CMYK Export

[Charles Moir]

I hope someone can help clarify a requirement that's been on the Xara X wish list. In fact it's the top item on the last consolidated wish list from this forum, namely the item that simply says 'CMYK Export'.

I've had a bit of a conversation with Jens about this, but thought it worth asking what other users want, or mean, by 'CMYK Export'.

Xara X produces colour CMYK separations, and can import CMYK TIFF bitmaps (or at least it's meant to). Xara doesn't, but could, create CMYK JPEGs, but is that useful? Is it that something in this area doesn't work that is meant to? What specific features would you like to see under the general 'CMYK export' heading?

Thanks in advance,
Charles

PS I'm out of the country for the next two weeks, but other Xara staff will be reviewing the forum.

[Charles Moir]

I hope someone can help clarify a requirement that's been on the Xara X wish list. In fact it's the top item on the last consolidated wish list from this forum, namely the item that simply says 'CMYK Export'.

I've had a bit of a conversation with Jens about this, but thought it worth asking what other users want, or mean, by 'CMYK Export'.

Xara X produces colour CMYK separations, and can import CMYK TIFF bitmaps (or at least it's meant to). Xara doesn't, but could, create CMYK JPEGs, but is that useful? Is it that something in this area doesn't work that is meant to? What specific features would you like to see under the general 'CMYK export' heading?

Thanks in advance,
Charles

PS I'm out of the country for the next two weeks, but other Xara staff will be reviewing the forum.

[Egg Bramhill]

It's not a feature I've ever used but Klaus has some interesting points on his Xara site at web page in the Colourful Advice section. Maybe you could contact Klaus direct.
Egg

[Klaus Nordby]

Egg, thanks for the free plug! In that section I just mention that XX only exports RGB bitmaps, so CMYK'ing of TIFs must be done in an external image editor. But for XX to export good CMYK TIFs is bloody tricky - I'll just say: GCR, UCR, color coverage, etc. A can of worms. I think Xara's resources are better spent on improving other aspects of the program.

K
www.klausnordby.com/xara (big how-to article)
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/ (I was the first-ever featured artist in the Xone)
www.graphics.com (columnist, "The I of The Perceiver")

[Sheff]

I would like to see CMYK export. That would make my life a hell of a lot easier. I can't believe that you guys are arguing against it.

I think a CMKY export of JPEG is fine. CMYK Tiff, even better. CMYK Photoshop or Tiff file with layers intact would be best of all.

The whole point of asking for it is to minimize the number of applications you have to use to convert Xara output. There have been so many occasions where I have had to take layered Xara files, export each layer as a PNG to keep transparency, rebuild the file in layers in Photoshop, and convert everything to CMYK. What a major hassle. And the thing is, I need to have both RGB and CMYK because the art is for both screen and print.

Converting RBG to CMYK is a very simple task for Photoshop, however it still necessitates opening Photoshop. If there are enough layers in Photoshop that I've imported from Xara, it seriously diminishes Xara's practicality. If the time spent converting Xara files MEETS OR EXCEEDS the time it takes to build the file in the first place, I might as well have not used Xara at all.

The people I've mainly dealt with have wanted CMYK Tiff files. And they've preferred to do their own seps.

I usually convert CMYK to RGB before importing into Xara as the colors don't look right when I import a CMYK. Then I have to convert Xara output back to CMYK. If Xara can indeed import CMYK, please make sure the colors look right or at least close to what the other apps represent as CMYK. When I import CMYK, Xara seems to push the contrast and color intensity. Imported CMYK images look very garish.

But ideally, import and export of CMYK tiff's and/or jpegs would be great. In terms of implementation, I think that a radio button for CMYK or RGB on the export dialogue box would suffice.

I like Jens, and agree with some of the things he has said, but some of his opinions are highly biased and not necessarily typical of Xara users. I appreciate your asking other Xara users for their opinions.

Sheffield Abella
www.sheff.com

[This message was edited by Sheffield Abella on October 23, 2003 at 12:23.]

[Klaus Nordby]

Sheff: "Converting RBG to CMYK is a very simple task for Photoshop"

Yes. And the very brilliant Adobe programmers have probably spent 50,000 man-hours getting CMYK conversion right. And it still is damn problematic to get good seps in Photoshop!!!

Sheff, I seriously doubt you have any idea of the complexities involved in converting RGB to CMYK. Your one-button-does-it-all solution is laughable. Sorry, pal!

So I say that Xara should use their man-hours in better ways. Like giving us a PSD export - in RGB even - which exports XX layers to PSD layers. I, too, have gone the PNG route you're talking about, and it's really a loathsome, stupid procedure - which I hope becomes unneccessary when we finally see XX2.
Hallelujah!

