An ICC profile I can' find back in PDF export (Xara Designer Pro)

[stephane_fr]

Hello everybody.


I have to finalise a big work (an entire board game with packaging, cards...) with a german company for the printing.
They asked me to work, when exporting the pdf files, with an ICC profile called ISO COATED V2 (39L).
So I've downloaded it, and I put it in the directory : Xara Designer Pro X\Filters\PDFXFilter\icc (is that good ?)

Anyway, when I'm going to the PDF/X export menu, in the "custom" option, in "Pre-Press", I don't find the profile I put in Xara.


Could someone give my the informations I missed ?


Thank you very much,
Stephane

[handrawn]

Hi - I think, and its not something I have done, that you need to select custom on the pre-press tab and then use the button on the third line below to browse to your new profile to add it

[stephane_fr]

Indeed it works in that way. Thank you very much


I have a last question : they ask me too to "create rich black with 100% black + 40-60% cyan." (speaking about illustrator or freehand soft, but the same I suppose for Xara and all vectors softs). What is that and how to get it ?

[mwenz]

The "Rich" CMYK black they are talking about does not apply to small text (like below 10 pt, depending on what is behind it)--just so you know.

For your blacks to meet what they desire, just make the CMYK C=40 (up to 60) and K = 100. It's not a typical rich CMYK black as usually the others (M+Y) have values as well.

Take care, Mike

[stephane_fr]

Ok.

All my documents are done, I have to define again all my blacks.

But sometimes I have 2 or 3 blacks in my colours (when for instance I had to import vector files into another).

How can I do to have, in final, only 1 black in my documents, instead of 2 or 3 ?

[mwenz]

Hello Stéphane,

By two or three blacks are you meaning shades/tones of black or simply the blacks as defined in these other files are a different CMYK mixture?

There is no easy way to turn the 100% blacks into the 40,0,0,100 black with an exception. You can highlight like objects and turn them into the C/K mixture at one time. Same with the line color (if there are black lines) as well as with the shades/tones of black.

But it also depends on what exactly I am working on on how to proceed. Can you share a screen shot if the above doesn't make sense?

Take care, Mike

[handrawn]

Indeed it works in that way. Thank you very much

thats good

Mike knows a lot more about CMYK than I do, so I'll leave that to him...

[stephane_fr]

Hello Mike and thank you for your answer.

I put a screen here : http://nsa30.casimages.com/img/2012/...5612604555.jpg

Actually, what I need is to clean my color galery. I have a lot of colors that appears twice, even 3 times (because I never give name to my colors - a bad idea of mine, thn when I import, it is an accumulation of, sometimes, the same colors...)

Is there a way simple to "clean" this galery, without loosing the color attributes of the objects of the page ?

[mwenz]

Hi Stéphane,

Hmm, I don't use named colors unless I am going to recolor art. So I am a bit out of my league there.

Is about the only black being used the smaller print? Some outlines? If so, for the text, unless it is on top of another color, I would simply use 100%K. The big issue is where black is sitting on top of another color.

If you have any text sitting on another color, I suspect the printer is wanting the black mix so they do not have registration issues--they avoid registration issues by specifying a black mix. But then for color matching, all text even text not sitting or crossing into another color needs to also be that mix. The default is to overprint black. So when it is on the paper color (not on top of a design color), it is one shade of black. But any text that overprints another color is actually a mix of the CMYK components.

All that to say, from the screen shot I have no idea what is going on. And all that drivel doesn't answer the question of named colors! You will get a warning if you try to delete them if they are actually colors used in the document. I know of no way to find items using a particular named color, so I think you will need to attempt to delete them one at a time and see if you get the warning.

Gotta say, what I can see of the design looks pretty darn nice. Take care, Mike

[stephane_fr]

Hello again Mike


Yes I have some text over colored backgrounds, in this black color. I won't think about this too much : I will just put all my "blacks" into the CMYK features you mentionned before. Not more.. Should be ok (I will ask the printer man too if it is sufficient or not, but he is a bit too much silent for the moment )

Thank you for your compliment about this work. I had in mind to show this complete work into the galleries sections of the Xara, to show what kind of work I did in it. Should be in 1 or 2 weeks...