Colors and printing

[rstroud]

After the fireworks of the Access Violation thread, this one will be very tame!

If nobody can answer this, no problem.

I am working on a book that will eventually be published as a trade paperback. An ebook will maybe also be available. I am not concerned about the ebook. I know what to do in that kind of publication.

But I have a question about a print version.

I am avoiding color in the print version. I want to keep things cheap and simple.

But I do want to highlight some words and phrases, here and there. All of the highlights will be in a single shade of gray, probably "silver". In the RGB system of colors, the code is hex C0 C0 C0 (decimal 192 192 192).

Since printing uses the CMYK system of colors, do I need to address this somehow within Atlantis when I do the text highlighting?

And I suppose I should ask about any screenshots that I include. My book is a "how to" for how to use a particular screenwriting software, so I will have a lot of screenshots, which I intend to convert to grayscale.

My intention is to create a PDF with all the appropriate measurements for publishing a trade paperback with a particular size. I am fairly familiar with all of the details of that kind of project. However, can I use Atlantis for simple colors (grayscale) or do I need to write the book in Atlantis and then finish up in a desktop publishing program because of the RGB/CMYK issue?

Any help or advice is appreciated.

[Alan]

Hi rstroud,
A question for clarification. Will you be having a print house make the book?

On the color versus mono printing the K in CMYK stands for blacK. For home printing every printer I have used had the print option to print in Black & White by not using CMY to form black, thus giving you monochrome (grayscale) output and saving the expense of the color ink/toner. I have not ever heard of a print house not able to print in B&W from color. As you are going to have grayscale to begin with as the source this should make matters easier. On any dealings I have been involved with using outside printers color was an additional cost with the most expensive quoted being 4-color. Not having dealt much with book type printing my only advice is to check what the company(s) you are likely to deal with as to their preferred printing input format.

[rstroud]

The book will be printed by a printing house.

Everything will be black and grayscale in the PDF that I supply. No colors except black for text, and some grays for highlighting text and for screenshots.

I just wondered if the CMYK vs RGB issue was something that I needed to address, since shades of gray are also colors.

The CMYK equivalent of "silver" (RGB decimal = 192, 192, 192) is:

C (cyan) = 0
M (magenta) = 0
Y (yellow) = 0
K (black) = 25%

I will search on the internet and see what I can find. I am very good at turning up answers that way.

[rstroud]

I did some googling.

The answer to my question is complicated, and goes beyond my experience and knowledge.

It seems that some modern (digital/image setter) print systems can use RGB colors, but traditional offset printers do not. Also, some printing houses can do an RGB-to-CMYK conversion for you. All of this is murky and like quicksand. The more you struggle with it, the deeper you sink.

Anyway, I think that the best plan for me is to use the wonderful features of Atlantis to create my text and my many paragraph and heading styles, and then move the document to a desktop publishing program. I will use the free Scribus, which I believe is sophisticated enough to handle what I want to do. Scribus is also designed to work with the free Inkscape (for drawing). I have played around with Scribus a little, and I think it will be an option. In no imaginable situation will I ever pay Adobe to use InDesign.

[Robert]

If you haven’t already come across the following pages, you might want to take a look at them:

CMYK vs. RGB
CMYK vs RGB and What Is Best for Printing
CMYK vs RGB: What color space should I work in?
RGB vs CMYK: What is the difference?
RGB vs CMYK: What’s the difference?

[rstroud]

Thank you for the links, Robert.