Meeting Summary: Color Management: InDesign and beyond

Tue, Sep 21st, 2010 at 5:30 PM

McMurry Inc.

Event Details

Our presenting sponsor, Arizona Office Technologies, kicked off the meeting with an introduction to a blog by written by Malcolm Crawford, Senior Worldwide Technical Marketing Manager at EFI. The blog (http://digitalprinting.blogs.xerox.com/?p=1348) is a five-part series about managing spot colors on Fiery controllers. There is a wealth of information here for those who print on digital presses using a Fiery controller.

One of the speakers at the 2010 Phoenix Design Week conference was also the presenter for our Member Minute. McMurry’s Design Director, Marc Oxborrow, presented us with a case study about refining a logo for his corporate client, UPS. The logo that Marc created was a text-based mark using the corporate font. He showed off a few simple InDesign techniques such as horizontal/vertical scaling and using the Direct Selection tool to nudge specific points to demonstrate how he refined the logo without having to launch Illustrator. You can download Marc’s presentation below.

Next up was the main presentation by Rick Burress that has generated a lot of buzz on Facebook and Twitter recently. Rick began his color management discussion by requesting some topics from the audience. People wanted to know how to calibrate their monitors, what profiles to use, and how to set up the PDF export options. We begin with the basics.

To calibrate your monitor, go to System Preferences: Display. Then click on the “Color” tab at the top next to “Display”. Select the monitor you wish to calibrate and then click Calibrate. This will bring up a new window. Check the “export mode” option at the bottom of the dialog box to begin the process. Follow the on-screen instructions to calibrate your monitor.

After color calibration, the next big step to achieving accurate color is using the appropriate profile. To set color profiles in any of the Adobe applications, go to Edit: Color Settings. Work with your printer and other vendors to make sure that everyone in the process is using the same color profiles. To get information about a color profile, select an option from the drop-down menu and read the description below at the bottom of the dialog box. Rick recommends setting the “Working RGB” profile to Adobe RGB (1998) for print output. This profile has a large color space and is suitable for flat-screen displays.

However, setting the color profiles in each application individually is time-consuming. Adobe Bridge gives you the ability to reset the profiles of all your Adobe applications in one step. Go to Edit: Creative Suite Color Settings. When you change your color settings here, the changes take effect throughout the whole suite.

The next tip that Rick presented generated the most buzz from the audience – a recommendation straight from the Adobe manual that he reads religiously. Rick revealed that the best way to achieve accurate color is to use an RGB workflow until the product is ready for print, because when you are editing colors in RGB mode, you are asking the profiles you selected to manage the color for you. However, if you are editing images in CMYK, then YOU, rather than the specified profiles, are in charge of the color management. This was a complex subject to comprehend, and many people lined up after the meeting to discuss this in more detail with Rick.

Needless to say, the meeting was wildly successful and we thank all of you for suggesting the topic in your meeting evalautions. If you have a meeting topic you’d like to see or are interesting in presenting at a future meeting, please contact phoenix@indesignusergroup.com.

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Want to learn more before our next meeting? Check out this 2-day, action-packed seminar in Los Angeles hosted by InDesignSecrets. (http://idla.eventbrite.com). All IDUG members get a 10% discount off the admission. Just enter IDUG as the discount code.

The Phoenix chapter wants to help get you there! Tune in to our Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/PHXIDUG) and Twitter (@PHXIDUG) pages for daily raffle prizes next week. On Friday, you will have an opportunity to win a 2-day seminar pass, plus the opportunity to bring a friend for 1/2 off. If you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, please email us at phoenix@indesignusergroup.com to get in on the action! You must send an email each day (Tues 10/5-Friday 10/8) to qualify for the daily prizes. Details on the daily prizes can be viewed on Facebook, even if you are not a member.

Thank you

We were very fortunate to have Arizona Office Technologies as our presenting sponsor for the meeting.

Arizona Office Technologies has 27+ years in business of lowering costs associated with managing & producing documents by providing best in class software, hardware, & workflow solutions.

A special thanks to our other sponsors: Adobe, Artistec, Shutterstock, Cengage Learning, InDesign magazine, Peachpit, PHX IDUG and McMurry

Our raffle winners for this meeting include:

• 2 VIP DBACKS tickets with parking pass courtesy of AOT: Debra Ross
• Artistec 1-hour training: JoAnn Simony
• 2 Shutterstock 1-month subscriptions: Eric Torres and Eric Henry
• 3 $10 iTunes gift card courtesy of PHX IDUG: Becci Burkhart, Adele Mulford, and Eric Henry
• 2 InDesign Magazine 1-year subscriptions: Lisa Quirin and Laura Marlowe
• The Adobe Illustrator CS5 Wow Book courtesy of Peachpit Press: Chellie Buzzeo
• InDesign Type Book courtesy of Peachpit Press: Fred Gutierrez
• Exploring Adobe InDesign CS5 Book courtesy of Cengage Learning: Mitch Selznick
• Adobe Creative Suite 5 InDesign courtesy of Adobe: Kim Matelski

Job Opportunities

Visit our homepage (http://indesignusergroup.com/chapters/phoenix) to view available job opportunities.

Upcoming Industry Events

Phoenix Design Week (Sept. 29 - Oct. 3) - See Industry Events for more details or visit http://phxdw.com.

InDesignSecrets Live (Oct. 18 - Oct. 19) - See Industry Events for more details or visit http://idla.eventbrite.com.

Comments from attendees

“Mind blowing. Color settings are something that scares me because I never knew what to do. Some of that fear is gone now.” -Becci Burkhart

“I was impressed. I’ll definitely be back.” -Theresa Johnson

“Answered a lot of color questions I’ve always had. Thx.” -Diane Serpa

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Attached File/s

• compass_logo_refinement.pdf

Photos from this Meeting

See the photos