Print is our biggest issue. Publishing software, Scribus in my case, allows for you to save images, say your book cover and photos therein as CMYK using built-in color sets. In Scribus color management, two seem to be labeled "Generic CMYK Profile" and "FOGRA27L CMYK Coated Press" with a monitor set called "iMac CMYK Calibrated".
First things first, and I can't stress this enough. If you're going to be working on anything for published color (CMYK), your computer must be set to printing color standards. That means a monitor set to a 5000K white point, and a 1.8 gamma. The only way to do this correctly is with a hardware/software solution such as the X-Rite i1 Display Pro. The monitor calibration and profile settings in use directly affects the gray balance in Photoshop, and all color management transformation via ColorSync. You must be using print standards for your monitor to get a balanced gray for CMYK image conversions. You must get it away from the default 6500K color balance.
Once your monitor is properly calibrated and profiled, it may take you a while to get used to how it looks. Compared to the horribly bright blue of 6500K, it will look yellowish in appearance. After a few days, you will realize it's actually neutral. Meaning, the way gray images would appear in a book or magazine; black and white, not black and bright blue. Keep the brightness down, too. Go for a luminance of 80 when the software asks you to set a brightness level. You're trying to get the screen to simulate a somewhat brightly lit piece of better quality paper.
These appear in color management only, which must be activated to reach the mandated holy grail of a PDF-x-1a. Within the particular book cover, I was presented with a frightening list of names that made no sense to me so I looked for anything that contained CMYK. I choose one called "OpenOffice dot org CMYK" (sic) as one at least recognizable. You might find it useful to note that there is also a CIE-LAB CMYK.
For your PDF-X1a output, use "FOGRA27L CMYK Coated Press". It's actually a pretty good CMYK color space. It comes out almost the same as "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2". This, after you've set your monitor to print standards. The conversion will not come out the same with how your monitor is set up now.
I have no idea what they're talking about with the phrase, CIE-LAB CMYK. There is no such thing. CIE-L*a*b* is the current computer mathematical model being used to describe the entire visible color spectrum humans can see. CMYK has nothing to do with L*a*b*. Not directly, that is. Any CMYK color space, just like any other ICC profile (CMYK or RGB) would be a portion of L*a*b*. Too much to get into here on that.
There is nothing labeled ICC and nothing labeled Adobe for that matter.
About the only profile you'll find anywhere with either as part of the name is AdobeRGB1998.icc. Otherwise, any profile should have the .icc file extension.
When saving/exporting to a regular PDF, the colors for background and text (photo sails through fine) are as specified in the publishing software, but smoother. By smoother I mean more subtle and harmonized--I'm envious. When saving/exporting to the required PDF-x-1a the colors are noticeably more pale and greyed, also smoother. When I first save the file as a PostScript (EPS) and save/export this as a PDF (of what type who knows) the colors are maintain as specified, but like a regular PDF's, not PDF-X's.
That's because you're going from RGB to CMYK, which has a much smaller color gamut and range than just about any RGB color space. It's limited to the specific hues of cyan, magenta and yellow inks that would be used on a press and the percentage combinations you can create with them. Anything outside of those fixed hues is impossible to reproduce without adding spot colors to the equation. The K means Key, not black. The key color can be any dark color used as the fourth hue to deepen shadows and add shape to the images. Since printing inks are translucent, even 100% (solid) coverage each of CMY on top of each other does not produce a perfect black. It's more of a dark muddy brown. So a key color is necessary to add the extra weight. Typically though, it is black ink.
I did copy my Scribus file to another Mac and choose "iMac CMYK Calibrated" and was able to actually save/export as a the PDF-x-1a with the specified colors, although deeper and harsher. This must have something to do with that monitor even though are calibrated the same since there is no change in the file. I have only one workaday Mac.
Yes, it's the current monitor calibration and profile that is causing less than desirable conversions.
I plan to make copies of all these PDF's and take them to a Signal Graphics print store to see what actually comes out on paper and seek their advice as to any differences in the printing the various ones. If I learn something useful, I'll post it. In this day and age it seems like there ought to be a better electronic way to verify this. Do you know if there is one?
I wouldn't spend the money on it until you can produce a new PDF after the monitor has been set up for print.
Does this mean they auto-install?
No, it just means the OS decompressed them from the downloaded .zip file. You still have to put them into a Profiles folder. A folder named "Adobe ICC Profiles" should be next to the .zip file. I did find the Scribus page that links to the profiles from Adobe. The most useful one to you is the included CMYK profile, USWebCoatedSWOP.icc. It will give you slightly better RGB to CMYK conversions than FOGRA27L CMYK Coated Press. USSheetfedCoated.icc is a good one, too.
I note also that you somehow have created specific color profiles for your own, probably higher-end, printers.
You can create profiles for any color printer you want, though it does require expensive hardware to do it. The i1 Profiler Basic package is about as cheap as you can go and get good results. You get the i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer and other equipment that will allow you profile monitors, printers and projectors. You wouldn't need the i1 Display Pro mentioned above if you purchased this. Creating printer profiles this way is tedious, but it works.
One of my experiments was to just print out the varying PDF's using our own home HP Laser jet. All of them came out a uniform horrifying mud, and I do mean mud.
Two things happening there. The big one being the images in your x1A PDFs have been converted to CMYK. Consumer level (cheap) inkjet printers don't know what to do with CMYK images. They are designed for RGB, which is what essentially every person uses at home. Such as the images off of your digital camera. All inkjet printers have their own conversion tables built in to produce CMYK+ prints from the incoming RGB images. Inkjet printers all use CMYK inks at minimum, but often add extra colors to improve the output range. When you feed a CMYK image to an inexpensive printer, it tries to print the CMY channels as RGB and ignore the K data. The results are mud, as you saw.
Somewhere in my rummaging for color profiles I noted that there was a color profile installed by model name for every Epson we've owned since the sixteenth century.
They love doing that, and so does Epson and Xerox. Doesn't matter what specific model you have, the installer just dumps profiles for darn near every printer they've ever made onto your computer. You can delete all of the ones that aren't for your model printer.
In Re: Apple and the ICC. I read somewhere that in 1743 Apple got on the phone and said' "you-all come over to our house out here in Cupertino, sit down an' straighten this color thing out". The source seemed authoritative, so I took it as gospel.
1743!? Steve Jobs and The Woz must have been a lot older than anyone thought. 🙂