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Hi guys, hope this is the right section to post this. I need to ask about colours modes and converting to cmyk from rgb. Ive used this online tool, rgb2cmyk but the colours dont match the ones Ive done with photoshop back when I still had it. Can I convert the old ones to rgb and back to cmyk with that online tool or is that doing to affect the quality?
sorry if this is a bit confusing, hope you understand what i meaa :(
A couple things.
One is I highly recommend getting a CMYK swatch book. Or make your own and have it printed by a service bureau that can hold the colors whether they are using offset or digital printing. I have one in process I may get done one of these days that people can use for producing a CMYK swatch book of their own. As regards
Two, Xara Designer Pro does a pretty dang good job of feeding RGB images into the CMYK color space using the PDFX-1a profile. They will be a little richer (by percentage points is all) than if you use images already converted to CMYK using a good photo editor. But nothing worth too much concern.
What XDP does not do well is represent color on-screen as well as it should. Especially CMYK color. Which makes having a CMYK swatch book all the more important. But having one is still important regardless of one's application of choice.
In the screen shot below is how, with show print colors on, a certain CMYK mix displays in XDP. On the right is Acrobat. I can guarantee the Acrobat image is incredibly closer to how it will look on paper than the XDP display.
Attachment 94744
Take care, Mike
Thanks for the reply Mike. I had to read that a couple of times to understand everything but I think I got it now. :D After thinking about this I think the colour difference is not going to so big (hopefully) that it would really make a difference. I can even submit the files in RGB to my printer (print24) who will make the conversion for me and I dont think the differnce is really going to bother me.
But yea I'll definitely look into getting one of those CMYK swatch books you mentioned. Where should I get one from? Is there different qualities? Its not going to be too expensive is it?
The books I recommend are relatively inexpensive and are here:
http://www.tintbooks.com/index.htm
Take care, Mike
Thanks Mike I'll have a look!
The way I tackle this problem is to use a known colour palette. What I mean by that is to make up some form of colour wheel or block colours with stated RGB & CMYK values then get that printed by your printer which maybe digital or off-set then you have a visual reference. This means that surprises are kept very low as you can take tints of these colours and so long as you don't stray that far from the values no big surprises. This is a bit like your pantone book without the Pantone values staying either in RGB or going CMYK colour profiles as Mike states.
It's the darker colours that cause the most surprises! especially dark Reds & Greens. Using this limited colour palette may make your drawings look a bit the same but hell I can stand that.
Ok wow, seems like theres way more to this than I thought. But thanks Albacore, appreciate your help too!