Color management
Choose Edit > Creative Suite Color Settings.
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Select a color setting from the list, and click Apply.
If none of the default settings meet your requirements, select Show Expanded List Of Color Setting Files to view additional settings. To install a custom settings file, such as a file you received from a print service provider, click
Show Saved Color Settings Files.
Set up color management
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Select the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.
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Select a color setting from the Settings menu, and click OK.
The setting you select determines which color working spaces are used by the application, what happens when you open and import files with embedded profiles, and how the color management system converts colors. To view a description of a setting, select the setting and then position the pointer over the setting name. The description appears at the bottom of the dialog box.
Note: Acrobat color settings are a subset of those used in InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
In certain situations, such as if your service provider supplies you with a custom output profile, you may need to customize specific options in the Color Settings dialog box. However, customizing is recommended for advanced users only.
Note: If you work with more than one Adobe application, it is highly recommended that you synchronize your color
settings across applications. (See Synchronize color settings across Adobe applications
.)
Managing process and spot colors
When color management is on, any color you apply or create within a color-managed Adobe application automatically uses a color profile that corresponds to the document. If you switch color modes, the color management system uses the appropriate profiles to translate the color to the new color model you choose.
Keep in mind the following guidelines for working with process and spot colors:
• Choose a CMYK working space that matches your CMYK output conditions to ensure that you can accurately define and view process colors.
• Use Lab values (the default) to display predefined spot colors (such as colors from the TOYO, PANTONE, DIC, and
HKS libraries) and convert these colors to process colors. Using Lab values provides the greatest accuracy and guarantees the consistent display of colors across Creative Suite applications.
Note: Color-managing spot colors provides a close approximation of a spot color on your proofing device and monitor.
However, it is difficult to exactly reproduce a spot color on a monitor or proofing device because many spot color inks exist outside the gamuts of many of those devices.
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Color settings
About color working spaces
A working space is an intermediate color space used to define and edit color in Adobe applications. Each color model has a working space profile associated with it. You can choose working space profiles in the Color Settings dialog box.
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Color management
If an object has an embedded color profile that doesn’t match the working space profile, the application uses a color
management policy to determine how to handle the color data. In most cases, the default policy is to preserve the embedded profile.
Working space options
Select the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.
To view a description of any profile, select the profile and then position the pointer over the profile name. The description appears at the bottom of the dialog box.
RGB
Determines the RGB color space of the application. In general, it’s best to choose Adobe RGB or sRGB, rather than the profile for a specific device (such as a monitor profile).
sRGB is recommended when you prepare images for the web or mobile devices, because it defines the color space of the standard monitor used to view images on the web. sRGB is also a good choice when you work with images from consumer-level digital cameras, because most of these cameras use sRGB as their default color space.
Adobe RGB is recommended when you prepare documents for print, because Adobe RGB’s gamut includes some printable colors (cyans and blues in particular) that can’t be defined using sRGB. Adobe RGB is also a good choice when working with images from Using-level digital cameras, because most of these cameras use Adobe RGB as their default color space.
CMYK
Determines the CMYK color space of the application. All CMYK working spaces are device-dependent, meaning that they are based on actual ink and paper combinations. The CMYK working spaces Adobe supplies are based on standard commercial print conditions.
Grayscale
Determines the grayscale color space of the application.
Note: You can use the color space in an embedded output color space for viewing and printing. For more information on output intents, see Color conversion and ink management (Acrobat Pro) .
Adobe applications ship with a standard set of working space profiles that have been recommended and tested by
Adobe Systems for most color management workflows. By default, only these profiles appear in the working space menus.
About missing and mismatched color profiles
Unless specified otherwise, the document uses the working space profile associated with its color mode for creating and editing colors. However, some existing documents may not use the working space profile that you have specified, and some existing documents may not be color-managed. It is common to encounter the following exceptions to your color-managed workflow:
• You might open a document or import color data (for example, by copying and pasting or dragging and dropping) from a document that is not tagged with a profile. This is often the case when you open a document created in an application that either does not support color management or has color management turned off.
• You might open a document or import color data from a document that is tagged with a profile different from the current working space. This may be the case when you open a document that was created using different color management settings, or scanned and tagged with a scanner profile.
In either case, the application uses a color management policy to decide how to handle the color data in the document.
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Color management
Color conversion options
Color conversion options let you control how the application handles the colors in a document as it moves from one color space to another. Changing these options is recommended only if you are knowledgeable about color management and very confident about the changes you make. To display conversion options, select the Color
Management category of the Preferences dialog box.
Engine
Specifies the Color Management Module (CMM) used to map the gamut of one color space to the gamut of another. For most users, the default Adobe (ACE) engine fulfills all conversion needs.
To view a description of an engine or intent option, select the option and then position the pointer over the option name.
The description appears at the bottom of the dialog box.
Use Black Point Compensation
Ensures that the shadow detail in the image is preserved by simulating the full dynamic range of the output device. Select this option if you plan to use black point compensation when printing (which is recommended in most situations).
