: Best way to produce PDF files containing CMYK images I've wrote a program that uses iTextSharp to produce PDF files. I'm currently producing PDF files used solely for print (personnal and professional)
I've wrote a program that uses iTextSharp to produce PDF files. I'm currently producing PDF files used solely for print (personnal and professional) that contain CMYK images.
The source images are RGB pictures.
The way I do it is to convert the RGB pictures to CMYK tiff images using Image Magick and two color profiles (sRGB.icc for the source, and USWebCoatedSWOP.icc for the target CMYK).
This results in big tiff files (a 26 KB jpeg file for instance becomes a 1 MB tiff) leading in turn to a huge PDF file.
I've done a bit of research in order to make the files smaller. I've read answers to a related question (Which file format is best for printing?) but I don't know if I'm doing it right, or if there's a better approach.
1/ is there a better format than tiff for storing CMYK in PDF files? Apparently EPS doesn't work well on all printers (see link above). I can't find a single JPEG2000 CMYK image to test, nor do I know if it's supported by PDF files (or the coming PDF2 files). JPEG CMYK work also, but are bigger than tiff files for my set of images.
2/ should I rather include the RGB files and embed the ICC profile in the PDF file? Does it work? Does it lead to the same result?
3/ any other ideas?
Thanks
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Sounds like you're doing it right to me.
1) Tiff files are pretty much standard, as far as print-ready PDFs go. In my experience, anyway. They are an uncompressed image format, so you will always have a large file size.
2) If you are printing in CMYK, to play it safe, your artwork should all be CMYK as well. Otherwise, you might end up with undesired results when printing the final product and wonder why colors aren't exactly the same.
Working with full-resolution, high-quality images for print will always have the added consequence of large file sizes.
Like Yorik said, sacrificing file size is also sacrificing quality.
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