Hello my friend. Let's proof colors. What is it? It is when you want to stay in RGB,  but you wanna see what it looks like in CMYK. Basically you just click this button under view proof  colors and it will change. There's a bit more nerdiness to it.

We'll get into it in this video. Let's get going. Okay, if you wanna play along, open up the proof colors, uh,  file from the exercise files. Okay, it's our whale. Now this is an RGB document  and the situation is, um, the fake situation is,  is I am creating this whale, let's say,  and I am gonna use it both digitally. It's going up via web and social.

Um, and it also, it's gonna go via print  and I just wanna check it and see YK to see  what it looks like, okay, before I send it to print. Okay? But we know if I go to file  and I go to uh, document color mode  and switch it to CMYK, it's very destructive. It'll actually change the colors in the document to CMYK. And even if I flick it back to RGB,  like we learned in the last video,  the colors aren't all gonna come back. It's quite destructive.

So I just wanna preview it. Imagine if there was a way  of just previewing CYK, they call it proofing. Okay? It's under of view and it's easy  to just turn on proof colors and it should default to CYK. Let's go click and that my friends, is  what our whale looks like in CYK. And you might decide that the blues don't change a whole  lot, but the greens do and that could be a problem.

So I might need to pick a different green in our GB just  so there's a bit more consistency  between the digital and the print version. Now what's happening is, um, can you see up the top here? It's RGB, but it's been previewed in this thing called  us web coded swap. Okay? Basically there's a default where I am at for CMYK. Now you can't hit undo.

That's what I just did there. Okay? I try and hit undo, I'm like, let's undo that. Okay? It's not really a thing that's done that can be undone,  it's just a different way of viewing it. So you've gotta toggle that on  and off to see RGB versus CYK.

Where are we proof colors? Now, sometimes that doesn't work as well. If you're doing that and you're like it's not working,  sometimes you gotta turn it on, then get a view  and go proof set up and click on this top one  here, which is CMYK. That's that swap thing I just mentioned. Cool. So that's what it looks like when it goes to print.

You might be like, I'm happy with that. Or you might be like, uhoh,  these colors aren't gonna work together when it's printed,  so I might have to go and change them. Now another thing that you might be interested in, okay,  interested in, you might be like, mine doesn't say  swap up the top, it might be something else. Now, um, the way  that CMYK is displayed can  be different in different regions. So if you're somewhere else, and this is different up the  top here, just leave it, okay? It means you are industry standard in your country  or your region is set to a different one,  like buy a different one.

It might be like, if we're gonna customize,  I can say actually, uh, like  that one there I know is parts of Europe. I know that in New Zealand  and Ireland we use web coated swap as the CMYK breakdown. So if yours is different, don't worry about it. It's not gonna make any difference. It's just the way that the industry in your area works. So if you're working in that area, for sure keep it as that.

If it's not okay and you're sending, you're working  In, I don't know, Sweden  and you're sending it to the us, um, you might want to check  to see what the default is in that country. But to be honest, unless you're working with a really,  really big printing house, if you go to a local color shop  and say, Hey, what's uh, you know,  and when I'm proofing CMYK, what proof, um,  are you using for CMYK? They'll just look at you blankly. Okay? It's quite nerdy. Um, I only mention here because everyone's different  and people ask, they're like, well, mine's not that one.

Should I change it? No, just leave it as is. You can talk to your printer to see what they use  and what they should you should be using,  but often they won't even know either. And the printer that knows will handle  that anyway, if you know what I mean. Like if they are aware of all of the really intricacies  of pre-press and color profiles,  they'll be holding your hand  or expecting stuff from you for them  to fix on the way through. Does that make sense?

Kind of. There you go. That is proofing colors. I'm gonna make sure I turn mine off. View proof colors off back to IGB,  but that's the way to do it without actually converting it  to CYK, just to see what it looks like before it goes out. Alright?

More nerdiness but useful. I'll see you in the next video.