Working with Color in InDesign

Spend an evening devoted to all the little details of working with color in InDesign as well as maintaining consistency across Illustrator and Photoshop. This comprehensive presentation will make you an expert in color—or at least on your way—in just a few hours.

Learn about:

• Color settings
• RGB, CYMK and spot color along with when to use each one
• The advantage of swatches
• Navigating the color swatches panel
• Pantone colors
• Color groups
• Using Adobe Color to find and manager color themes
• Maintaining consistent color in placed graphics across IN, AI and PS
• Using Bridge to sync color settings
• AI’s unique ability to use both RGB and CYMK simultaneously
• Sharing colors

Location and Parking

The Veterans Memorial Building, which is part of Culver City's Veterans Memorial Park complex, is located at the intersection of Culver Blvd. and Overland Ave. It's less than a mile east of the San Diego (405) Freeway (use the Venice Blvd. off-ramp and go south to Culver) and three miles south of the Santa Monica (10) Freeway's Overland Ave. exit. The Memorial Building is surrounded by tons of free parking. And that's THE most important thing, right?

Meeting Notes

By Alvin Takamori

Our guest speaker for the May meeting, Teresa Jackson, came from San Diego to Culver City to talk to us about color management in InDesign and maintaining consistency across programs. She recently completed an Adobe Illustrator color course for Lynda.com. She also recommended David Blatner's color management lessons also on Lynda.com.

To begin, Teresa suggested looking at the default settings in Adobe Bridge to set your color profile across multiple Adobe programs. The default is North American General Purpose2. The working spaces for RGB is sRGB and for CMYK, it's U.S. Web Coated (SWOP). Other settings you might consider changing to is Adobe RGB 1998, which has a wider gamut than sRGB, and for CMYK many printers use GRACoL. But whatever settings you use, opening them in Bridge will synchronize them, so that any files without an embedded profile takes on the working color space profile you set. You'll also want to turn on the warning for any files that you open which have a different color workspace.

In Adobe InDesign, under the Edit Menu, you can check the Color Settings and Assign Profiles to files that don't have an embedded color space.

Teresa showed us some issues that can arise if your programs are not synchronized. An Illustrator file placed in InDesign can have different ink percentages for the same color, if the color spaces are different. Also, if InDesign doesn't have a defined color space, it takes on the color space of placed Illustrator or Photoshop files with embedded color profiles. That might not be a bad thing, but it's better if you control the color.

One thing to consider is asking your printer what color profiles they use and to set your files to match. However, keep in mind that most of the world operates in default mode. so anytime you change your color space settings, expect to receive a lot of warnings when you open other people's files.

One issue with matching colors across programs is that InDesign uses a different Color Picker from Photoshop and Illustrator. The InDesign Color Picker is based on HSB (Hue Saturation Brightness). The other programs use LAB (Lightness and 2 color ranges), which maps colors horizontally from unsaturated to saturated and vertically from light to dark. So Teresa avoids creating swatches using the Color Picker. She'll go to the Menu and select New Color Swatch and create a process or spot color. As a side note, in the swatches a black dot in the corner indicates a spot color and a white triangle indicates a global color. However there is still a problem with global color swatches in Illustrator not transferring to InDesign with placed files. If you place content that uses Pantone colors, those are embedded in the image and can't be thrown away. You can add color swatches from other InDesign files. Select New Color Swatch and one option is Other Libraries, where you can choose another file to import color from.

If you have color swatches and one version is RGB and the other is CMYK, you may want to drag one version to the trash. If the color from that swatch was used in the artwork, a message will pop up asking what to do with objects that used the color. You can tell it to replace the color with the remaining RGB or CMYK swatch.

In Ink Manager, you can convert all spot colors to process color. But you might want to consider leaving the conversion process to your printer. It's easier for them to change a spot color than to correct a bad CMYK mix.

In Photoshop, there is an extension called Adobe Color Themes. It links to the internet and allows you to find other people's color combinations and add them to your swatches. You can save them in your CC Library. Be aware that if you edit colors in the library it does not change the swatches in documents that used that color.

Another way to add color swatches is to use Adobe Capture. It converts images into a series of swatches. Using an eyedropper, you can click on an image and load a color. You can also introduce new color swatches by using Color Harmonies. Select a base color and select Color Harmonies which will create a set of swatches related to the base color.

Hopefully, Teresa's presentation introduced ideas, or ways to work with color, for you to consider and to explore further.

After her presentation, our group leader, Alan Bell, introduced us to the emerging field of color fonts. These fonts would, of course, eat up a lot more storage space on the computer than traditional font sets without color information. But they introduce interesting possibilities like multi-colored, shaded, textured and transparent type. At this point they work better in Illustrator and Photoshop, but it could be the next big thing in future graphic design.

As always a lot of raffle prizes were handed out, But in addition to the normal raffle prizes, a lot of books about color were given away. However, even if you didn't win, everyone received a big set of color pens as a bonus for attending, the meeting.

