More info regarding CMYK

[Zakiyya]

Hi!

Please can you point me to articles/documentaion regarding CMYK.

I have to submit an advert in pdf/jpg but it must be CMYK as well.

I know CMYK is a color model....but that's all I know.

Please help!

[handrawn]

Hi

CMYK is a colour model for printing ink

the primary colours for pigments [paint,ink] are blue[Cyan], red[Magenta] yellow[Yellow] and with pigment you can never mix to get pure white or pure black, so there is black [blacK] as well and white is no ink at all, assuming you are using white paper

light primary colours are Red, Blue, Green - RGB

EDit - sorry - submitted this too soon - will follow through...


[in RGB you can mix all three to get pure white, and pure black is no light at all]

[handrawn]

You can simulate CMYK on a computer screen, but it is always an aproximation - some programs are better than others.
You can also simulate RGB when you print.
And there are other colour models you can simulate on screen such as HSV... it can get complicated.

Light produces a wider range of brighter colours than you can print with ink, so RGB printing is not precise

CMYK printing gives the printer much more control over the printing colour precision, but the only way for the designer to know for sure that the colours are correct is to print off a proof [on a CMYK printer of course]

In Xara if you go to the menu 'window/show printer colours' and tick 'simulate printer colours' it will give you an approximation of what you will see printed in CMYK, but it is only an approximation.

In Designer Pro it is easy enough to produce a print quality CMYK PDF - I am not sure if you can do that in Photo and graphic Designer, you may be limited to a TIF file - I am pretty sure neither will produce a CMYK JPG..

[Albacore]

To continue Handrawn's advice the JPG is RGB and not CMYK so that solution is not available to you. Look at your export file menu and see if it has the option to export as PDF as I think you can and use that as your method. Also Xara's help file is well written and that is a good source of information on CMYK. In the search area once you have loaded the Help file by pressing F1 type in CMYK and look at the results. Once you have saved the PDF open the file up in Adobe Reader and have a look at your output. The colours may look slightly washed out so you may have to go back into Xara and correct some of your designs. If you have a Laser printer you could use that to see what your PDF is like when printed in CMYK. If you want any more help please come back with an actual problem as the whole CMYK is a very large topic. Good luck!

[gwpriester]

Zakiyya - Xara Photo and Graphic Designer can export a PDF file, but the options are limited.

If you are going to be working with a lot of CMYK materials for advertising, you will be better off upgrading to Xara Designer Pro X which offers a wider range of PDF/X types and options.

Xara can export a CMYK TIFF, which is better quality than JPEG, but I have never been real confident in this format.

[M.U.D.]

Xara can export a CMYK TIFF, which is better quality than JPEG, but I have never been real confident in this format.

Hi Gary,

By the above quote, do you mean you are not confident with Xara's CMYK TIFF exports or not confident with the TIFF format in general? Please elaborate.

Regards,
M.U.D.

[gwpriester]

Sorry. Not confident in Xara's CMYK TIFF export.

For my published stereograms, I export my images as 24-bit PNG then convert to CMYK in Photoshop.

[Albacore]

Your exporting, when you use .tiff, from a screen or page with RGB which has a huge number of colours down to a file type in CMYK with a restricted number of colours. This causes information to be left and is called "out of gamut colours" which is why people use PhotoShop for this job. Hope you can understand what I just said there for it took me a few weeks to get my head round the problem.

[handrawn]

yep....

[Zakiyya]

I appreciate all the information. Looks like I will have to upgrade to Xara Designer Pro X.