My .pdfs look a little vampyric... Help?

desperaterobots

Hey guys...

I've put together an illustration/advertisement for a client and they're having it printed in a glossy magazine. The magazine wants a .pdf sent to them, but when I look at the .pdf I output, it comes out looking kinda desaturated.

PDF on the left, photoshop on the right--->



All the images are CMYK to start with, using the default US Coated (SWOP) v2 colour profile... When I output I am selected to embed this profile, is that the right thing to do?

Colour profiles are really something I've never touched on but I'm wary of the printed version looking crappy and washed out. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong (or if I'm doing anything wrong at all!)

Could anyone help?

Drake Chambers

I'm not an expert in this sort of thing at all but there's visible aliasing in the PDF as well. Not sure if that's helpful but I wouldn't expect the color profile alone to have that effect.

bowen

I think PDF compresses this stuff by default.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2429745/pdf-disable-anti-alias-on-lines

NibCrom

Are you saving it as a PDF in Photoshop? Are you using Press Quality or High Quality print or a different setting?

MagicToaster

As, NibCrom said. What are your PDF settings?

As for the color profile it works one of two ways: Either you give the ICC profile to your print supplier or the print supplier gives it to you. Since you are collaborating on the magazine, you need to ask the print vendor to send you the ICC profile, install it on your machine and then choose it from the PDF dropdown menu when you're exporting.

That profile is gonna have all the image compression and color settings pre-programed so you don't have to worry about if the color spaces are gonna match.

Keep in mind that print production is, to a certain degree, a guessing game. If I saw that desaturation on my proofs I'd let it slide... not because I'm lazy, but because I know that the color's on the press are gonna darken a little and the gloss of the paper is going to affect how the colors are percieved in different illuminations.