Farthest Attendee

The bona fide LAIDUG member who travels the farthest specifically to attend the meeting will receive her or his choice of any one deal at MightyDeals up to $50.00. Mighty Deals offers fonts, templates, apps, e-books, etc. You need to prove to us that you traveled farthest to attend this meeting. Having recently moved to the area from somewhere else won't cut it. Be prepared to show us indication of your current residence—perhaps a driver's license or a utility bill. Decision of the administrators of the Los Angeles InDesign User Group is final. Winner — Theresa Jackson

Raffles

LAIDUG is supported by raffles of donated prizes. No one is required to participate in the raffles. Raffle tickets are: 1 for $3, 2 for $5, 5 for $10, 11 for $20, 24 for $40, 32 for $50 and 65 for $100. All major credit cards are accepted.

Special Raffle Prizes

Sharper Image Remote Controlled Turbo Drifter Action Vehicle Winner — Sarah Ivey

SuperLotto Plus ticket Winner — George Wilde

Raffle Prizes and Winners

WordsFlow Pro or DocsFlow from Em Software. Value $300.00 Winner — Russell Shinpo

GoProof from Oppolis Software. 3 month subscription for 2 users. Value $300.00 Winner — Trish Hall
Proofing add-on for Adobe Creative Cloud. Version history tracks what has been changed and by whom.

Markzware. Any single product. 12 month subscription. Value $199.00 Winner — Mia Cramer
Choose one from the list below:
Q2ID (Quark to InDesign), Convert and open QuarkXPress files in InDesign.
PDF2DTP (PDF to InDesign), Convert PDF files to InDesign.
ID2Q (InDesign to Quark), Convert and open InDesign documents in QuarkXPress.
MT (Markzware), Convert InDesign documents to IDML files readable by InDesign CS4 through CC 2017.
FC (FlightCheck), Check native and PDF files for printing quality.

Expo Creative Asset Manager for Mac from Insider Software. Value $149.00 Winner — Russell Shinpo
Digital asset manager that allows you to view, tag, search and manage images, icons, fonts, audio, video, app documents.

Suitcase Fusion 8 from Extensis. 12 month subscription. Value $119.95 Winner — Angela De Leon
Font management program that allows you to organize your fonts from one plane—including system fonts, purchased fonts, fonts synced from Adobe Typekit, Google fonts, etc.

Font Agent Pro 8 from Insider Software. Value $99.95 Winner — Cathy Romero
Windows font management that allows you to organize, distribute and control your fonts.

Fontself Maker Bundle Winner — George Wilde

InMotion Hosting. Web hosting and free domain. Value $90.00 Winner — De Shawn Burton
Web hosting company.

DTP Tools Cloud for InDesign. 6 month subscription. Value $77.40 Winner — Jeff Marcus
Suite of 14 different InDesign productivity tools.

Multi-Find/Change 3.0 from Automatication. Value $49.95 Winner — Dave Snow
Extension for InDesign and InCopy that allows you to manage and execute Find/Change queries in batches rather than one at a time.

Adobe Stock. 15 image licenses. Value $44.00 Winner — Karla Chouhan
Royalty-free, high-quality photos, videos, and illustrations.

InDesign Magazine. 6 month subscription. Value $30.00 Winner — Tedis Safarian
Monthly PDF publication devoted to InDesign how-tos, in-depth features, and quick tips.

LA Web Professionals Group meeting tickets. Value $7.99 (four raffles) Winners — Mia Cramer, Sarah Ivey, Richard Krause, Bing Wong
Adobe user group that meets monthly with an emphasis on web design, marketing and the latest internet trends.

Book Raffle Prizes and Winners

Process Color Manual by Michael and Pat Rogondino from Chronicle Books San Francisco Winner — Rick Torres

Color Harmony by Bride M. Whelan from Rockport Publishers, Inc. Winner — Laurel Paley

Designer’s Guide to Color Combinations by Leslie Cabarga from North Light Books Winner — Marney Wilde

The Pastels Book Color Works 4 by Dale Russell from North Light Books Winner — Marney Wilde

Photoshop in 4 Colors by Mattias Nyman from Peach Pit Press Winner — Alvin Takamori

The Desktop Color Book by Michael Gosney and Linnea Dayton from MIS:Press Winner — Allan Gluck

Designer’s Guide to Color by James Stockton from Chronicle Books San Francisco Winner — Rick Torres

Designer’s Guide to Color 2 by James Stockton from Chronicle Books San Francisco Winner — Marney Wilde

Designer’s Guide to Color 3 by James Stockton from Chronicle Books San Francisco Winner — Jeff Marcus

Designer’s Guide to Color 4 by James Stockton from Chronicle Books San Francisco Winner — Rick Torres

Designer’s Guide to Color 5 by James Stockton from Chronicle Books San Francisco Winner — Angela De Leon

About the Presenter

Theresa Jackson

Theresa Jackson graduated from UCLA with a BFA in 1984. Shortly after she embarked on a career in the graphic arts / print industry. Working in prepress during the early years of digital imaging, she developed an expertise in photo retouching, photo composition and all matters related to pre-press and printing.

Her work experience includes technical support and training for a color management software company, project management, and product development. Since 2005 she has worked as an independent contractor/graphic artist, with a major focus in print design, including large format printing.