Re: CMYK separations: a correction

Well, I'm probably beating a dead horse at this point, but I find rather
annoying the suggestion that even though I don't *think* my settings
changed, I must have changed them somehow without realizing it. If I
say the settings were identical, that's exactly what I mean, they didn't
change. I have never changed the CMYK settings, but just in case,
before I started working on this web page, I researched what the default
settings are and made sure that mine were still set at default. And
yesterday, when I got different separations, I checked the settings
again, just on the wild chance that somehow elves might have got into
them and changed them in the night after they've been the same forever.
But no, they are all still at default settings as follows: : Ink colors:
SWOP (Coated). Dot Gain: Standard, 20%. Separation Type: GCR. Black
Generation: Medium. Black Ink Limit: 100%. Total Ink Limit: 300%. UCA
Amount: 0%. Those settings are welded in place, they don't change.
(Sorry Keith, but I'm never going to change the station on my car radio,
since I don't use the radio; I prefer listening to Bach on the CD
player).

Anyway what I'm saying is: any reason that will satisfactorily explain
my getting different separations with the different image sizes cannot
include the possibility that somehow the settings got inadvertently
changed.

And more to the point, if it's this easy to get bogus default
separations without even knowing what you've done wrong, then that's
another reason to put on my list of reasons why I personally prefer the
straight route to CMY through RGB rather than messing with CMYK at all.
But, as I always say, each to his own.

As to replication, I don't have time to check again this morning and see
if I can make it happen again, but I'll try to remember later. But when
I first made the wrong separations, I made them every way from Sunday,
to make sure (I thought) that I wasn't making a mistake, and I always
got the same separations; both on the screen and printed they were
always the same, however I arrived at them. This was true with every
image size below 4". The only time I got the correct separations was
yesterday when I increased the image size (file size didn't change)
before sending to CMYK. I'd have to go back to the file to see what the
original values were; the values that gave the good separations were 6
inches across at 720 ppi.

Katharine

Ender100@aol.com wrote:
>
> Katherine,
> Can you repeat the results?  If not, and you get the appropriate
> results with the workflow that makes sense to you, then I wouldn't
> worry about it.  We all occasionally get results from out in left
> field, and it usually is something we absent-mindedly do, some setting
> that is weird and we don't notice.  I've had this happen with the
> Epson Printer Driver, thinking that a certain saved setting will
> repeat automatically and it doesn't, resulting in a negative that
> doesn't print as predicted.
>
> Mark
>
> In a message dated 12/18/04 2:34:45 AM, kthayer@pacifier.com writes:
>
> Okay, I believe you, but if so, then what is this other
> thing that could
> logically be causing this? I'm quite willing to believe it's
> something
> unbelievably stupid I'm doing, but I'd be happy anyway just
> to know what
> it is
> Katharine
>
> Mark Nelson
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Received on Sat Dec 18 13:00:32 2004