K
www.klausnordby.com/xara (big how-to article)
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/ (I was the first-ever featured artist in the Xone)
www.graphics.com (columnist, "The I of The Perceiver")

[Charles Moir]

Yes separating to CMYK is not easy - but Xara X does it already, and does indeed cope with the complexities of GCR and UCR, overprinting, dot-gain and all the rest etc - it has to in order to do decent 4 colour printing. It doesn't provide the degree of control that you get from Photoshop - but of course part of the philosophy of Xara X is to avoid complexity - so our colour separations printing is a awful lot more straightforward and works well, almost all of the time, but that doesn't mean we don't handle many of the exact same technical issues. However if you really want fine control over aspects such as GCR and the like, then Photoshop is the way to go. Our argument is that users shouldn't need to know anything about the technicalities, it should just work.

So actually if it's just exporting CMYK TIFFs and JPEGs, that should not be too much of a problem to solve. However if you want absolute control over the separation process, then exporting an RGB file and using Photoshop to create the CMYK version is a better way to go. Klaus is right that the Photoshop guys have spent huge amounts of time implementing a truly flexible system, and it would take us a very long time to implement a system as flexible. There are probably better uses of our time.

The problem with displaying CMYK TIFFs is a different matter. In this case we have to convert to RGB (to display on an RGB monitor) and we do this using a very basic, very fast system, without any colour correction. Actually you will find many other apps that can load CMYK TIFFs, such as PaintShopPro, Fireworks and others do the exact same thing as Xara X (i.e. these program make CMYK files look too contrasty and wrong colour balance). The reason is they don't perform any sort of colour correction. However if you select 'show printer colours' from the Xara Window menu it does show you a much more accurate representation of the final output. But again this system is a fast, generic colour correction, and certainly does not offer the flexibility of Photoshop. It's another example of a ultra-simple solution to a very complex problem.

So I would say it would be relatively straightforward for us to output CMYK image files. The key aspect that I suspect people care about most would be that we correctly separate the existing channels of a CMYK image, without going via a conversion to RGB. Then you could create CMYK files in other packages, such as Photoshop, import them into XX, and print or save to CMYK file and be sure your image has not been messed around.

The issue of us displaying more accurate CMYK files on screen I believe is of secondary importance, but is something we could look at if a lot of people felt if was necessary.

Charles

PS Our current preferred solution to the issue of supporting PSD files with layers, better Illustrator compatibility, SVG export etc is along the lines discussed in another thread. Namely the first stage is that we'll make our system much more open for external third party import / export filters to be created (using XML). The next step, of actually creating and maintaining up to date filters for PSD, PDF etc then becomes a much easier process for us, and / or third party developers.

[Sheff]

I have no idea what it takes to create code for something like Xara.

But I have made requests of programmers that they have been able to put into the executable and that's the whole point of this diatribe.

Charles asked users what they want in terms of CMYK export. And I answered his question. They want to know how their customers use Xara. I included the graphic to illustrate how I think that functionality should be implemented.

If they decide that the user must determine from the outset whether or not a Xara file should be RGB or CMYK then so be it.

I don't know what it takes to get there, but I DO think it should be that easy. We shouldn't have to fight a program's lack of features or share with each other our techniques and work arounds. The features should be there. If not, they should add them.

It's better that we tell them what we want and let them decide how and whether or not they can do it. I'm not going to try and guess what their capabilities are or how many man hours its going to take. I'm just going to tell them what's important to me.

We've all waited for them to begin working on XX2. I think it's pointless for users to say no to other users feature requests. That's not your job or responsibility to decide what features are possible or not. That's ultimately Xara's decision.

It just seems that a number of threads on this forum deal with printing problems and export format issues. I think its something Xara needs to work on. If you think their time is better spent on other aspects of the program, lets hear what you want Xara to do.

Sheffield Abella
www.sheff.com

[Sheff]

Thank you for your response. I appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions. In fact you posted your response before I did.

I do agree that CMYK screen colors are of secondary importance, but I still feel it's something that should eventually be integrated into Xara.

I did turn on the feature of 'show printer colors' and I did notice a slight improvement. I will experiment with it further.

I think your solution for conversion without correction is ideal for what Xara needs to do. I don't expect to control levels and curves within Xara as that is more in the realm of a bitmap app rather than a vector app.

But to increase controls for the user, it would be nice to be able to put in a numeric value everywhere Xara has a slider setting. That shouldn't be too hard to implement either.

Sheffield Abella
www.sheff.com

[Klaus Nordby]

Charles, thanks for your posting! It sounds like you have a very sensible solution in the works, and some core technology is already taken care of which will work well for many people's purposes. Yes, if we spec our CMYK values in XX, it would be damn nice to get them into CMYK TIFFs with all the exact values intact. And vice versa. Or, possibly, the other way around. :-)

And layered PSD exports seems to be coming! Wonderful!!!

K
www.klausnordby.com/xara (big how-to article)
www.xaraxone.com/FeaturedArt/kn/ (I was the first-ever featured artist in the Xone)
www.graphics.com (columnist, "The I of The Perceiver")