Colour Purity and the pitfalls of CMYK & RGB

[Stevey]

I thought I would pass on my recent experience of producing a logo from scratch for a horticultural company. I created a really vibrant logo with lots of bright green colours and proudly submitted a proof in RGB Jpeg format to conveniently send on email. What a mistake. Here's why.
I am in the printing trade and realised shortly after sending the proof I might be required to submit this for litho printing as well as appearing in RGB on a website. I quickly output a PDF and saw a woe full interpretation of the colours I had designed. The bevels were a big issue, I was surprised at the nasty two tone output of subtle blends of colour created in Xara Designer Pro 9. Logic dictated I create the bevel blends in CMYK, but in fact this didn't cure the issue. The only thing that preserved the blends was to mix the colour for the bevel in HSV mode even though I was exporting to CMYK PDF. This is part of the snake that is the mixed colour space of allowing both RGB & CYMK to exist together in XARA.
My advice to anyone who knows that their vector artwork will be printed on paper is to output a CMYK PDF and then make a Jpeg / Tiff of that. That way you can struggle with your colour compromises before your client sees a proof and the printed product will resemble what they have been shown. If you know spot Pantone colours will be used instead of process, then none of this matters, but most printing in done in process colours these days.
If you know your artwork will be printed on a lithographic press using secondary colours Cyan, Yellow Magenta and Black, you really have to restrict your use of colour to what you know will work, otherwise you can spend hours, as I did, finding workable colours. The end use dictates the path of your workflow, ignoring this can cost hours of time.

[gwpriester]

Without reading any further I can tell you the answer to your question. You did ask a question didn't you?

Xara works in RGB color space which can display a much larger range of colors than CMYK, thus many colors that appear bright on the screen appear dull when printed.

There is a setting Windows > Show Printer Colors > Simulate Print Colors that provides a more realistic idea of how RGB will look when printed.

[handrawn]

This is part of the snake that is the mixed colour space of allowing both RGB & CYMK to exist together in XARA

you mean as opposed to adobe photoshop and illustrator which don't... or do they...

[Stevey]

Hi Handrawn

Sorry, yes the adobe software will operate in one colour space or another and will warn you of mixed CYMK & RGB when importing PDFs & give you a choice of modes to work in. A lot of the time the loss of fidelity of colours when exporting to a PDF which will be printed CMYK isn't that great. Sometimes though, an unfortunate choice of colour can throw up a worse than normal result. The subject is very deep and I think a series of different workflow tutorials dealing with colour conversions would be a great idea from Xara. This subject comes up now and again and to be fair the manual does point out some of the different conversion limitations.

[handrawn]

Hi

yes - I don't think mixing colour models in one document is ever good for work-flow, but one advantage of being able to do so in xara is you can make a quick side-by-side visual check on the differences without changing monitor settings, but it is of course an approximation - at the end of the day what you see on a monitor is RGB light

xara is not document oriented, it is object oriented [leaving aside the relatively new web-creation features] - there is no 'document' to assign a colour space/model to, only a set of independent objects existing in the workspace, so colour model settings are applied per object...

as I recall [and memory has been playing me up recently] the blends in xara are based on raster fills which probably explains the limitation you experienced - they are limited in the number of discrete steps by a relatively low bitdepth

[Albacore]

If you know your artwork will be printed on a lithographic press using secondary colours Cyan, Yellow Magenta and Black, you really have to restrict your use of colour to what you know will work, otherwise you can spend hours, as I did, finding workable colours. The end use dictates the path of your workflow, ignoring this can cost hours of time.

Using the experience you gained from this and if you keep on using Xara why not take a trip too your local digital print shop with a colour chart PDF file and get it printed and use the limited colour palette in your designs. The other way is to invest in a CMYK laser printer for your desk you can get one for £110 or more. Even use what Gary said "simulate printer Colours" or even better export to PDF and view in Acro Reader and you can see how much colour is washed out of your design. All of these things are simple to do and with a bit of experience you will find the surprises go away

[handrawn]

I second that - you say in your OP that you work in the printing trade - should be easy to get charts then

and accurate monitor calibration is essential for accurate viewing, pretty obvious, but worth mentioning

[MarcT]

Hi, you can have nasty results in cmyk color coming from rgb. especially greens.

I usually take the simplest route, I work without thinking in rgb, having access to all the filters and effects in PS, lightweight files, etc.
I do have a template in xara having only cmyk safe color, that helps.

Before sending, I make a bitmap, transfer to cmyk in PS, and adjust if needed.
It's the simplest way that I found.

Of course if vector output is absolutely needed, it would be different.
My preferred workflow is a hybrid vector/bitmap and Xara excels in this.

And yes having a calibrated screen helps a lot.
Nec has a nice line of hardware calibrated screens.

Marc

[Stevey]

Thank you to everyone for their help and advice. I think that Xara Designer Pro is intuitive to use and even people with full access to adobe products still love to use this program as it offers them something different. I was pleased with my final design and I agree with Marc that the hydrid vector/bitmap approach that Xara offers does open up possibilities.
I also think the website features are pretty decent and have managed to put together some reasonable sites with design skills only, not being a master coder.

Steve

[Michael]

This posting hits the nail right on its head: Xara is a wonderful drawing program but... it is lacking for pure vector and print work. And if Xara wants to be an Illustrator contestant it should really brush up on these features like true vector lines, effects, colour renditions and text handling. It's fine that it moves in the direction of a mixed DTP/webeditor but it would be better if it wouldn't do that half heartedly. No yearly updated with version numbering but a true jump in development. I'd rather wait for a year extra to see the program get some progress than to draw the wallet for some minor updates and bug patches. Could someone at Gaddesden Palace have a good talk with Magix to get that into their brains?
With the gap that Adobe is leaving by pulling out real versions of Illustrator (and replacing it with subscriptions to programs) there is a huge challenge for Xara to promote it's drawing program as a real alternative.