placing photos into indesign

[Terry Mikkelsen]

How is your document going to be presented?
Print on a press?
Print to a color copier?
pdf on a webpage?

Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com

[Phil Rego]

I’m trying to get my photos on to a greeting card. When i set up the design in indesign I place one of my photos which are rgb and in jpeg. The colors are washed out. When I convert my photos from rgb to cmyk in photoshop they also wash out. Iread a tutorial that said the true photo would still be there after i shipped it to the printer. Not the case as the printers proof was also washed out. All I want is for the true photo to be printed as I have saved it. Thanks for any input.
Phil

[Terry Mikkelsen]

Alright, now we are getting somewhere. You are sending these cards out to a print house. Your CMYK proof and his press proofs match. Hence, the printer is most likley using a CMYK process printing process.

Here is how you “fix” your problem:
You must convert your photos to CMYK in Photoshop. If the colors are not to your liking, you need to color correct them (BUT only after having converted them to CMYK). Then what you see on screen is what you should get back from the print house.
(One major variation is if you print to a consumer inkjet printer. It expects to see RGB files which it then performs its own calculations on it to convert internally to CMYK while printing. So sending CMYK files in this workflow would really make a mess.)

Back story:
RGB and CMYK are two TOTALLY different ways of displaying color. RGB is typically used for light producing objects (computer screens), while CMYK is for light reflecting/absorption objects (printed pieces). These are typical, there are variations, but you get the idea. The problem is that the two color spaces are NOT equal to each other (Yellow + Blue does not always equal Green). So a color that can be mixed and made in RGB, may not be able to be reproduced in CMYK and vice-versa! This is why we convert our graphics to the color space in which we are outputting to and then adjust the image to fit the need.

Tech-T Productions
http://www.technical-t.com