flare tool in illustrator CS2

[stacia]

I used the flare tool to create some flare effects for a document on solar water heaters. The rings are very saturated with brightness and color and are the main design element. I created it in RGB format so I could use filters to create other effects. When I convert to CMYK for printing, the flares become completely washed out and look brownish-gray. I have tried everything I can think of to brighten them back up. I realize the color mode will change it somewhat, but this is pretty drastic. Any suggestions?

[synthetic]

I used the flare tool to create some flare effects for a document on solar water heaters. The rings are very saturated with brightness and color and are the main design element. I created it in RGB format so I could use filters to create other effects. When I convert to CMYK for printing, the flares become completely washed out and look brownish-gray. I have tried everything I can think of to brighten them back up. I realize the color mode will change it somewhat, but this is pretty drastic. Any suggestions?

this is a common problem... CMYK will not handle the many of the bright hues from RGB due to gamut issues of the colors available in CMYK. Actually, I try to work everything in CMYK (if I know its a printed piece) so I know what the colors will be like for printing and if I need to use RGB filters... I will convert to RGB just for that purpose and then back to CMYK. CMYK to RGB makes almost no difference... its going the other way that you get differences in color and the differences can be dramatic depending on what colors and hues were used in RGB.

there may be other methods to handle this... but sticking to CMYK when at all possible has always worked best for me;)

[stacia]

A coworker suggested I import the flares in separate layers to Photoshop and use blending modes, color overlays, etc. to fix the problem, then place the entire thing back into Illustrator. (thanks, JR) I had tried to use these effects in Illustrator in CMYK to little or no avail... This worked fairly well for the document, even though it still looked better when it was in RGB. I did have to overlay copies of the flares over each other, applying different blending modes to each to get the effect I wanted. It looks pretty good—we'll see when the printed piece comes back.

[The Repro Kid]

RGB and CMYK describe two physically different states of color. RGB describes transmissive color and cmyk describes reflective color.

A real lens flare is a transmissive color phenomenon, so RGB color describes it best.

It's kind of like expecting pizza to taste good out of a microwave oven. Burnt crust doesn't happen in a microwave, and lens flares don't happen with reflective color.

I doubt that helps but there it is.