Design Practice: Digital Print Workshop - Preparing Work to Print: Photoshop

The tab always tells you what colour mode it is in. Designing for commercial print the colour mode should be in CMYK. The default mode in photoshop is RGB, so when you scan an image or use a digital image it will be RGB. Photoshop is designed to work in RGB. When preparing for commercial print the mode needs to be in CMYK. As soon as the image is converted to CMYK photoshop will change it to the closest colour.

The gamut warning shows you which colours sit outside the colour range in RGB.

The first option is to convert to CMYK.

But before that we should check the saturation and vibrance and adjusting the levels. As the image is brightened then some of the colours begin to return.

The saturation can also be changed. The brighter colours don't tend to be in both colour modes so lowering the saturation removes the gap.

Proof colours allows you to see it in CMYK whilst working in RGB. The tab shows you that it is RGB/CMYK.

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Why bother with RGB? It gives us the possibility to design for screen as well. RGB files are smaller.

Colours

Alt and Click deletes the colour swatch. But they have to all be done individually.

Colour swatches can be made by using the eyedropper tool and then clicking in the swatches box.

The colour picker tool allows us to pick any colour. The triangle and exclamation mark shows that it is not a print colour. The cube shows it is not web safe. You can click on them and it will go to the closest colour.

Spot Colours

Why would you want to use them?:

You want to use more vivid and bright colour which cannot be used in the RGB and CMYK modes.

They allow us to apply specific colour, for a brand or logo then we know it is the same pantone colour anywhere in the world.

Economic factors - It can lower the price if you can print it all from one or two spot colours.

You can use spot colours to print things that can't be printed with CMYK such as florescent inks, metallic inks etc...

On the colour picker there is a colour libraries which allows you to pick colours by pantones.

If you know the specific code then you can type it in and it will go directly to that colour. For example, below I typed in 555 and I now have my spot colour.

As soon as I use my spot colour on my image it becomes the mode of the image. The pantone code has to be there so that it can be referenced and made up separately at the printer. At the moment the green on the image below is now working in RGB. You need to work in a different way for it to be separate.

To do this the image drop down menu has an option in mode called duotone. If the black is clicked on it brings up the colour picker. This allows you to access the pantone libraries and pick a spot colour.

The drop down menu can be changed from monotone to duotone, this adds another layer of ink as a spot colour.

The curves allow you to adjust the amount of ink which is used in relation to the previous black image. The curve box to the left of the colour changes the amount of colour. The horizontal shows how the ink was in the original. the vertical is the ink now. Moving the curve line will add or deduct ink to or from the original.

Adding black (key) brings the image together.

Channels

The main use of photoshop channels is to store information about colour.

Different channels can be removed Above green has been removed.

Here I have experimented with moving the position of the channels.

The drop down menu offers to add a spot colour to the channels. Once this is done you can choose a colour through the colours library. The black then becomes full colour and white acts as an eraser removing the colour.