CMYK question

[Jimi King]

I'm just about to do something for print that involves importing quite a few RGB images. My printer requires a print ready PDF and so I will be relying on Xtreme converting the images to CMYK as part of the PDF-X export.

Is this wise or should I convert the the images to CMYK in Photoshop first and import them afterwards?

Anybody got experience in such matters?

[gwpriester]

I've had very good results letting the PDF export filter do the converting.

Gary

[behzad]

I have tested an export from photoshop in pdf
and export from xara as pdf
both for print.

But I found that photoshop pdf export the colors are more vibrant than xara export.
Yes it is CMYK not RGB.

[Jimi King]

Well I'm going to give it a whirl and see how it goes. The bitmaps are all grabbed from the web so they're unlikely to be particularly vibrant anyhow.

Of course the problem with importing them after conversion is that (in my experience anyway) Xara doesn't cope with CMYK bitmaps too well. At least they don't usually look too hot on screen, which kind of puts me off taking it any further.

In the past I've usually created an entire document in Xara and exported the lot as an RGB JPG, opened it in Corel DRAW, converted to CMYK and then submitted it for print. howeve my printer now insists on PDF's so it all gets a bit long winded. Adding a further conversion can't improve things so I'm kind of hoping that Xtreme PRO will finally nail the CMYK situation.

[Tao jones]

export from xara with print preview turned off you shouldn't have any trouble..

[Charles Moir]

Yes the conversion to PDF/X does the automatic conversion of everything into CMYK as required by PDF/X (it leaves CMYK colours unaltered). The conversion is done with the specified ICC profile (in the PDF/X export dialog) and so is in fact identical to the process that Photoshop uses (assuming you specify the same ICC profile as you do in Photoshop). So we'd recommend just leaving images as RGB in the document, and just export as PDF/X. That gives you most flexibility - e.g. to use the embedded photo controls to adjust Levels, etc.

It's very easy to proof that it will look OK using Adobe PDF Reader of course. But a real wet proof (i.e. a real printed example) is the only sure way to know what the colours will look like.

[Jimi King]

Indeed. Thanks Charles.

I have tried one print job recently straight from an Xtreme Pro PDF-X and it came out quite well, which is why I'm inspired to go for a second. And not least because it takes far less time to design it in Xara than it does in Corel DRAW.