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In this section on setting up Photoshop, we are going to cover setting up Color
Settings inside of Photoshop, and in fact, this is something you really ought to
do before you even open up an image. We have kind of put the cart before the horse
here, because setting up your Color Settings is something you do want to
do before you even start inside of Photoshop. So where do we get to our Color Settings?
To come down underneath the Edit menu and choose Color Settings, and for those
of you who like keyboard shortcuts, if you remember the keyboard shortcuts for
accessing Preferences, it's Command+K or Ctrl+K on the Mac and Windows, just add
a Shift key to that. Command+Shift+K or Ctrl+Shift+K. It brings
up Color Settings. So when you are setting up Photoshop it's
all about the Ks. The Command+K and the Command+ Shift+K for
setting up Photoshop. Now, if you have ever seen this dialog box
before and ever looked at it, and went holy smokes, close that before I hurt
myself. It's a pretty complicated looking dialog box.
Well, the first thing that you can do is just click on Fewer Options.
There, see that's better already. There is only two important things that you
want to set up here. We could spend all sorts of time talking about
how to set up all the details of this entire dialog box, but for our purposes,
for working inside of Photoshop, for color correction, the two things you really
want to pay attention to are the RGB and the CMYK Working Spaces.
This first setting here, the RGB Working Space, this is what you will choose
to determine which color space into which you will open an image inside of Photoshop.
And notice that there is several default color spaces built in here.
Now, before we choose one, let me just go back over to More Options here for a
second, and turn that on, and show you what happens to this menu.
Oh my gosh, look at how many different settings you have got here.
Most of those you won't need, which is another reason why you could just
turn-off the More Settings and go to Fewer Settings.
Now, if you are one of the lucky ones who are actually working in a fully color
managed workflow, you will probably have your own custom color profile, but if
you are like most people and you don't have your own custom color profile, you
are going to choose from one of these here. When we're working in color there are three
things that we want to really think about, the three core topics or items to think
about in your head are, what color space are you working in, what's the
gamut of that color space, and then what color profile am I using for opening
or saving or working on my images. Well, in this one menu here, we see RGB color
spaces, and that's typically the color space into which we capture and open
and edit images. The color space is determined by the colorants,
in this case red, green, and blue colorants.
Then the gamut refers to range of reproducible colors.
Profile, the third term in concept, are the files that we use for describing the
color space and the color gamut. Well, these are all general or generic color
profiles. Notice that the default inside of Photoshop
is SRGB, which is fine if you are a web maven and you focus on creating web
images, but if you are creating images for the web and for commercial printing
and for expanded gamut printing on an inkjet printer, you are really going
to be better off choosing one of the other color spaces.
My general recommendation is to choose Adobe RGB (1998).
If you are a professional photographer and you are using a high-end camera that
allows you to capture and edit in the ProPhoto RGB, go ahead and choose that.
But for everybody else, if you don't have a ProPhoto option, go ahead and choose
Adobe RGB (1998), and then whenever you open up an image inside of Photoshop,
that's going to be the preferred color space. By the way, if you are a photographer, you
should set this color space on your camera as well.
Most digital cameras have SRGB, which is the web color space, which is a smaller
color space than the Adobe RGB (1998). So be sure to set this on your digital camera
as well as here in Photoshop. Okay. Then what we want to choose here on the CMYK
is what's going to happen to our RGB color space files when we convert them
into CMYK, specifically for commercial printing.
Now, again, if you are a professional photographer and/or your final output
device is a wide gamut inkjet printer, which is printing with cyan, magenta,
yellow, and black, plus maybe light cyan and light magenta inks, you are not
going to convert it to CMYK. That's going to occur on the fly during the
printing process. But if you are sending your files for commercial
print, then you probably are going to convert to CMYK in Photoshop.
What you want to do here is choose one of these color profiles.
Remember a color profile is the description of the color gamut and the
color space of the device that you are going to be outputting to, in this
case a printing device. Choose the kind of press and the general kind
of paper in which you are going to be printing. So if you are going to send your files, or
you would tend to send your files to a commercial printing press, that's going
to be printed on coated stock, then you might choose U.S. Sheetfed Coated.
If you are going to uncoated stock, then you might choose U.S. Sheetfed
Uncoated, or if you are going to a SWOP v2, this is U.S. Web Coated, if it's
going on web based press, and there is a web based uncoated.
Now, some printing companies now are supporting the new standards called the
GRACoL standard, which is generally on a sheetfed press, on coated stock, and
it's just a refinement really of the earlier SWOP standards.
And this is if you are printing in the U.S. Of course if you are printing in
Japan, then they have got Japanese colors here.
Choose the one that matches the country, the printing press, and the paper in
which you are going to be printing. We are going to go with the standard U. S.
Sheetfed Coated here, and basically this doesn't do anything to our image until
we convert it into CMYK. Although when we get to talking about the
Info panel, the CMYK values that you see in your Info panel will be controlled
by whichever color profile you choose here. Well, there we go.
There's setting up our working spaces, Adobe RGB, unless you are a professional
photographer, then go to ProPhoto, and then choose the printing press and the
general paper in which you are going to be printing, and then click OK. Boom!
You are done setting up your color spaces, and now you are consistently opening
and saving your images into the two working color spaces of RGB and CMYK.