That’s what I assumed too, but I wanted them to confirm it before tearing into the boneheadedness of it and, then, suggesting a way to deal with it.
The vividity of the RGB colours will be monitor dependent.
I have my monitor set to a cool - I don’t have vivid colours on my screen due to tendency to get migraines, so my monitor colours are turned right down.
I can manage as I have a knowledge of colour that allows me to see beyond the monitor so to speak.
I never trust the monitors colour anyway.
Anyway, just to say, RGB-vivid images, will be different for everyone.
[quote=“PrintDriver, post:7, topic:21959”]
Sounds like they have some new corporate colors that are gonna be vividly out of CMYK gamut.
[/quote] 
Yes, they will look like garbage and there’s just no way around that, whether we define a cmyk variant or not. The colors are way off the gamut and spot colors will only rarely be an option.
See this is what I am trying to do, but it is not working. Throw in an .ai or .eps, and I just can’t get the black 100%K from the .ai to make it through to the PDF.
You are absolutely right on the “corporate” and I have no further comment, it’s not my choice 
A lot is being printed inhouse, so spot colors are rarely an option!
Exactly!
Based on your clarifications, here’s what I might do (without giving it a ton of thought).
Assuming we’re discussing 2–4 corporate colors, I wouldn’t resort to a 100% RGB workflow for all the reasons (and more) that you’re running into. No matter what you do (short of a Herculean effort) everything in all your documents sent to printer will be converted from RGB to CMYK. This will cause, to a lesser extent, the same problem you see with the text — RGB colors converted to some approximation of those colors in CMYK.
Instead, I’d probably build the documents in CMYK and use spot colors for the out-of-gamut corporate colors. Even though you might not have the budget to print spot colors, as a last step in making the CMYK PDF for the printer, you could convert the spot colors to CMYK. This conversion would only affect the spot colors and leave the other colors, such as the black text, as they were in CMYK.
I’ve run into this problem for years in publications that accept advertising — some advertisers invariable send ads with spot colors, so every single time, it’s necessary to convert them to CMYK before sending them to a printer. Fortunately, it’s not a huge problem to identify those colors with InDesign’s ink manager and make the last-minute conversions in the packaged file while leaving the original InDesign file unchanged for use as, for example, a website PDF. Rather than explain it, here’s a link.
If you are sending work out to digital printers, they might be capable of a larger color gamut than the standard CMYK. You might want to talk it over with the digital printing company for suggestions in those instances. Their printing devices might be able to get closer to your corporate colors than standard CMYK. Those companies might ask you to convert the spot colors to LAB values in the ink manager rather than process. Or they might ask you just to let them handle it.
For what it’s worth, it was stupid of this company to select corporate colors way outside the CMYK gamut since it will complicate every printing job they ever do and result in their corporate colors not being unless they pay for spot-color inks. Of course, that’s not your fault.
Make sure your document is in CMYK before starting.
So you can see the colour mode of the RGB image
Your colour settings should be something like this
Even if you think there is no RGB embeded profile there has to be something already there.
Your PDF will show as your Output Intent - mine is set to something and I don’t care about this for my purposes
But the black is 100%
You do get a CMYK breakdown - however, this is only due to the output intent (which you can talk to your printers about and you can get a better view on screen by choosing an output intent your printer might use).
But the image is 100% RGB
You go to the object inspector
Click anywhere on the image
So you can build a better workflow with your printers by discussing output intents and how to view in Acrobat for results in CMYK on their printing presses -
But be warned, your monitor won’t be colour calibrated to their printing presses -
so what you see is NOT what you get - (the opposite of WYSIWYG)
But perhaps a better understanding of how the vibrancy is being reduced.
In the PDF you can switch between your output intents - whether it’s RGB or CMYK (profiles).
Hope that helps to explain it a bit better.
You can see clearly in Illustrator the image is RGB.
Unfortunately - I don’t think there’s a way of mixing CMYK and RGB swatches in Illustrator (like you can do in InDesign)
I think it’s only CMYK or RGB.
If you need RGB swatches - then there is a way around what you want to do.
But it involves running preflight checks in Acrobat after processing your file to convert all rich blacks to 1 colour black.
Have to go now - hopefully I"ve not over/underexplained it.
Yes - i’d endorse an InDesign workflow in this case.
The ink manager is quite clever.
I had to setup a complex Pantone 021 vs CMYK scenario and I had cleverly built one file to accommodate whether it was going to printed spot or CMYK - that I could switch colours over in the Ink Manager by aliasing the colours.
It worked a treat.
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I’m referring to RGB colors / swatches for vector elements in InDesign. But more specifically, I am referring to placed vector files from illustrator, in .eps or .ai. I am having trouble getting the 100% K + RGB swatch colors in Illustrator all the way through to the PDF created in InDesign – while retaining the black text and RGB colors in the InDesign document.
This should be easy IMO, just keep everything as is, no conversion. But I am missing something somewhere along the way. Am I perhaps missing some settings in the Illustrator file? Can Illustrator even handle RGB + CMYK in the same document?
PDF’s will be sent to all kinds of printers (big corporation), and also printed inhouse. Thus, a more automated workflow would be preferable. In certain instances, spot colors are used (merchandise and such), but that is off-topic.
As far as I know, it’s not doable. In Illustrator, you pick between two color modes: RGB or CMYK. Even if you color something 100% K in an RGB Illustrator document, Illustrator treats it as rich black RGB.
However, you can add spot color swatches (different from the process color swatches) that can move with the document to InDesign, which brings it back to the suggestion I made earlier.
There might be an awkward workaround that could somehow be adapted into a standard workflow, but I can’t think what it might be. My gut hunch is that, in the end, you’ll need to create separate RGB and CMYK documents — possibly doing everything in CMYK, then changing the relevant CMYK value to RGB when using those files for digital/web use.
What is perplexing is this was allowed to happen in the first place.
No, this is something I mentioned earlier.
My recommemdation is never EVER use the color labeled Registraion in swatches. Only use the color labeled Black for black text. (100% Black) I know this what design classes teach you to do, but for offset printing, this is a nightmare for any four color pressman. Getting the 4 color images into proper registraion (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) is hard enough, without worrying about trying to keep a 4 color black build in the text or any small keylines in registration too. Especially if they are 100% of CMYK.
Off the top of my head, the only use for the registration swatch is to color registration marks on the off chance someone wants to add their own. I can’t image any competent design instructor telling their students to use it for text — then again, there are some design instructors who only teach design but know next to nothing about print production requirements.
This is correct.
The registration swatch is only used for - you guessed it - registration marks.
You might want to add your own registration marks to a project for whatever reason you have. And the registration mark will output on all plates or for an InRIP separation somewhere.
You don’t have to use black. It could be Pantone Colours only.
You add the registration marks.
And when the colours are separated they appear on all separated plates/film/paper or whatever you need it for.
100% agree, obviously.
I have seen designers just grab any old swatch and color artwork with it though. Most commonly, swatches designated for die lines - like a fold indicator. They would be given old production files as a starting point. I have seen the registration swatch used too. 
It should really be banished for Text - but that is not really feasible there are legitimate reasons to use it on text as you might want the text in the Slug Area to be in Registration colour.
Digital print doesn’t have the same issues with Registration black in text as plate presses.
Still…ink limits.
How’d that job go with 19 spot colours and black text in registration colour!???