RGB to CMYK: How to keep the colors vivid??

Hey guys, I need an help.

Unfortunately, while I was creating a new work, I noticed that I was working in RGB mode, but I needed to work in CMYK.
So now, if I convert to CMYK the colors, obviously, get worse and they lost all the “vivid” effect. :S

How can I keep the colors vivid and “brilliant” as they were in the RGB mode?
I’m aware that the amount of colors in CMYK is much reduced compared to RGB but there’s no method??
I’ve tried a lot of things, but for the moment I can not do much :frowning:

Help me please, Thanks in advance guys.

How to Convert RGB to CMYK in Photoshop

Era89 said

Hey guys, I need an help.

Unfortunately, while I was creating a new work, I noticed that I was working in RGB mode, but I needed to work in CMYK.
So now, if I convert to CMYK the colors, obviously, get worse and they lost all the “vivid” effect. :S

How can I keep the colors vivid and “brilliant” as they were in the RGB mode?
I’m aware that the amount of colors in CMYK is much reduced compared to RGB but there’s no method??
I’ve tried a lot of things, but for the moment I can not do much :frowning:

Help me please, Thanks in advance guys.

Open psd file, click Image options and changes 8 bit to 16 or 32bit then change RGB to CMYK, It will work :slight_smile:

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webdesignerart said

Open psd file, click Image options and changes 8 bit to 16 or 32bit then change RGB to CMYK, It will work :slight_smile:

I tried that but unfortunately this method does not work :frowning:

Guys, did you read what author said? He knows how to convert a file, it’s just a color range problem.



I might be wrong here, but there’s not much you can do about it. You could play with Pantone colors, but I won’t help you here much. It’s still narrower range of colors than RGB, but far more than CMYK.

1 Like
Era89 said
webdesignerart said

Open psd file, click Image options and changes 8 bit to 16 or 32bit then change RGB to CMYK, It will work :slight_smile:

I tried that but unfortunately this method does not work :frowning:

Send me the PSD file i ll try it. [abdullah.media(AT)gmail.com}]

Era89, flatten all layers before converting to CMYK. This will save a good number of the vividness and vibrance because RBG to CMYK and vice versa conversion works better with a single layer. Mulitple layers will result to off colors. After the conversion, use some adjustment filters to boost up certain range of color strength/vividness.

ShapShapy said

How to Convert RGB to CMYK in Photoshop

+1

mrcharlesbrown said

Era89, flatten all layers before converting to CMYK. This will save a good number of the vividness and vibrance because RBG to CMYK and vice versa conversion works better with a single layer. Mulitple layers will result to off colors. After the conversion, use some adjustment filters to boost up certain range of color strength/vividness.

There’s no workaround, other than what mrcharlesbrown mentioned, short of manually adjusting the colours once the colour-profile was set to CMYK. Also, under the same umbrella, there’s the lovely banding issues that sometimes tend to appear once you go through with a conversion… I know this doesn’t help, but in the future, you should check the colour profile before you start any actual or major work, so that everything fits… I’ve had this all too often, so I’m not playing the teacher here :smiley: just writing this in the hopes that I myself will remember to do it in the future…

Thanks all guys, I realized that unfortunately there are no methods. I have only to play with the Adjustments! :frowning:

CMYK print won’t make vivid colors except if you use additional tints, which only works if you have separated layers for them, otherwise will be quite difficult to extract plain tints for an image. A trick could be using CMYK print plus 1 silver (or other metallic pantone) tint on concrete areas (over the printed CMYK, this is done with “overprint” method on your compose program). Note that you will need a good printer company for this method.

Another way to trick Photoshop when converting to CMYK is to group all luminance adjustment layers and convert to smart object. Create a new CMYK document and drop and arrange the base design/create a new base design in it. For light effects/filters that you already converted to smart object from the previous RGB document, drag and drop it to the new CMYK mode document. Surprisingly, it will retain a good amount of the vividness and you can still modify it in RGB mode document via the smart object.

^ Never tried that trick, but seems to me that the vividness will only be real while on screen, once you export the PDF or compile the whole work for printing, all RGB will be converted, no matter if they are inside smart objects. But as said, never did it that way.

Printing is our family business , and I can assure you that’s mostly all about the paper choice and mastery of the printing offset , when you convert your work from RGB to CMYK.

This may seem obvious and please forgive me for that , but have you ever printed it with a digital printing machine (just one example to see how colors look) , at least it will give you an idea about the end product like it is printed with an Offset printing machine.

@Koolgfx Try this…

Photoshop:
Edit > Convert to profile… > LAB. OK.
Edit > Convert to profile… > (CMYK Profile: dropdown) Photoshop 4 Default CMYK

You must use “Convert to profile…”, Mode works very differently.
I think this method retains the most vibrancy with the least amount of color shift.

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I think he found solution in the last 7 years :joy: :wink:

Yeah… I don’t type that fast and my aol dial up…

Stoopid me thought it said July 13th, not July 2013.

Sorry.