Converting to CMYK, Great Idea or Disaster?

Why do we consider such a move? Well when we shoot a photo & then print it or have it printed, often we find that the colors are not what we wanted. We've heard that professional labs use CMYK color space, so if it's good enough for them why not for us?

You may not realize it but CMYK is not actually a defined 'color space', such as aRGB or sRGB, but a 'profiled color space' that you may or may not have created in your Photoshop Color Settings.

Clearly what happens when we choose to convert to that profile is we are limiting the colors (gamut) available to the image already embedded with a color space. CMYK offers a device profile that would be very helpful only if we know that the device, most often a printer within a printing lab, is one we have a lot of faith in.

Bottom line is if you are sending an image or printing an image in-house, leave it in the color space which has been assigned by the camera body settings, unless the print lab you are sending it to has requested the conversion.

Would love some feedback on this or questions so we can take this to another level if you wish.