color proofing

I did a side by side color preview in xara and in illustrator.
They are very different, but after checking with my pantone
color booklet, illustrator was much true to the colors that i saw.

Do they each use a different system, algorithm?

Yes. Different combinations of RGB to simulate what is in reality a solid color ink.

Pantone colors were originally intended to be printed as solid colored inks and not to be matched in CMYK or RGB which uses a combination of colors to create a color. Many Pantone colors are outside of the gamut of CMYK and even RGB which has a much wider gamut than CMYK.

In illustrator i have the option of assigning my color profile, which is the standard North American print settings. I wonder if the next xara version can have a selection of soft color proofing so settings can be defined.

Did they print the same colours though?

I have yet to find out. But i trust the adobe system. I love xara but screen color proofing I go with adobe.

The "show printer colors/simulate print colors" option in Xara helps SOME, but it's still not the same. When it came down to the screen coming close to matching, it was the comparison between the paper and the pdf output that were the most alike. All others were variations on the theme but so far out that it would be impossible without trial and error.

If I know I'm going to need to send something to the printer, I know to look at it in an exported pdf first, because it's inidicative of what it will really look like.

I wonder why the print simulation is so much different than the pdf output even. If the print simulation would show what the pdf export does, it would be great (at least that's what it looks like to me) - they export that way, why not have a view that allows you to preview it that way?

Image to right is illustrator color proof, the one on left is xara color proof.

The right now is closer to my pantone cmyk colors.