Color confusion for printers needs

[TDolce]

Can someone please help me!? This continues to be a huge buggaboo for me as I cannot get a good grasp of the color issues with Xtreme.

I have a logo that I designed for someone and I gave them the CMYK color key for the blue in the logo, but the printer said that he needed the PANTONE color for it and that the .ai file I gave him (exported out to .ai from Xara) is in RGB mode and he wants to know exactly what PMS color he needs to shoot for.

According to Xara:

The RGB number for the blue is: 29.8% 36.9% 58.4% and has a # next to it that reads (4c5e95) Not sure what that means...
CMYK=76.5% 67.5% 25.5% 3.5%

According to a free progarm color picker (Pixie)
It says the RGB=76,94,149
It also says the CMYK= 29, 22, 0, 42

Why do they conflict? Which one do I believe and what would be the PANTONE equivalent?

This is ridiculous and far more complicated than it should be.

Todd

[gwpriester]

Is the logo you are printing in CMYK or spot color?

If spot color (for example Pantone 300) are you specifying your colors from a Pantone swatch book or are you going by screen colors?

If your logo is fairly simple and you have not mixed colors together, you can make each color black or grayscale and export an AI or Adobe EPS for each color in black and/or grayscale and identify the Pantone color for each plate.

Gary

[Soquili]

Hi Todd,

The numbers you have do not conflict, they are in different units.

Xara is one of the few programs I have that allow you to choose between percentages and values between 0 and 255 for RGB colours.

The value 29.8% for Red is a value of 75.99 or rounded up to 76 in the 0-255 scale. The 4c5e95 is the hexidecimal value for the RGB values. 4c is the decimal equivalent to 76 on the 0-255 scale.

Computers use binary values internally and humans use decimal for numbers. The binary value for hexidecimal 4c is 01001100 or in human decimal it is 76. It can become quite complicated to use binary numbers if you are not a computer .

There are many numbering systems that help humans to work with binary numbers. One of them is hexidecimal which is a base 16 numbering system that uses digits 0-9 and the letters A through F (upper or lower case are the same in hexidecimal). To convert the 4c to decimal (base 10 numbering system) you would do the following:
4 X 16 = 64
c = 12
64 + 12 = 76

More info than you wanted, I am sure
I was hoping to show that there are no conflicts with the numbers you presented.

Gary can provide more accurate information about working with printers and the file types they like to use.

[stratocast]

Todd,
For your info, this is where you change your colour units (Utilities>Options...>Units).

[gwpriester]

Not sure if we answered your question or not.

If not, let us know and we'll dig deeper.

Gary

[TDolce]

Hey Guys,

I don't know why I always have issues with colors. It's been that way loooong before computers too. Hard to believe that I make a living doing graphics and cartoons huh?

Well,..what I did was go to a site that lets you enter the hex code (or RGB non percentages) and then it gives you up to 30 different Pantone color swatches to choose from to hopefully match. I found what a wanted,..but it was not a definitive science as I like it to be normally. The printer kept telling me that what I gavce him was in RGB and not CMYK and he wanted to know what to shoot for in the way of SPOT colors.

I basically matched the Pantone swatches with the color I had on my screen. I mean what else can I do? It seemed to work. I just hope the logo doesn;t appear Pink when it should be blue. I'll be in deep doo doo if that happens.

td

[remi]

I mean what else can I do?

Colour management

[gwpriester]

td

You are not alone. Color management has always been one of the least understood aspects of computer design.

The best way if you are specifying spot colors is to do what you did. Find a color in the Pantone swatch book that comes the closest to what you see on your screen.

Screen color on a monitor can be way off in reality depending upon whether or not your monitor is accurately calibrated. But you see a color on your screen that is what you want so find a printed Pantone color that comes close and you can be assured your printed color will be the same.

I take issue with your printer wanting CMYK unless she or he is planning on matching the Pantone color in CMYK. Pantone spot colors are solid inks that are mixed to a specific ink formula and have nothing to do with RGB (screen color space) or CMYK printed color. Only 50% of Pantone spot colors can be accurately matched using CMYK colors anyway. And of the remaining 50%, 25% will not even be close.

Gary

[amoore]

I think TDolce's printer meant that he needed to print the job using seps and the RGB wasn't separating properly. Doesn't he need seps even to print spot colors unless it's a one-color job?

I just had a problem with a "two-color" job in which the primary area of color (the company logo) vanished when they tried to print it. I'd expected the print to be digital, so I'd left the RGB logo tiff alone. When the job had to be offset, poof, no logo. Printed correctly when I gave them proper seps (black and spot color) instead.

Unfortunately, we've gotten very sloppy in the way we use words. I can easily understand that the printer was using "CMYK" to mean a job that should be printed from seps.

[kana]

Hi guys.
i think CMYK mode is still weakest point of Xara. i don't like CorelDraw, but i need to use it but it has working better in CMYK. so just try to export any vector image or text to *.cmx (from xara's CMYK mode) and open the file into the Corel space. looking to Info and you'll see some CMY (aka RGB) objects, not CMYK...((( i'm afraid the same we could found into ai space too.
take care — any printer could find some gentle words to express it admiration!

i like xara but for printing a file i need have longer way other soft's users had.
best regards,
anatoly