CMYK, how to use it? (see details)?

Question

I took a picture using digital camera, I send it to my computer and fix the light, etc using a photo software from my scanner. I plan to send it to the photo finish store and get it print out.
I heard people said that is better if you convert your picture into CYMK before printing. Since if you don't, the color of the print may come out different?

So I tried convert the picture to CYMK, but then they have option about "Black Generation % ", "UCR Amount % ", "Total Ink Limit % ".

So I just click OK, then 4 new pictures come out, it's the same picture but different but all black and white. ??? All I know is CMYK stands for 4 different color?
So what happen? how come four different pictures are created?

Most important: Is my original picture (the color picture) has been converted to CMYK mode?

Please read the questions carefully and give me real answer.

Don't answer: "I dunno", "Ask the people in the photo store", "Try printing using your own printer".

Thank you.

Answer 1

Don't worry about converting to CMYK. Your camera takes the picture in RGB. Some cameras allow you to set it to sRGB. Adobe set the standard in the RGB's. When you take the photo to the super whatever, they print in RGB, they calibrate in RGB, so, keep it in RGB. If you want better colour rendition than JPG gives you, save to .tiff format. If you save to tiff format, you will need to re-size the photo on the computer since most Super whatever' have a 6 Mb limit on files. If you are doing Litho's most places only accept jpg and tiff formats anyways, they do the conversion. Most digital cameras come with a photo suite for playing with the photo's taken, if you bought your camera second hand, go to the manufactures site and download the software, or go to the site I pasted below and grab there software and try it out, it is a free trail version that does not expire, they just nag you to death till you buy it after it expires. Using the software from the scanner, is just "ain't right". Good Luck and happy shooting



Also, you need to find some calibration software for your monitor, Adobe has Adobe Gamma, ain't no sense in working with your photo, if what you see looks alright but is really all wrong.

Answer 2

Let the photo place do any converting if needed. You should convert to CMYK if you are sending the pic to a commercial printer, but otherwise. the difference between CMYK and RGB will be too small for you to notice if you don't mess with color correction a lot.

The black and white prints you got were representations of each of the 4 colors (CMYK). It is called 'separations' and you may have noticed how pictures in magazines are made up of colored dots if you use a magnifying glass to look at it? Look real close and see that there are only 4 colors being used. C-cyan/ blue, M-magenta/redish, Y-yellow and K-black.

If your pic is now in CMYK it will still print. The problem is in your print command somewhere. GO back and check all of your settings and try it again. Or ask the photo place. They may be able to help more.

Answer 3

First of all, when you took the photo with your digital cam, it is set to be on the "RGB" mode (colors of the light). You can easy convert it into the "CMYK" mode (colors of pigment). Many different programs have different function to make the conversion. However, converting "RGB" into "CMYK" is not the same as "color separation". "Color separation" is the process to creat negative films of each "CMYK" colors for the litho plates or silk screens that use in commercial printing. Its function is to separat the colors you see into cyan, magenta, yellow and black. As result, when you said, they all came out black, but did you notice that each one of them has different density in black (dots).

Answer 4

well dude it sounds like u are looking at the color layers (cymk are colors) each grayscale pic is a representation of u'r color example the cyan one well it's like u have a scale 0 is white and 100 is full color

only that it doesn't show u the scale for cyan but on black dun ask why my photoshop does it on colortoo. i don't think that u did it right though .. u shouldn't have 4 diferent pics. anyways for fotographs, the cymk doesn't really maer at color printing that is for tipographis so just shug u'r shoulders and take the original pic to the shop :) it won't make any visible diference

Answer 5

PSD is a Photoshop file type, where the image is saved complete with any layers, it means that you can open the file & work on individual layers (unlike a jpg where the file is saved with all layers combined). RGB (red, green, blue) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow & black) are colour systems. RGB are the primary colours used to make other colours in projected media (ie using light), CMYK are the primary colours used to make other colours in printed media (ie using inks).