HELP !!!! How to PRINT COLORS in...

Please help, I am new to color and would like to know the correct way to fix my problem;



I used Adobe Kuler to produce RGB and CMYK codes for a specific set of colors. It is my understanding that for the colors to print the same in Word documents and Adobe documents (InDesign), I need to use RGB for Word and CMYK for Adobe.



Although the colors print similarly, there is a difference...and I have no idea what to do. I tried letting Adobe convert the RGB codes to CMYK, that didn't work either.



I printed a sample from Adobe Kuler and it matched the Word document (RGB) PERFECTLY. It seems that I am only haveing trouble with the Adobe InDesign (CMYK) documents.



PLEASE HELP!!
HELP !!!! How to PRINT COLORS in...
It would help to define the colors RGB in InDesign, and also to set the InDesign page to RGB (Edit %26gt; Transparency Blend Space), and also to print thru the printer driver dialog boxes to a destination color space that is RGB.



It would help to have your color synchronized across your creative suite of softwares.



Not only that, but you should calibrate your monitor with a spectrophotometer or colorimeter device.



These things will improve the color matching amongst your programs; but it will likely never perfect it.



Mike Witherell in Alexandria, VA
HELP !!!! How to PRINT COLORS in...
A LOT of this has to do with how you are printing, and that Word is not a color-managed application, while InDesign is.



Are you send the file to your desktop printer from both applications, or do you expect this to go to a commercial press?



For a desktop printer you should be using RGB colors. Despite the fact that they use CMYK inks or toners, desktop printers are designed to accept RGB data and convert it to CMYK internally. If you send CMYK it is first converted to RGB, then back to CMYK, and you get some color shifting from rounding errors.



Word uses your monitor color space and does not apply any management conversions for display or printing, so it sends exactly the numbers that you've created. InDesign will use a profile for your monitor to display the colors, and will presume they are in the the document working color space, which for RGB is probably either Adobe RGB or sRGB, depending on what you have set for color settings. Your monitor may or may not be displaying something close to either of those color spaces, so there is a high probability that the color will look different onscreen in the two applications.



InDesign will also try to manage the color at print time, making adjustments to the numbers it sends to the printer so that the color will APPEAR the same as it does on a calibrated monitor when printed in the color space specified by your output profile (which will be the same as the working space unless you change it in the print dialog).



For the best match to Word, but not necessarily to what you should expect from a printing press, I would change the setting in the print dialog from InDesign manges colors to Printer manages colors, and see if things look better.



For a reliable and predictable color work flow you should start by calibrating and profiling the monitor, and if you intend to use the printer for final output it should be profiled as well. You should read as much as you can about color management, starting with the Help files, and moving on to something like Real World Color Management which despite being fairly technical is actually pretty easy to read and understand.



Peter