Editing the standard colors in the Xara color strip

[James Loudon]

This is a bit of a problem really. I know I can add my own colors to the strip at the bottom of the screen, but time and time again I need to use grayscale that has to be just gray and its not! For instance if you pick 50% black and then click on CMYK scale it turns out to be C:49% M:45.5% Y:32.5% K:11%
Why is it not 0 0 0 50?
I see no reason why this should be like this - if you send something off to the printers with what you think is small grey text that looks sharp on your RGB screen it may well be fuzzy when you see it in hard copy from an offset press.
So it would be great to redefine the standard strip, or at least be able to load a user strip every time the program starts.

[angelize]

You can right click on the Standard Palette in the colour gallery and click on show in colourline to remove the checkmark and the palette will be removed. Then you can create your own custom named colours or double click on any colour in any folder in the colour gallery to add it to your colourline.

Your document with your custom colourline can be saved as a template for future use, just be sure to uncheck delete unused colours and styles in the options. Then save as template. Check use as default if you wish to have your custom template load on program start.

[steve.ledger]

If you are using DPX, you can create your own palette, Tony.
In the colour Gallery, un tick to show the Standard Palette.
Open a new document and set yo CMYK color model.
What I did was to draw 5 small objects, set them to 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% and 10% K and named them as such.
The colour line then shows me those five swatches only.

Opening the attached file in DP or PGD should now show you the 5 named colours on the left of the colour line. If you check their CMYK values, they will be all values of K.
At least they are here in DPX and PGD (WD has no CMYK colour model of course).

[Michael]

There are some quirks with Xara that makes working with colours a bit tricky. First of all is it's default behaviour to delete unused colours. I'd recommend to switch that of in the first place. (Utilities->options... Tab "View" item at the bottom "Delete unused colors and styles when saving"
Now start a blank document and change the colours you'd like to see and have at your disposal when opening a default document. Once done save that as a template (File -> Save template ...) and make it default so every time Xara starts a new document you'll have your colour available.

[handrawn]

T I need to use grayscale that has to be just gray and its not! For instance if you pick 50% black and then click on CMYK scale it turns out to be C:49% M:45.5% Y:32.5% K:11%
Why is it not 0 0 0 50?
I see no reason why this should be like this

Greyscale colour model and CMYK colour model are not the same thing - Xara does not have a Greyscale colour model like Photoshop does, which is a pity

EDit - ah pressed the submit button too soon..

so, although you can show the greyscale percentages of your work in greyscale in xara, you cant AFAIK export in greyscale like you can in PS - although if there is a PDF option in Pro, maybe you can

[handrawn]

blacks:
http://www.andrewkelsall.com/the-pro...o-using-black/

[James Loudon]

Allright, thanks very much all, good info there. Esp the article about Black - I am going to study this in more detail. Really good stuff.
Anyone seen Spinal Tap? Discussing theor album cover...

"How much blacker could it be? None. None more black"