Xara and Color Management

Bear with me, as I setup for my question!

Been trying to put together a small catalog, which is to become a PDF file. Most of the graphics are photos imported into Xara, then ‘faded’ into the sea green color I want for the page backgrounds. One page has a table created in Excel. I’m assembling the catalog in PageMaker v7.1 with Kodak color management turned on, so I can (hopefully) make sure colors visible in publication look the same once it goes to PDF.

First problem was getting the whole table to show up in PageMaker. Adobe’s Forums state in their FAQ that you shouldn’t try using OLE to connect to the spreadsheet as odd things happen. Tried that, and found out they were right.

They had several suggestions on their site to try. I picked out the 2 most promising, that didn’t require me to have to recreate the table in Adobe Table.
Idea #1) Output direct to PDF, and then import into PageMaker. No good – Excel can’t stop adding page margins.
Idea #2) Copy to clipboard, paste as metafile into Illustrator, output as EPS file, import into PageMaker. No good – couldn’t get PageMaker to accept ANY type of EPS that XARA can create.

So, I thought up my own idea. Got the whole chart showing on screen in Excel, made a screen capture, then saved results to PNG file. (It isn’t a very BIG price list!) Imported that into Xara. Brought it in against background I wanted for that page, and got it imported into PageMaker. (Whew!)

Finished up the rest of the material for the catalog, and then created the PDF. HORRORS! Everything looked either washed out, or too bright. I’ve been chasing my tail for a couple of hours just to try to get the font colors to be what I want them to be when the PDF is created. I’m going to try turning off color management in PageMaker to see if I can get things to look the right way. (Crossing fingers.)

I know Xara doesn’t have color management built in, but I have it turned on in XP itself for my monitor. So, what I see in Xara should be how things look once imported into PageMaker. But, PageMaker insists on using only ‘recognized’ forms of color management. So, maybe I’m needlessly beating my head against the wall with having color management in PageMaker turned on for this project.

Has any one got any ideas as to how I can simplify this process, or work around these problems? Comments would be greatly appreciated!

I'm attaching copy of the ugly PDF, in case anyone wants to see what I'm talking about...


[] My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips.

<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
Irene M. Kraus a.k.a. The Computer Lady!
Graphic & Web Page Design www.design-comp.com
President/Newsletter Editor/Webmaster - CEBUG www.cebug.org

Bear with me, as I setup for my question!

Been trying to put together a small catalog, which is to become a PDF file. Most of the graphics are photos imported into Xara, then ‘faded’ into the sea green color I want for the page backgrounds. One page has a table created in Excel. I’m assembling the catalog in PageMaker v7.1 with Kodak color management turned on, so I can (hopefully) make sure colors visible in publication look the same once it goes to PDF.

First problem was getting the whole table to show up in PageMaker. Adobe’s Forums state in their FAQ that you shouldn’t try using OLE to connect to the spreadsheet as odd things happen. Tried that, and found out they were right.

They had several suggestions on their site to try. I picked out the 2 most promising, that didn’t require me to have to recreate the table in Adobe Table.
Idea #1) Output direct to PDF, and then import into PageMaker. No good – Excel can’t stop adding page margins.
Idea #2) Copy to clipboard, paste as metafile into Illustrator, output as EPS file, import into PageMaker. No good – couldn’t get PageMaker to accept ANY type of EPS that XARA can create.

So, I thought up my own idea. Got the whole chart showing on screen in Excel, made a screen capture, then saved results to PNG file. (It isn’t a very BIG price list!) Imported that into Xara. Brought it in against background I wanted for that page, and got it imported into PageMaker. (Whew!)

Finished up the rest of the material for the catalog, and then created the PDF. HORRORS! Everything looked either washed out, or too bright. I’ve been chasing my tail for a couple of hours just to try to get the font colors to be what I want them to be when the PDF is created. I’m going to try turning off color management in PageMaker to see if I can get things to look the right way. (Crossing fingers.)

