First talk to your printer or pressroom regarding the settings they would like for best
reproduction in the paper.
You’ll need Photoshop and a good monitor that has been professionally calibrated for optimum color correction results. (A workaround is to just to move your computer to a darkened room, so your eyes are not affected by background light, and follow your OS’s guide for calibrating your monitor.)
Here are some basic steps in color correction for newspaper photos. Others may do it
differently. Your mileage may vary.
• I make a copy of the original photograph to use as insurance against mistakes I might make.
• Once I place the photo in my InDesign layout, I will check the percentage at which it is
scaled, and then right-click it and select “Edit Original.” InDesign will open the photo in
Photoshop.
• In Photoshop, I’ll select Image > Adjustments > Image Size. Then, I’ll change the measuring options from inches/picas to percent and input the percentages I got from InDesign. (The reason I do this is to accurately reflect the screen preview with what is actually printed. If you leave the photo at 100%, then InDesign will scale it down when it is output as a PDF, and your sharpening and toning settings might be affected.)
• Now, I’ll begin color correcting. If the photo is well-lit and looks good, a quick Image >
Adjust > Auto Contrast will do the trick. If the photo’s colors look a little off, Image > Adjust > Auto Color will often fix it. If the photo’s lighting is poor and the colors are off (usually the result of mixed lighting sources, like daylight and tungsten or florescent), it gets trickier. I’ll play with the levels (Image > Adjust > Levels) or Hue & Saturation commands (Image > Adjust > Hue & Saturation), adjusting each level or channel individually.
There is no easy solution for this level of image correction; it requires a good eye, lots of patience, and some advanced Photoshop skills. You’ll make mistakes, so try to learn from them.
• Once the color is to your liking, convert it to CMYK (Image > Mode > CMYK). Photoshop’s standard CMYK profile is decent, but your printer might have a custom profile you’ll need to load, so check with them.
• Now, you have to adjust the CMYK image to compensate for the dot gain on newsprint (the propensity for darker colors to bleed on lesser- quality paper, like newsprint). You do so by adjusting the output level of the image in the Curves function. (Image > Adjust > Curves.) Dot gain ranges from 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on the presses, so I usually go for 15 percent and the results look fine. In the Curves window, click the little black arrow below the image histogram and change the “Output” field to 85 to reflect the 15 percent change. The image on the screen will look strange, like it has lost some of its darkness, but the printed version will look fine.
• Hit save and go back to InDesign to see your image update automatically.
• Finally, remember to change your color photos to gray scale in Photoshop (Image > Mode > Grayscale) if you will be printing them in black and white. Then do the same with the dot gain adjustments, as you did above.
Questions? Need help with your newspaper design or staff training? Shoot me an e-mail (bob
newsdesignschool
com) .
Related posts:
- No. 8: Dealing with photographs
- Tip: Better shadows in Photoshop
- 4 color palette tools for newspaper web site design
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