Indexed CMYK?

[Brad Wilson]

I've done some searching in the forums and can't find the answer already posted, so here goes ...

In Acrobat, our newspaper ad department uses a plugin called PitStop Pro. Often, Pitstop will flag a file giving the message "Indexed color is used." As I search for the culprit graphic in the PDF, I'll find out the graphic is a CMYK base color space, but that it is indexed. When I open the original graphic in Photoshop, it shows the color mode as CMYK. But somehow that base CMYK mode is indexed.

The problem is that in our DTI classified ad system, a PDF with an indexed CMYK graphic will print except for the indexed graphic itself ... as if it just dropped off.

Bottom line ... where does the indexing originate, and how can we keep the file from it? The quick fix, I've discovered, is to change the graphic to RGB and then back to CMYK. But sometimes PitStop will give us a report stating that 800 or so parts of the PDF are indexed! Changing this many files to RGB and to CMYK again is impossible on deadline. This is an issue that we need to resolve soon, so any help will result in a thousand virtual handshakes. Thanks!

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[Larry G. Schneider]

Brad,

The graphics in question are probably TIFF files, an indexed color format. You will need someone to write a script file to do this for you.

Larry

[Aandi Inston]

Distiller will use indexed colour whenever an image has less than 256
distinct colours. It is not a fault, and Pitstop should not normally
be set up to complain specifically about indexed. If your ad system
drops them this is a serious fault in it.

Aandi Inston

[Brad Wilson]

Aandi,

What you're saying is that DTI may be at fault regarding the throwaways and not necessarily the indexed CMYK? Sounds like a call needs to placed to them for sure.

Thanks for responding!

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[Brad Wilson]

Does the TIFF format automatically index the color space (i.e., "tag" the color)? If so, that makes a great deal of sense. Nearly all of these questionable files come from outside advertisers* and we have no idea what format they're in.

So I guess my next question is more related to InDesign, but does the flattening process in InDesign create TIFF information from the graphics?

* One of things I noticed about the files that -we- produce in InDesign is that nearly everything in it turns into indexed CMYK but most of the graphics are Illustrator EPSes. (?!)

Anyway, thank you, Larry, for the push in the logical direction.

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[Aandi Inston]

>Does the TIFF format automatically index the color space (i.e., "tag" the color)?

There's nothing specific about TIFF files that might make indexed
colour in PDF files. As I said, any image with 256 or less distinct
colours will produce indexed colour in PDF.

"Tagging" in PDF terms normally means adding a colour profile, and has
no connection to the "Tagged" which is the "T" in "TIFF".

>
>So I guess my next question is more related to InDesign, but does the flattening process in InDesign create TIFF information from the graphics?

Forget TIFF. It is just a way of storing image data, and something is
not a TIFF unless it is actually written out and in a TIFF file.

>
>* One of things I noticed about the files that -we- produce in InDesign is that nearly everything in it turns into indexed CMYK but most of the graphics are Illustrator EPSes. (?!)

The kind of original doesn't matter.

Aandi Inston

[Aandi Inston]

>What you're saying is that DTI may be at fault regarding the throwaways and not necessarily the indexed CMYK?

Absolutely. If something claims to accept PDF files and produces wrong
results from some it is either a bug (to be fixed) or a limitation (to
be clearly documented). Or so it seems to me...

Aandi Inston

[Brad Wilson]

Thanks, Aandi. I've passed yours and Larry's information along to my supervisors.

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[tman]

Brad...you can build a PitStop Action that will automatically fix this problem--when detected...in pit stop...check your user manual about creating 'actions'...you can also download 'pit stop actions' from the enfocus website...

[jeanette wickham]

Hi Brad

One of things I noticed about the files that -we- produce in InDesign
is that nearly everything in it turns into indexed CMYK but most of the
graphics are Illustrator EPSes. (?!)

I had this happen when the images contained spot colours and the 'InRIP separations' was not selected in the Print dialogue

Depending on other setting the images either ended up indexed CMYK or RGB

J

[Brad Wilson]

tman,

The older version of Pitstop (4, I think) does indeed take care of indexed color, simply by converting to CMYK. The newest version doesn't get rid of it. Every time I rerun the report, it will still tell me I have indexed color. I contacted Enfocus about it and they said the earlier version's abillity to eliminate indexed color was in fact a bug. He said the newer version does what the programmers intended by not stripping the indexing from the CMYK image. (?!) Anyway, we've updated the DTI software, so we'll see what happens. Thanks for the input.

[Brad Wilson]

jeanette,

I suspected spot colors early on, but it turned out not to be the case. We combed every graphic in the InDesign file to make sure we had no stray spot colors or RGBs. Still testing different theories, though. Thanks for your help.

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[Jon Bessant]

You can change the INDEXED colour flag in the PDF_Profile in Pitstop.

As Aandi has stated - Indexed is just a more compact way of saving an image with less than 256 colouts - it is Distiller that is performing this change.

Jon

[Brad Wilson]

It turned out to be a glitch in DTI. After finding an upgrade, we tried to print seps of a linked file that had indexed CMYK and it worked beautifully. We no longer have to worry about indexed colors.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful tips.

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