Preparing images for press

Generally, your workflow depends on the capabilities of the prepress facility. Before you begin a workflow for commercial printing, you need to contact the people that will be outputting the file and find out what they want you to do. For example, they may not want you to convert to CMYK at any point because they have specific settings that they need to use. Here are some possible scenarios for preparing your image files to achieve predictable printing results:

• Work entirely in RGB mode and make sure the image file is embedded with the RGB working space profile. If your printer or prepress person uses a color management system, he or she should be able to use your file's profile to make an accurate conversion to CMYK for producing the film and printing plates.
• Work in RGB mode until you finish with your image editing. Then convert the image to CMYK mode and make any additional color and tonal adjustments. Especially check the highlight and shadow areas of the image. Use the Levels, Curves, or Hue/Saturation command to make corrections. These adjustments should be very minor. Then send the CMYK file to the professional printer.
• Place your RGB or CMYK image in Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, or Adobe PageMaker. In general, most images printed on a commercial press are not printed directly from Photoshop but from a page-layout program like Adobe InDesign or a print-savvy program like Adobe Illustrator. For more information on importing Photoshop files into Adobe InDesign or Adobe Illustrator, see the Adobe InDesign Help or the Adobe Illustrator Help.

Here are a few issues to keep in mind when working on an image intended for commercial printing:

• If you know the characteristics of your printer's press, you can specify the highlight and shadow output to preserve certain details. For more information on setting the tonal and color output of your image, see Making Color and Tonal Adjustments.
• If you print an image on a desktop printer in order to preview what the final printed piece will look like, keep in mind that there are differences between a desktop printer and a commercial printing press. You may find that the resulting images do not look alike. A professional color proof gives a more accurate preview of the final printed piece.
• If you have a profile from the print house, you could choose it with the Proof Setup command then view a soft proof using the Proof Colors command. This method gives you a preview on your monitor of the final printed piece. For more information on soft proofing, see Soft-proofing colors.