Is CMYK problematic in Publisher 2003?

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Brett... - 26 Feb 2008 19:20 GMT

I am creating a 28 page A5, fully colour newsletter which is sent to a
commercial printer as a PDF.

My commercial printer asked for a PDF with colours set up as CMYK.

To do this I created a postcript file and then ran this through Adobe
distiller. It worked but there were problems:

Printing to file (postscript) took 10 minutes for my newsletter to complete.
All graphics had to be manually inserted from file - attempting to use cut
and paste resulted in blank images in the PDF.

I have now been experimenting with the print settings and by changing the
colour from CMYK to RGB has resulted in some big improvements:

I can now print directly to PDF without having to go through the
intermediate step of creating a postscript file

Printing takes 1 not 10 minutes

Images that have been inserted using cut and paste now appear in the
resulting PDF.

So are their known issues with using CMYK in Publisher?
Is my commercial printer going to have kittens as a result of getting RGB
rather than CMYK colours?

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Rob Giordano (Crash) - 26 Feb 2008 20:06 GMT

I've done two 4 over 4's in the past few months with Pub 2003 and 2007 and
haven't had a problem. Switched the pub to CMYK and outputted to Acrobat 8
gave the file to my printer dood...no problems. I did not go to postscript.

Signature

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression

|I am creating a 28 page A5, fully colour newsletter which is sent to a
| commercial printer as a PDF.
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
| Is my commercial printer going to have kittens as a result of getting RGB
| rather than CMYK colours?

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Matt Beals - 27 Feb 2008 01:09 GMT

I've never been able to get Publisher to output CMYK when printing
composite. The problem with Publisher CMYK is that no one knows *which*
CMYK it is. We have a pretty good idea, but it looks like hell. So it is
better to give the printer RGB so that when it is converted to CMYK they
can make the conversion in a more intelligent way. And if they have a
problem with getting RGB PDF's well then that says a lot about the
printer. And not necessarily in a good way... There are several ways to
get good PDF's out of Publisher. Best way all around for everyone is RGB
PDF export and smart RGB to CMYK conversions.

Matt Beals
Consultant
Enfocus Certified Trainer
Markzware Recognized Trainer
(206) 201-2320 - Main
(720) 367-3869 - eFax
mailto:matt@mattbeals.com

Come visit me at:

http://www.automatetheworkflow.com
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http://forums.mattbeals.com

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> I've done two 4 over 4's in the past few months with Pub 2003 and 2007 and
> haven't had a problem. Switched the pub to CMYK and outputted to Acrobat 8
> gave the file to my printer dood...no problems. I did not go to postscript.

Reply to this Message

Rob Giordano (Crash) - 27 Feb 2008 04:36 GMT

I've done it both ways...the last one I did, I believe you're right...I left
it as RGB and went to Acrobat 8.

Signature

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Giordano
Microsoft MVP Expression

| I've never been able to get Publisher to output CMYK when printing
| composite. The problem with Publisher CMYK is that no one knows *which*
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
| > haven't had a problem. Switched the pub to CMYK and outputted to Acrobat 8
| > gave the file to my printer dood...no problems. I did not go to postscript.

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Brett... - 27 Feb 2008 22:08 GMT

Useful information, thanks both. I'll stick to RGB for now.

> I've never been able to get Publisher to output CMYK when printing
> composite. The problem with Publisher CMYK is that no one knows *which*
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
>> Acrobat 8 gave the file to my printer dood...no problems. I did not go to
>> postscript.

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