Photoshop bug?

[frits]

Hi Everyone,

I am making an add for a friend of mine. And because I have no experience with printing I'm carefull. So I'll use Photoshop to make the final image. Now what's happening:

I started a new drawing in Xara Xtreme. And as Zee suggested changed the color model to CMYB and % (does this mean I'll only use CMYB colors or is is it just a way of showing the color's I'll use?, PS shows if a color is in the right colorspace).

I import an aps file for the logo (it's awfull..) and change the color to some sort of green (just one green for the whole add). Change the display to show CMYB colors (light green changes to dark green).

After doing the add I saved it and export it to PDF. In Acrobat the image looks fine. But after importing it into PS CS2 it looks weard. The letters show diffrent colors of green. Does anybody have any suggestions.

I do have the source files but they are a bit big.

[Albacore]

Hi Frits,
Xara works using RGB colours and exports RGB colours in your PDF file so when you take this file into PS the colours are not the same. When you have your ad the way you want it Export it as a CMYK tiff file at 600 with no LWZ compression. You will need to play around with the colours a little bit to get the exact green that you want as greens draken slightly when exporting.

Look at the recent topic heading "Working in CMYK" by Zee that will give you a good starting point.

[williamdruid]

If you are going to print it yourself on an inkjet, don't mess with cmyk. Just work in rgb, Willy

[gwpriester]

As a test, I created two PDF files with 4 colors specified in CMYK %. The first PDF file displayed the colors in RGB color space and the second PDF displayed the colors in CMYK (Simulate Printer Colors).

I opened each PDF file in Photoshop CS2 (selecting the CMYK import option vs the RGB option) and sampled each of the 4 CMYK colors with Photoshop's Color Picker.

In both cases, the colors sampled were 100% correct (see attached).

Then I exported the same 4 colors, in RGB display more as a CMYK TIFF file and opened the TIFF file in Photoshop CS2 in CMYK mode. The colors sampled 100% correct.

I am also attaching a side by side of colors displayed in Xara's default RGB display and Xara's Simulate Printer Colors display mode. Obviously the colors displayed in Show Printer Color mode are closer to the actual colors.

I'm not sure what this means, except that the color was very trustworthy.

Gary

[frits]

Thank you all for the replies,

but my point is not that the color changes when the picture is converted from RGB to CMYB, I can understand that because they are different color spaces.

What's bothering me is that when I open the PDF in PS2 the letters BASSA show different colors of green, while in the xar and in Acrobat they are all the same color.

See what I mean?

Regards,
Frits

[Luciano]

Frits,
I noticed the same problem, and I believe it is related to Text objects (even if exported as shapes).

I tested the exported PDF with Photoshop, indesign 2, CS and Acrobat 7 with the same results.

Here is an example, the word studio was defined as CMYK black (only 100%K);
as you seen some letters appear in a sort of rich black (always the same letters in the whole file).

If someone at Xara needs the whole files I can send them to examine.

Luciano