About rendering intents
A rendering intent determines how a color management system handles color conversion from one color space to another. Different rendering intents use different rules to determine how the source colors are adjusted; for example, colors that fall inside the destination gamut may remain unchanged, or they may be adjusted to preserve the original range of visual relationships when translated to a smaller destination gamut. The result of choosing a rendering intent depends on the graphical content of documents and on the profiles used to specify color spaces. Some profiles produce identical results for different rendering intents.
In general, it is best to use the default rendering intent for the selected color setting, which has been tested byAdobe
Systems to meet industry standards. For example, if you choose a color setting for North America or Europe, the default rendering intent is Relative Colorimetric. If you choose a color setting for Japan, the default rendering intent is Perceptual.
You can select a rendering intent when you set color conversion options for the color management system, soft-proof colors, and print artwork:
Perceptual
Aims to preserve the visual relationship between colors so it’s perceived as natural to the human eye, even though the color values themselves may change. This intent is suitable for photographic images with lots of out-ofgamut colors. This is the standard rendering intent for the Japanese printing industry.
Saturation
Tries to produce vivid colors in an image at the expense of color accuracy. This rendering intent is suitable for business graphics like graphs or charts, where bright saturated colors are more important than the exact relationship between colors.
Relative Colorimetric
Compares the extreme highlight of the source color space to that of the destination color space and shifts all colors accordingly. Out-of-gamut colors are shifted to the closest reproducible color in the destination color space. Relative Colorimetric preserves more of the original colors in an image than Perceptual. This is the standard rendering intent for printing in North America and Europe.
Absolute Colorimetric
Leaves colors that fall inside the destination gamut unchanged. Out-of-gamut colors are clipped.
No scaling of colors to destination white point is performed. This intent aims to maintain color accuracy at the expense of preserving relationships between colors and is suitable for proofing to simulate the output of a particular device. This intent is particularly useful for previewing how paper color affects printed colors.
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Color-managing documents
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Color management
Color-managing documents for online viewing
Color management for online viewing is very different from color management for printed media. With printed media, you have far more control over the appearance of the final document. With online media, your document will appear on a wide range of possibly uncalibrated monitors and video display systems, significantly limiting your control over color consistency.
When you color-manage documents that will be viewed exclusively on the web, Adobe recommends that you use the sRGB color space. sRGB is the default working space for most Adobe color settings, but you can verify that sRGB is selected in the Color Management preferences. With the working space set to sRGB, any RGB graphics you create will use sRGB as the color space.
When you export PDFs, you can choose to embed profiles. PDFs with embedded profiles reproduce color consistently under a properly configured color management system. Keep in mind that embedding color profiles increases the size of PDFs. RGB profiles are usually small (around 3 KB); however, CMYK profiles can range from 0.5 to 2 MB.
Proofing colors
In a traditional publishing workflow, you print a hard proof of your document to preview how its colors will look when reproduced on a specific output device. In a color-managed workflow, you can use the precision of color profiles to softproof your document directly on the monitor. You can display an on-screen preview of how your document’s colors will look when reproduced on a particular output device.
Keep in mind that the reliability of the soft proof depends upon the quality of your monitor, the profiles of your monitor and output devices, and the ambient lighting conditions of your work environment.
Note: A soft proof alone doesn’t let you preview how overprinting will look when printed on an offset press. If you work with documents that contain overprinting, turn on Overprint Preview to accurately preview overprints in a soft proof.
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A Document is created in its working color space. B Document’s color values are translated to color space of chosen proof profile (usually the output device’s profile). C Monitor displays proof profile’s interpretation of document’s color values.
Soft-proof colors (Acrobat Pro)
Choose Tools > Print Production >Output Preview.
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Choose the color profile of a specific output device from the Simulation Profile menu.
Choose any additional soft-proof options:
Simulate Black Ink
Simulates the dark gray you really get instead of a solid black on many printers, according to the proof profile. Not all profiles support this option.
Simulate Paper Color
Simulates the dingy white of real paper, according to the proof profile. Not all profiles support this option.
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Color management
Color-managing PDFs for printing (Acrobat Pro)
When you createAdobe PDFs for commercial printing, you can specify how color information is represented. The easiest way to do this is using a PDF/X standard. For more information about PDF/X and how to create PDFs, search
Help.
In general, you have the following choices for handling colors when creating PDFs:
• (PDF/X-3) Does not convert colors. Use this method when creating a document that will be printed or displayed on various or unknown devices. When you select a PDF/X-3 standard, color profiles are automatically embedded in the PDF.
• (PDF/X-1a) Converts all colors to the destination CMYK color space. Use this method if you want to create a pressready file that does not require any further color conversions. When you select a PDF/X-1a standard, no profiles are embedded in the PDF.
Note: All spot color information is preserved during color conversion; only the process color equivalents convert to the designated color space.
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