RGB to CMYK help

[benlacy2112]

This is something I've been curious about for a while. I've never done anything where I needed to convert RGB colors to CMYK colors. I've got a project in an Illustrator class where I will need to convert my colors for print. I know that the Pantone swatch books are the best way to do this, but right now that's not really within the budget. I've heard that there is another type of book that's much cheaper that will help you convert colors. I have no idea what that might be, but I was hoping that someone here might. Also, I'm going to be converting A LOT of colors. It's not just going to be 3 or 4. The project is a photorealistic drawing of a face using the pen and gradient mesh tools, so there are going to be a ton of colors that I will need to convert.

I apologize if this has been answered before, but nothing useful came up in searches. Any help would be appreciated.


BenLacy2112
www.benjaminlacy.com

[mlk]

having pantone colors is utterly useless if you printer does not use pantone inks. Most likely you will be using a standard CMYK color tracer (big big printers) What you can do is use CMYK color management which best fits your printer (and hopefully have a nicely calibrated monitor)...

A few people on the boards have done/do professional printwork, like Simplistik... ask him !

[dru_nasty]

I assume you didn't like the result of file > document color mode > cmyk?
Pantone makes a pms to cmyk converter, but that really doesn't do you any good since your working in RGB.

Can I ask why you must make it CMYK? Other than if your were going run it on a press.

See how it looks printed out if you just convert the document color mode to cmyk.

[benlacy2112]

I assume you didn't like the result of file > document color mode > cmyk?
Pantone makes a pms to cmyk converter, but that really doesn't do you any good since your working in RGB.

Can I ask why you must make it CMYK? Other than if your were going run it on a press.

See how it looks printed out if you just convert the document color mode to cmyk.

Dru,

Maybe I don't need to switch it, I don't know. I've never done any printwork before and I've been told since becoming a web designer that I have to convert the RGB colors to CMYK for printing. Is this true only for a printing press? Will I be fine if I just have the Illustrator document set to CMYK?

Thanks for your help

BenLacy2112

[dru_nasty]

Totally, you can just convert the document to cmyk for press output.
Although depending on the accuracy of your monitor the colors you see on screen may differ from what is produced.