Simon's Blog

I’m pulling together my annual art/photography yearbooks and I have hit the CMYK problem.

I know. I know. Commercial book production uses CMYK printers. Normally this isn’t a problem as I usually use a very restricted sRGB colour space and this is usually enough. Not this year. I’m not sure whether Blurb has changed things or perhaps the images I’m using are much blue/green. Whatever the reason I’ve had to use a CMYK colour space. It is hell.

Quick note for anyone not aware of the difference. Most images are created using an RGB colour space. This means the primary colours used are Red, Green and Blue. This is a much deeper colour space and produces wonderfully rich colours. The space can be saved as a 16 bit image ensuring that the colours have a huge range to be saved in. In a CMYK the primary colours are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. It is only 8 bit.

The above image illustrates the problem. The blue on the left is R: 0 G: 0 B: 255. Once it is converted to CMYK it becomes the colour on the right. In RGB it is R: 57 G: 83 B 164 – quite a change.

(Please note: the explanation is very simplified and if you want to know more then a quick google will open your eyes to a whole load of pain.).

Most images don’t really need any work but when they do they never look the same when finished. It is very frustrating. (I suspect if had to do this more often then this wouldn’t be such a hasle/problem. This time it is and is VERY frustrating! I’m having to reactivate memories that I first laid down almost 20 years ago – my memory isn’t what it was which also doesn’t help.)

Of course you would be quite in your rights to point out that this is the most first of first world problems. You would be right. Nonetheless, it is the world I live in and I am really frustrated!