I know Xara doesn’t have color management built in, but I have it turned on in XP itself for my monitor. So, what I see in Xara should be how things look once imported into PageMaker. But, PageMaker insists on using only ‘recognized’ forms of color management. So, maybe I’m needlessly beating my head against the wall with having color management in PageMaker turned on for this project.

Has any one got any ideas as to how I can simplify this process, or work around these problems? Comments would be greatly appreciated!

I'm attaching copy of the ugly PDF, in case anyone wants to see what I'm talking about...


[] My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips.

<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
Irene M. Kraus a.k.a. The Computer Lady!
Graphic & Web Page Design www.design-comp.com
President/Newsletter Editor/Webmaster - CEBUG www.cebug.org

But I recently did some 4-color color printing for a client, cards, letterheads and envelopes.

The color logo was created in Xara with Show Printer Color disabled.

I exported the logo and opened it in Photoshop and converted it to CMYK. I brought the logo back into Xara and exported an EPS file with the type which I placed in Adobe InDesign.

The results were a disaster. The color was too orange.

So, I said what the heck. I exported the EPS file in Xara with a Xara created RGB bitmap and placed this in InDesign, sent the files to the printer and the color printing was right on the money! Go figure.

I am using Windows XP.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

Hello,

this is my first posting.

first I would like to thank Gary, for his great tutorials.
My thanks goes also to all people here in this
forum, who share ther tips and cheats with us.
I learned so much, it would not be to be paid.
Thanks.

I often read here in this forum about the
problems with the creation of print files und
color management.
Now, since I know XARA (December 2001) I create
most prints over the way XARA, Corel and Acrobat
Distiller.
And I did not have ever problems.

In former times I operated only with Corel.

and here is my way:

With the methodology I was inspired by a note of
flysolo in this thread.

1. I open a new document. the PAGE are set to
to CMYK and 300 dpi.
2. I create three Layers and name them
Vektor, Bitmap and Tiff
3. the vector layer only contains type and
vector elements without transparencies and
other effects.
everything else is on the bitmap layer.
4. wen I am finished with the layout, i select
all the content of the BITMAP-Layer and create a
Bitmap-Copy (CTRL+SHIFT+C)
and place the copy on to the tiff-Layer.

select the 24-Bitmap in the Tifflayer and apply
the 'plug- in x-Port CMYK' (get it on the
shareware page of xaraxone.com)to convert it and
save as it as a tiff, CMYK 300 dpi file.
attention: show printer colours should be DISABLED
5. export all the content of the vektor –layer as
xara eps-file.
6. import the cmyk-tiff an the eps-file in to the corel draw document (my be it works also with
illustrator or indesign).
7. print to file with distiller and create a
prn-file.
8. last step: with distiller make a pdf-file out
of the prn-file.

i never had any problems.

It seems to be something additional work.
In reality I save more time using xara, than I
need afterwards for the print preparation.

rubberswan

Thought I'd share what is the final results on this.

Okay, trick number 1 is to turn off image CMS in PageMaker. Select image, choose Element, Image, CMS Source and turn off. Do this for all image files for which you want CMS turned off.

Next trick, for colors for text make sure CMS settings are right when importing colors from library. Use the On-Line Library, which is supposed to match up with ordinary RGB values.

As I was still having lots of trouble with the Dark Pink color (magenta, Dusty Rose, whatever!), I finally turned CMS off when exporting to PDF. Made my own custom 'job' options file so it will be easy to switch if need be in future. (Tried default settings for both screen & e-book and this is how I got best results.)

Color used in chart that originated in Excel looks a bit off, but not enough for me to keep beating my head against the wall. (I hate setting color values in Excel.)

Whew! For a job that was supposed to take only an hour, I have no idea how long it took to get things to this point. Learned a lot about what works and doesn't though so I'll have a better idea on how to quote prices for the next project.


[] All good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
Irene M. Kraus a.k.a. The Computer Lady!
Graphic & Web Page Design www.design-comp.com
President/Newsletter Editor/Webmaster - CEBUG www.cebug.org