Color-bug in Xtreme 3.2.3.2440

**Dón|Olivierè** · 25 August 2007, 03:23 PM

Xtreme has still alot of bugs, but I have no time to document them all every day. This software is far away to be professional.

Please do the following and see for yourself what I am talking about:

1) open Xtreme and create a new document
2) create a new color, name it to color1 and give it this CMYK-values: C=0%, M=20%, Y=100%, K=0%
3) create another color, name it to color2 and link it to color1
4) draw a rectangle with no line-color and fill it with color2; because color2 is linked to color1, the rectangle has now the CMYK-color: C=0%, M=20%, Y=100%, K=0%
5) export the document into a pdf ("commercial printing")

Open the exported pdf with any application yo desire, even with Xtreme itself and check the color of the rectangle - it has changed. It CMYK-values are now: C=3.6%, M=20.7%, Y=95.9%, K=0%.

My questions are:

Can anybody confirm this behavior? If yes, what's this all about? Is it a feature or a bug? And if this is a bug who is responsible and pay for thousands of misprinted brochures?

**steve.ledger** · 25 August 2007, 10:32 PM

Originally Posted by Dón|Olivierè

Can anybody confirm this behavior? If yes, what's this all about? Is it a feature or a bug? And if this is a bug who is responsible and pay for thousands of misprinted brochures?

Using your colour values: C=0%, M=20%, Y=100%, K=0%

My results are that while colour1 remains the same, both colour2 (linked to colour1) and the rectangle filled with colour2 change when opened in another application.
I found that Adobe Reader 8.1.0 showed colour 2 as CMYK: 0% 18% 80.4% 3.9%
While re opening saved PDF into XXP (3.2.2) showed colour2 as CMYK: 0% 17.9% 95.9% 0.35%

Could pose a problem for printers. I suppose you could supply the intended CMYK (or maybe PMS) values for the printer to refer to, incase of variations?
Not my area of expertise, but I agree there are variations with Xara's output which I would not expect to occur.

**Egg Bramhill** · 26 August 2007, 12:53 AM

Dón,

I should imagine this is more to do with the limitation of linked colours. Linked colours only work within the HSV model, not the CMYK model. See the help file under "Colour Handling" / "Creating a Tint, Shade or Linked Colour"

Linked colors
Linked colors are similar to shades but give greater flexibility. These are also based on a parent color but linked using a HSV model. You define which attributes you want the linked color to share with its parent. For example you can create a linked color that is a more or less saturated version of the parent, but the hue and lightness / darkness follow the parent.

I've never used linked colours so I couldn't comment any further.

**Tao jones** · 26 August 2007, 01:03 AM

it looks like you are right..here is a pdf that shows the shift in colour to what you say...tao

**Dón|Olivierè** · 26 August 2007, 01:36 AM

Egg,

you can watch the same behavior when you create color2 as a tint of color1. But if you export the document as a tif, in both cases no color change is ascertainable. It seems, there is a problem in the pdf-export-algorithm.

**Albacore** · 26 August 2007, 08:47 AM

Can I ask what PDF version you were saving it at as this can effect the output! For standard CMYK output choose version 4 or 5 and I doubt if there will be any shift in colours, I can't test it at the moment as I am at work.

**Dón|Olivierè** · 26 August 2007, 10:05 AM

I use the option "commercial printing" without any changes.

**Albacore** · 26 August 2007, 02:18 PM

Now I can't remember what the default is? I think it is PDF X/1a so what I recommended that you do is to select Advanced Options and then from the top lefthand dropped down box pick under "PDF versions" PDF ver. 1.4 and the on the righthand side select CMYK. Using this method so long as no transparencies are used is the best method but you may pick up 1% colour shift in Cyan but all the rest should stay the same. Now can I ask a second question I know it may sound rude but did you change in the page options from 255 to % as this may account for the discrepancies, it is just a thought as I have tried to get the same results as yourself but failed and I tried twice.

**Albacore** · 26 August 2007, 03:34 PM

Sorry to keep coming back, but Egg is right, linked colours can be only linked in HSV colour mode and it is this that is giving you the difference. It is like the difference between the number of colours that are available between RGB and CMYK. Sorry but I just realized what you were trying to do I thought you were making to spot colours (named colours).

Taken from Help "Linked colors are similar to shades but give greater flexibility. These are also based on a parent color but linked using a HSV model."