flat colors in PDF export

[frits]

Hi to you all,

I 'm using XDP pro X and made a logo for some friends of mine and exported it to PDF using commercial printing PDF X. When you look at the pdf the colors are a bit more flat than in the PNG or JPG export. Also you can see an aditional line in the black line arround the stones. Does anybody have a clue how I can get the same colors as with JPG export and get rid of the line?

Regards,
Frits

[handrawn]

the difference in colour is probably because the jpg is RGB and the pdf is CMYK

the line I'm not sure of

[BTW - both your posted JPGs are the same?]

[frits]

No, one is a JPG and the other is a PNG ;-)

[handrawn]

if you click on the thumbnails do you see any difference? - I see jpg both times with the same file name

[handrawn]

... which is probably the vBulletin software converting the png if it exceeds the size limits allowed...

EDIT - or maybe you should give them different names...

[frits]

I treid different filenames but I think the software converts the PNG to JPG.

[handrawn]

couldn't find the limits before, sorry - here they are:


max width 800pix
file size 250KB [png] 200KB [jpg]

if you exceeed the width with the upload then it will be reduced to 800pix and, if it's png, converted to jpg

[pauland]

Looking at the PDF in Acrobat Pro, the colours used are "DeviceCMYK" and converting them to DeviceRGB, restores the colour.

[mwenz]

Hello frits,

A couple reasons you are seeing the abnormalities you see. First is the XAR file is made from an imported PDF. A PDF is a wonderful thing for a fixed and final form--which is all Adobe ever envisioned for it. That applications can open them, parse the information for editing, is a great thing with some downsides.

One downside is a PDF often has been chopped up in to various component parts in the constructing of the PDF. This is the case here.

The lines you see may or may not have been in the original, I took them off. As well, I reconstructed the stone-looking part of the logo, the black area, and removed all the inner nodes which makes it a single entity.

I have changed the 100% K to a rich black comprised of the CMYK values of 60, 40, 40, 100. This will provide a great black in print, but also will better match other output formats such as an RGB bitmap for a web site.

The two other colors in the stone looking part. I have no idea what the colors "ought" to be and left those alone. I would heartily suggest that if you do print work to pick up some CMYK color guides. This will aid you in choosing color or matching existing print work.

Take care, Mike

[pauland]

Here's an RGBified version of the PDF.