CYMK colour - how to find on an image to recreate the colour.

[jdmorrisn]

Hi all, I have only really used basic functions of Corel before and mostly photo-paint. Now I have x3 version and I wish to use corel draw to modify vector and bitmap images for printing. How can I identify what the CMYK is of a colour on a picture that I have imported - is it possible? I wish to recreate this colour.

[Big Frank]

Hi JD and welcome to the forum. There aren't that many CDx3 pro's around here because it's mainly a Xara users form. However, if you follow this link I think you might find what you are looking for:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/CorelDraw...rel-Draw-1.htm

All the best!

[coza]

jdmorrisn,

Welcome. Firstly, I assume most pictures you will import into Corel will/should be "RGB" in nature, so you will have to convert them to CMYK. You can do this by choosing the Bitmaps menu and change the selected RGB image to CMYK - see the attached screenshot. If they are in CMYK, all you have to do is use the eyedropper tool to find the colour you are after or want to identify, this applies to solid colours as well, be very careful when changing "spot" colours to CMYK, the best way to do this is to use a printed colour swatch to match the exact values for these, or ask your printer for advice and help if you are going the commercial route. I used the eyedropper tool on the egg to get the values for it after my conversion. You should see the colour and values reflected in the status bar at the bottom of your page work area, depending on how yours is set up it could be different to mine?. If you double click on the colour in the status bar, it should bring up the colour dialog box. You might also notice that your image colour shifts somewhat when you convert it to CMYK, to tweak it to your liking, just go back to the Bitmaps menu and use the image adjustment lab, auto adjust does sometimes do the job, but not always.

Take Care - George

[coza]

Sorry, forgot to add the egg colour in the status bar.

Here is the other screenshot.

• Have some breakfast with me •

[Sarah]

You might want to go to http://nattyware.com/. They have a too named Pixie that will show you the CMYK numbers when you hover over a color.

[coza]

Hello Sarah,

Welcome to TG, it's a great place to be!

I'm glad you brought this up, that being, using different colour pickers, I'm not going to say you are wrong, but take a close look at what happens in my other screenshots of the colour of the egg in the little red square, also Xara, (as much as I love it), does not convert pics to CMYK in the programme itself as far as I know, it depends on the PDF profile that you ouput, so you can't really tweak your pics to your liking when they are in that mode before you produce the PDF. Anyway - take a look at the colour values of Pixie compared to my Corel ones - Corel's are in the bottom right hand corner, then look at the colour values that Pixie gives in Xara X1, but remember in Xara, you are working with a RGB picture, and in Corel I was working with one that I had converted to CMYK. Pixie seems to respond better with Xara.

Regards - George