Show Printer colors???

[mg.architect]

Beware! Newbie Question...

I have been trying several of the various posted tutorials and ran across one that said: "I made a bitmap copy of the Cyan and Magenta "Show Printer Colors"
When I go to Windows>Show Printer Colors I only have two options to pick from:
1. Screen Colors and 2. Simulate Print Colors.

The tutorial screen shot showed several more options such as Show Cyan, Show Magenta, etc.

Why do these options not show up in my Show Printer Colors dialog?

I'm using 2.0f Windows XP.

I know I'm missing the obvious...

Thank-you,
mg

[Soquili]

Hi MG,

Welcome to the forum.

Xara Xtreme is the most recent incarnation of the program. The two previous versions were Xara X and Xara X¹. The tutorial you mentioned was showing the menu for Xara X¹.

Xara Xtreme does not have support for CMYK or Pantone colours the previous versions had.

The attached image shows the menu as it appears in the three versions mentioned above.

[mg.architect]

So I wasn't missing anything after all (except for some deleted features:-) Well I guess that tutorial is history.
Thank-you very much for the quick reply.
mg

[gwpriester]

History.

But the basic idea behind showing the 4 process colors is really pretty obscure.

If you are a printer or someone related to the printing business, a film and plate maker, a photo engraver, and other professions that don't exist much anymore, you could examine the four colors and determine if the colors were out of balance.

But this is not really done on the computer. Printers create what is called a progressive in which they print a series of proof sheets, one of each color only, similar to the show printer colors > cyan for example, and then cyan and yellow, cyan and magenta, magenta and yellow, yellow and black, and so forth.

One with a skilled eye could look at a set of progressives and determine that the yellow was too dense or that the ink in fountain 12 needed to be dialed down a notch or two.

But unless you are a skilled printing professional or pressperson, these progs are meanlingless.

On the other hand, because Xara Xtreme, and previous versions of Xara, operate in RGB color space in which colors are more vibrant and intense, and because printed process colors have a more limited gamut (range of colors that can be achived through 4 color printing) being able to view colors in simulate printer colors is something just about everybody can understand and profit from.

Gary

[mg.architect]

I'm neither a printer nor in the printing business. The thread I ran across showed how to enhance the color of the sky in a photo by making a bitmap copy of the Show Cyan and Show Magenta in the Show Printer Colors dialog.

I'll look for other ways to accomplish the same thing. There are a lot of good ideas lurking in some of those past posts. The only difficulty for newbies are the differences between the various versions.

Thanks for the kind reply.
mg