colors look dull in pdf

[Josie]

Few remarks:

1)

Getting the blue to be as blue as the example on the left is very difficult.

Well, I think this (Photoshop) blue can be printed as it displays. This is not the problem anyway. The problem is why the two pdfs display differently, because they SHOULD look the same.

2)

for me they look the same

Yes, they look quite the same on my monitor (not like in Behzad's sample), but the CMYK values are definitely NOT the same, so that sample Xara pdf may not be produced with correct settings.

3) Generally, mysterious thing is that if Xara pdf shows CGATS TR 001 as Output Intent in Output Preview in Acrobat, it shows different CMYK values than if you change the Output Intent to something else (while this does not apply to Photoshop pdfs). I believe that CGATS TR 001 output intent does not show correct color values for Xara pdf.

4) In my experience, if you do embed some color profile in Xara pdf, you never get the same colors compared to Photoshop pdf.

[behzad]

It would be good if someone can try a picture on their own.

[handrawn]

well I got the same difference as you did wabbit - using acrobat [5] and reader 8.1.

no idea why, commercial printing is not my thing, as those few of my cartoons that are actually printed have only the one Henry Ford color [black].

since as well as not having acrobat professional, I only have photoshop 6, I'm not sure it would benefit if I tried this out myself....

[behzad]

Well, I am glad green eyes can see what I see.
They are exported at the same settings, everything is the same, but the colors look different.

How are you green eyes?

[handrawn]

Well, I am glad green eyes can see what I see.
They are exported at the same settings, everything is the same, but the colors look different.

How are you green eyes?

Mystified a bit like you, but then I don't pretend to undersatnd the commercial printing.

Hope you get it sorted out - there must be some reason for it...

[behzad]

Well, I am sending out this latest work to the printers with the xara pdf export.

The only thing that i see is not happening is when I assign my colors in xara and export it as (photoshop not pdf) , those cmyk values in photoshop do not match what I had assigned them to.

So that alone upsets me.

[handrawn]

yes things like that can be a fret

let us know how it turns out

[Charles Moir]

There is something deeply mysterious going on here. I get different applications showing completely different looks.

For me Xara, XPE, Photoshop, and other apps all look the same (slightly dull).
But just opening the JPG in Windows Picture Viewer shows it the same as it appear in Acrobat from Xara (more bright)

So this is nothing to do with the PDF, it seem just that JPG itself appear rather differently in different applications. This should not happen.

I did notice that Photoshop says the photo has an embedded colour profile of Adobe 1998, but that Windows says it has an 'uncalibrated' colour profile. So I suspect this is the problem - there's something funny with the actual JPG.

Oh I would say however that if this is exported as PDF/X then the full look is definitely more right as those bright blues are probably impossible from any normal printer (they are out of printer gamut). But I really do not know why Windows Picture Viewer and Acrobat from Adobe PDF, show it so bright. As I say there might be something wrong with the actual JPG.

[behzad]

I made sure that when i export as pdf in both apps that the jpg (in bitmap compression) is turned off and it is set to NONE.

[minimiro]

My test shows not this that I see from Behzad PDFs
I make my tests from his photoshop PDF
ie rasterized in photoshop, then saved as RGB jpg then exported as PDF from Xara and from Photoshop.

The only difference that I can see on my calibrated monitor is that blue letters on Xara PDF is one idea warmish than in Photoshop pdf
Same in values meaning 65/25 for Xara and 70/20 for Photoshop....
Other big difference that I see is that checked "no compression" for bitmap is without meaning , exported PDF is in times loss quality than the same JPG exported as photoshop PDF