Which working space for magazine publication

<p>I have been shooting <a

href="http://www.strathconanordics.com/photogalleryimages/coastalcup_

feb04/index.htm">cross-country ski racing </a>for our local club,

and have been invited to submit images for the next issue of a ski

magazine. The images will appear in full colour on glossy paper.<p>

 

For the record, I'm using a Canon 10D.<p>

 

I would appreciate advice regarding post-processing for this purpose

from those of you who submit your work to magazines with high

production values. As directed by the editors, I will save the

images in .tif format at 300dpi, but which working space to choose

for optimum image quality, particularly colour, is unclear to me.

<p>

Specifically, my questions are:

<li>Should I use Adobe RGB (1998) or sRGB in Photoshop when post-

processing the images?

<li>Which working space, Adobe RGB (1998) or sRGB, should be

imbedded in the images when I transmit them to the magazine?

<p>Thanks for your guidance on this.

How you send it to them is partly up to them, but I would definitely recommend doing the editing in the wider space (adobe(98)). That way, tonal changes are less likely to result in problems; you'll have a cleaner image for them to separate. [This is akin to the idea of editing in 16-bit even though its headed for 8-bit output, but the math isn't quite as straightforward.] I recently got published in a sports magazine (woo hoo!), and I provided them with flattened TIFF's in Adobe(98), with no output sharpening done because they still need to do layout and sizing (yeah, my shots ended up pretty small). Hope that helps a little.

Call them on the phone and ask them. My guess would be that they want 8-bit CMYK TIFFs.

 

my $0.02,

 

Sean

I submit quite a lot of images to magazines - some still want transparencies and

others digital files. The safest way to submit digital files is to use Adobe 1998 as your

working space as mentioned earlier and apply USM. If you are concerned about the

colour fidelity of your images (particularly if they are to be used A4 or bigger) submit

some prints that you are happy with so they can colour match.

But in my experience, if this is the first time you've got work published in a mag,

don't be too demanding on the art editor. If you come across as a pain in the rear

photographer, they will not use you again.

Brent,

 

1. Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, you should always work in Adobe 1998 (or another wide-gamut workspace) in Photoshop.

 

2. Images with Adobe RGB 1998 profiles are very very common. If you don't want to ask the magazine, this would be a very sensible default profile to attach to your image.

 

3. If they're asking for a TIFF, they will probably be manipulating it for the printed page (i.e. converting to CMYK) at the appropriate size. Therefore, do not USM your image before submitting since they will have to USM it again once they resize the image to fit on the page. By doing an USM, you will only worsen the quality of the end product.

 

4. If you're curious, you might press SHIFT+CTRL+Y in PS to see which of your Adobe RGB 1998 colourspace colours will be out of range on the printed page using a CMYK profile.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Rubens.

Thanks to all of you for your prompt and knowledgeable replies. (And I'm really glad you all agreed on the solution).