I really appreciate your time and effort, Peter and Rob, but there's either some piece I'm missing about "Working Spaces" vs. color management, or something odd about my setup. Maybe time to go "back to school."
Just FYI, Rob, I erred in my remark about 20% dot gain preview. That works only with the PDF/x-4, which uses "No color conversion" but then adds CMYK as a "Document Profile Intent" under the separate PDF/X heading And it happens whether I apply the 20% profile in PhotoShop or not (when I click "Don't Color Manage this document' and make sure nothing is checked in Save As).
So no matter what I do, the PDF looks grey on screen unless I turn off Color Conversion in the Press Quality setting while exporting.
Absolutely agree about the danger of assumptions, Peter, and use any profiles I'm provided. But these are mostly small (sometimes student) papers and magazines that just say PDF at 300 dpi. I've actually been using "No Conversion" for several years without problems, being careful about all the pieces and checking the K plate in Output Preview. But the ads were redesigned recently (I'm just a production guy), and the designer apparently used the PDF/x-1a setting from Illustrator (according to Preflighting the PDFs). Thus the client was asking why they looked so grey on screen, worried that would be the way they'd print.
Thanks again.
