RGB in PS to CMYK in Freehand??

I was asked by a friend to help him design his CD cover, disc, traycard, etc. and I am using photoshop to eidt the images and then transfering them into a Macromedia Freehand template that I downloaded.

The print/production company is asking that the images are in CMYK mode (300ppi) .tiff

I created them as RGB's and then changed them over to CMYK's. Since they are linked images in freehand, freehand automatically updates the RGB to CMYK conversion. Well, now the image's colors in freehand have changed brightness and contrast drastically but they still appear the same as the RGB's in PS. What happened to the colors and how do I fix them so that they appear the same as they did when they were RGBs in freehand?

This seems to be a common problem when working with print work. Sounds like Macromedia displays the cmyk quite different than Adobe. Have you thought of using Illustrator or Pagemaker?
The only good solid way to see what your colors will turn out to be is if you have a swatch to compare the colors to and if you are really concerned have a print shop make a color accurate proof before you send the films off to the print hizzouse (might cost a bit though)....

One more thing. I just saw this moments after posting...

"A Color Shift occurs when converting from RGB to CMYK. Do not trust the colors on your monitor. We recommend that you proof the colors used in your job at a local service bureau and get a calibrated color proof (Iris or Dupont Waterproof)."

This is from a site posted in a different thread.

http://www.uspress.com/pages/referencesMAIN.html

seemed like a good place to research.
Hoped this helped.

So, the way it appears on the monitor is different than it appears on the print b/c it is viewing four different film layers? So how much different will the actual print from the CMYK be from the way that the RGB appeared on the screen? I want to get this done right the first time.

Thanks for all the help!

The first thing I can tell you is Freehand's screen previews SUCK... period. Don't get me wrong... it is my favorite vector program... and I don't know what I would do without it.

As far as color conversion from RGB to CMYK... make sure you do that conversion inside Photoshop. Don't trust Freehand to convert bitmap images. Within Photoshop when you convert the image you will see a color shift, for the simple reason that there are TONS of colors in the RGB color gamut that are not achievable with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. (CMYK)

You can check to see if any colors you've used fall outside of the CMYK color gamut by hitting CTR+SHIFT+Y. Everything that is outside of the CMYK color gamut will be "GRAY" on screen.

If you don't want to see that color shift, WORK IN CMYK.

Lastly... The only true way to know exactly what you get is to be calabrated from the moniter to the delivery end of the press the item will be printed on. In most cases that just isn't going to happen.

SOLUTION:

you print it from photoshop - with the colors you like, then give them that print with the art as a color target.

They do their damndest to hit your colors (and they cuss alot, too)

good luck! :D