Thanks Bob. Sites like frighten me - you think you know a bit about
something and they show you know diddly squat.
In a magazine environment when illustrations and advertisements are coming
from all directions I have found that the most problems arise when ads or
illustrations have embedded colour profiles. I have always understood that
colour profiles adjust colour rendering to compensate for dot gain, paper,
ink chemistry and other printing characteristics, and that unless you know
how a job is to be printed, applying a colour profile could do more harm
than good.
One company that regularly sends me press releases has a standard rider to
the releases that specifies the CMYK and RAL colour for its machine
paintwork, and demands that I ensure that the machine picture is printed in
those colours ! The machine is light blue, and the requirement is 'not to
print in green'. Opening the files in some graphics viewer type programs
does, in fact, show the machine as dark green. The pictures have an embedded
colour profile and I have assumed that this is being read and interpreted by
some programs in a way that distorts the colour to this unacceptable level,
and that not to have embedded a colour profile would be safer than doing so.
Am I confusing profiles used, as you say, to balance colour from different
creation devices with profiles intended to compensate for printing
distortions?
k