Printing Advice Needed

[galinette]

By 'calibrated monitor' do you mean one that is simply calibrated with a Huey or Spyder or is there another step involved?

Yes, that's the only step. However, calibrating a crappy monitor will never make miracles.

[Voytech]

- If you have a calibrated monitor, you can have a preview of the printing colors using photoshop (proof colors preview). However, they will be more or less clamped depending on your monitor gamut.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was the print/paper medium that had the smaller gamut of color. Unless you have a really low quality monitor...

Absolutely not. Printers often have a wider gamut in the cyan for instance, very visible in blue sky or shallow clear sea (which are the weak point on RGB systems)
CYMK is much better than sRGB for this.

This is the main interest of AdobeRGB color space, it includes most of the CYMK gamut. Many consumer monitors are roughly including sRGB but not AdobeRGB

Ex: http://www.google.fr/imgres?q=cmyk+gamu ... =111&ty=91

Well, even based on your own link, CMYK has a smaller gamut than even sRGB. Whatever it gains in cyan-green, it looses in magenta-purple, so I wouldn't make absolute statements here...

[saint-gobain-glass]

Well, even based on your own link, CMYK has a smaller gamut than even sRGB. Whatever it gains in cyan-green, it looses in magenta-purple, so I wouldn't make absolute statements here...

Well, my point was about some CYMK colors that are clamped when displayed on a sRGB monitor when using a correct color chain, and which will cause the difference between the print and the photoshop proof preview. That's true AFAIK.

Etienne

[Voytech]

Well, even based on your own link, CMYK has a smaller gamut than even sRGB. Whatever it gains in cyan-green, it looses in magenta-purple, so I wouldn't make absolute statements here...

Well, my point was about some CYMK colors that are clamped when displayed on a sRGB monitor when using a correct color chain, and which will cause the difference between the print and the photoshop proof preview. That's true AFAIK.

Etienne

Understood. I didn't want to come off as a prick btw. Looks like one should take two separate approaches to preparing the files for print, depending on whether the printer can and is willing to work in Adobe RGB. That would be ideal. Most of the internet print shops though (Zenfolio is one I know for sure) want sRGB files exclusively.

[galinette]

Understood. I didn't want to come off as a prick btw. Looks like one should take two separate approaches to preparing the files for print, depending on whether the printer can and is willing to work in Adobe RGB. That would be ideal. Most of the internet print shops though (Zenfolio is one I know for sure) want sRGB files exclusively.

Yes, AdobeRGB is very nice because it includes nearly every other gamut. It may cause some slight color stepping in 8bit images but this is rarely noticeable

Etienne