Converting from RGB to CMYK - how to keep brilliance?

Hi

I have a cartoon/photo image that I need printed onto a t-shirt. I made the image in Photoshop CS V8 as an RGB image, and now when I convert it to CMYK for the printer, the image looks duller. Is there any way to maintain the 'brilliance' of the colours when converting?

Cheers

CM

you can clean up some of the muddyness created by the color mode change by changing the color mode to "lab" and then in the channels pallet and select the "lightness" channel.

With the lightness channel active you can go into "levels" (CTR+L) and use the sliders to adjust the brightness of the image.

Then switch back to CMYK color mode

torn: Thanks for that tip

cagedman: You're right to want the image as bright as possible. Unfortunately you'll have to accept quite a colour shift when the image is printed onto fabric. There's just no way the pigments used in the process can achieve anything like the brightness of colours displayed on a monitor.

You can't reproduce a lot of colors using CMYK. For example the color orange is made of red and yellow, yet you only have cyan, magenta, yellow and black to work with. On top of that, you're limited to 300% total area of ink coverage if you're working US Web Coated (SWOP) as your CMYK color space -- the sum total of the CMYK values have to be below 300%. (European and Japanese inks can support up to 350%).

If you need specific colors you'll have to go with spot colors. Go through a swatch book and find the ones you need, then make a separate channel for the swatch so the printer will know where it's going to be needed.

This might help
http://www.australiasigns.com.au/qsonline/PMS-color-chart.html