[Jonathan Bishop]

Hey Raeven,

It sounds like the RGB colours in your image are outside of the CMYK gamut. My suggestion would be to use ‘Hue and saturation’ to bring these RGB values closer towards the CMYK gamut before converting. In your ‘info palette’ change you colour values diplayed to CMYK and place the cursor over the image, some of the values shoud have a ! symbol next to them which means that these colours cannot be represented in CMYK. Try using Hue and Saturation and reduce the ‘saturation’ of the image until the ! symbols no longer display next to their CMYK values. Then OK the adjustmens (or merge the adjustment layer) and convert the image to CMYK. If you want to boost back up the colours while in CMYK use Hue and Saturation again and increase the saturation but be careful because the slightest increase can change the image drastically.

Hope this helps (and isnt too long winded)

Cheers

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hey Cary,

Select the adjustment layer you’ve created (directly above the layer you want to affect) and choose ‘Create Clipping Mask’ from the Layers menu. This will have the adjustment layer only affect the layer beneath it (grouping the two together and retaining the clipping of the underlying layer). Holding down “apple/opt g” when having selected the adjustment layer will perform this action as a shortcut.

N.B you can perform this action using multiple adjustment layers affecting the desired Layer by repeating the action on adjustment layers above the ‘group’ (hope that makes sense). You can also undo the ‘Created Clipping Mask’ by repeating the above action with the ‘grouped’ adjustment layer selected.

Hope this helps

Cheers

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hey Max,

The black is probably still slightly transparent because it needs more strength. Try boosting the strength of the black (levels, channel mix etc.) and see how this works. Just keep an eye on your ink limit to see that it stays within your specifications.

If your still not happy with the representation, what I usually do with line art in this circumstance is:

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hi Jon,

I know this post is over a week old now but I do have a tip for you to match grain using a couple of effects through PS, this technique will work in both CMYK and RGB modes.

Follow the steps below:

1. Begin by creating a new Layer
2. From the colour picker define a colour C=50, M=50, Y=50, K=50 or if using RGB R = 127, G = 127, B = 127.
3. Now fill the new layer with this colour.
4. Select “Add noise” from the “Noise” Section under filters and apply an amount of 5% (this is just a value for demonstraion, any subtle amount will do, this just works for me usually).
6. Now change the “Layer Blending Mode” of this Layer to “Overlay”.
7. You should now see that the original image (underneath this layer) has a fine grain running through it. To alter the appearance of this grain (if you wish) I suggest transforming the layer you just created or by altering its opacity.

Hope this helps and it wasn’t too late coming.

Cheers

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hey Guys,

Just elaborating on bilarts post, exporting at PDF version 1.4 instead of 1.3 should also aleviate this problem and majority of printers should accept this versioning.

Cheers

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hey Noorodeen,

It sounds like your problem may be related to the size/resolution of your images, you explained that they were 4″ x 6″, well i’m aussie so to me that would be 101mm x 152mm. First thing I’d check is my resolution of the image/s, to ensure a good quality print output the standard should be 300dpi/lpi (which is located in the “image size” window under the “image” pull down of photoshop (sorry i’m assuming your using photoshop but this function is native to most image correction applications). Now, the image size should be the 4″ x 6″ and the resolution section should read 300dpi (pixels/inch) or 120dpi (pixels/cm), if it displays a lower reolution such as 72dpi (pixels/inch) then the resolution is too low for your desired output. The moral of this lengthy storie is that the resolution of the image should be 300dpi (pixels/inch) or 120 dpi (pixels/cm) at whatever the desired image size is.

finally that parts over…. sorry if it was a bit longwinded

Now, if its effected through indesign, check what percentage the image is placed in as (this is found by selecting the image using the direct selection tool when it changes to a hand when held over the image). If the image is placed in at a greater percentage than 100 percent then the diplay will appear pixelated no mater what display featur is specified hi-res or typical. if the image is placed in at less than or equal to 100 percent but is 72dpi (as discussed above) then it will still be too low a resolution for you to print. Rule of thumb “Image must be placed at 300dpi and placed in page equal to or thereabouts at 100 percent”.

sweet, hope this helps but post again if this doesn’t solve the problem

cheers

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hi Privvy007,

In answer to your question, yes you can do this. However you will have to follow these steps:

1. Select all of the elements on the page you wish to extract.
2. Using the selection tool, drag all these elements (picture frames, text frames etc) as one selection to your desktop ( bare with me I’m going somewhere with this)
3. There should now be a new file on your desktop with the extension .inds, this is a Indesign Snippet file.
4. Create a new document in InDesign to the specs you need (should be the same as the file you are extracting from).
5. Drag the “.inds” file from your desktop to the new page you have created.

This will now place those same elements onto your new page. Now your probably asking why did’nt I just copy and paste… well the beauty if snippets is that you can drag single pages or a spread using the same action and use at your convenience. Only downside is that Indesign will only allow you to select multiple elements from the same spread, you cannot select a series of elements across multiple spreads (hopefully they will have fixed this in CS3).

Cheers, hope this helps

[Jonathan Bishop]

Hey there,

In response to the first response from thoward, ensure when saving the .tif file with transparency that you check “Save Transparency”. This will ensure that the TIFF file will retain transparent background when placed and PDF’d through Indesign CS/CS2. (Please post again if this continues happening)

Also in respose to EKWoman, the myth that only PSD files will display transperancy is a common mistake by some photoshop users. Since Photoshop CS (after Photoshop 7) was released Adobe have enabled the TIF Format to retain transparency and contain layered files. This also makes the TIF Format superior to PSD through using LZW compression (no removal of detail) instead of the jpeg compression that PSD uses (compression through loss of image detail).

Cheers