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January 9, 2007

Our first meeting of 2007, despite fears of snow and ice and the siren call of MacWorld in San Francisco, still attracted well over 100 attendees!

Before the break
In the first half of our meeting, we sought to address some of the questions that have accrued in my inbox. It was a lovely thing to behold the participation: many offering suggestions and perspective on questions ranging from the perverse, specific, and sometimes iconic ("How do you get rid of a swatch that just won't go away?") to the general ("Nested Styles?").

In fact, here's one more tip on that swatch issue:
Create a new graphic that uses the same color swatch name (in Illustrator, perhaps). Place the graphic in InDesign. This will sort of "reset" the perverse swatch. Delete the graphic, and the swatch should be deletable, too, unless another placed element uses it.

After the break
The second half -- the dreaded Color Management discussion -- drew members of the Pacific Northwest Color Management User Group to our meeting. The bulk of the conversation revolved around the fate and use of placed CMYK assets, especially in an otherwise RGB workflow. If these had been made with one press or printer in mind (with its associated ink limit, etc.), there could be trouble at press if a different press is required. Color Management allows a solution: the reseparation of these assets using the profile of the new press condition.

The bottom line was that folks developing documents for use on either unknown presses/printers, or a diversity of them, should build the majority of assets in RGB; assets that need specific color builds can be built in CMYK, and then use InDesign's print dialog box to choose the destination print environment.

 We then discussed the risks to those special CMYK builds (100%k, or 0c 100m 100y 0k, or other builds that oughtn't change, even if that means the resulting color will). It quickly became obvious that this discussion was raising issues, defining them, and offering a path to their resolution. And although it was never intended to be a comprehensive seminar, many brought up related issues (namely getting an InDesign doc into grayscale. The answer? Probably best to convert in Acrobat: in version 8, Advanced menu > Print Production > Convert Colors).

 Also, one can work in RGB in Adobe Illustrator and still have black ink-only text. One just has to double-click on the Black swatch and change its color mode to grayscale.

Below a link to a PDF that reviews many of the major points. It's not a treatise on color; if you want that, there are other wonderful publications. If you want a deeper discussion, consider PNWCMUG.

A Color Managed Workflow
Download [PDF: 585 KB]  

We had a diversity of prizes to give away: from a glowing pen-thing, to many books, and, of course, a copy of our favorite software.

 Ah, there was no snow or ice was evident until some time after the meeting adjourned. Our agenda holds sway over the elements!

Steve Laskevitch
Seattle IDUG Chapter Rep

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