Pantone, CMYK, RGB and Hex differences in Xara Designer Pro X

[Ander]

You cannot have correct values without color management. This is especially true of converted spot color.

With CMYK values, one doesn't even know what the pdf transformation will do until the pdf is exported with the intended output condition and then viewed in a color-managed application such as Acrobat, pdfToolbox or other RIP software because of the lack of color management at the document level. There is no soft-proofing...because of the lack of color management. In one sense, a person is flying blind.

Don't get me wrong, I love to draw my illustrations in Xara. But I draw them mostly for inclusion in layout software which has color management. The ads and occasional 1- or 2-paged documents I do in my Xara application are not as important to me other than the pdfs are ok. Anything else simply has to be color managed--including some of the aforementioned ads, etc.

LCMS is a widely available OpenSource color management system. I do not know if Xara's applications can even have the LCMS code rolled in. If it can, it should. This isn't the 1980s through the early 1990s when output had to be non-color managed PostScript to be ripped direct to film.

It works just fine to export from xara when i work in cmyk color, and i dont let xara convert spot to cmyk.
When exporting pdf i choose custom and Advanced, i have downloaded icc profiles from Adobes site, its free and i using CoatedFogra39 and embed profile. Open up in Acrobat all looks ok.

Yes LCMS would be nice to see in Xara.
I have testing the Trial of xara designer pro x now for 2-3 weeks, i must say i like the program very much but it could handle the color better, right now i think if i should pay for it.

It have been interesting to join and read all answers here, Many thanks for all answers

Included some picture of what i do when exporting to pdf.

[mwenz]

It works just fine to export from xara when i work in cmyk color, and i dont let xara convert spot to cmyk.
When exporting pdf i choose custom and Advanced, i have downloaded icc profiles from Adobes site, its free and i using CoatedFogra39 and embed profile. Open up in Acrobat all looks ok...]

Yes, it is OK. No, it isn't OK.

In other words, it depends.

I'll use a real color value of one element from an ad from this last spring. This ad was ran in several magazines in the US and in a few newspapers here and Europe. Color needed to be well represented from one media to another. There were a few output intents involved, but going from gloss paper ran on hot web offset to the cold run offset (i.e., newsprint) provides the most glaring challenge...that an Xara application is "incapable" of meeting that challenge properly.

One of the reasons for color management I like to call "design once, output to many devices." So if we take this darker green color, 100, 80, 100, 10 (a TAC of 290, near the upper limit for say U.S. Web Coated SWOP, and way too high for newsprint) and output to a pdf using the U.S. Web Coated SWOP profile, that's exactly what you will see in the PDF. That's great!

But now try outputting that PDF to say ISONewspaper 26v4 profile. What do you think happens? That's not so great. The numbers hold true when they should not, and if you embed the profile the representation in the PDF is also wrong.

So what should happen when that ISONewspaper profile is used? The numbers all need to change to relatively lower numbers and allow for the grayness of the newsprint to make up for some loss/lower relative black values. In the end, the idea of color managed input/output is to design a single source that can be output to disparate media.

This is all shown the the below screen shot. The two images on the left are from InDesign, the two on the right are from XP&GD. The top is the ISONewspaper profile, the bottom is the US SWOP profile.



So #s 1&2 from ID pretty much match well in print while #s 3&4 do not. As well, #3 would have been either rejected or they would have silently done a conversion which likely would have not matched up as well as #s 1&2.

Mike

[Ander]

Yes, it is OK. No, it isn't OK.

In other words, it depends.

I'll use a real color value of one element from an ad from this last spring. This ad was ran in several magazines in the US and in a few newspapers here and Europe. Color needed to be well represented from one media to another. There were a few output intents involved, but going from gloss paper ran on hot web offset to the cold run offset (i.e., newsprint) provides the most glaring challenge...that an Xara application is "incapable" of meeting that challenge properly.

One of the reasons for color management I like to call "design once, output to many devices." So if we take this darker green color, 100, 80, 100, 10 (a TAC of 290, near the upper limit for say U.S. Web Coated SWOP, and way too high for newsprint) and output to a pdf using the U.S. Web Coated SWOP profile, that's exactly what you will see in the PDF. That's great!

But now try outputting that PDF to say ISONewspaper 26v4 profile. What do you think happens? That's not so great. The numbers hold true when they should not, and if you embed the profile the representation in the PDF is also wrong.

So what should happen when that ISONewspaper profile is used? The numbers all need to change to relatively lower numbers and allow for the grayness of the newsprint to make up for some loss/lower relative black values. In the end, the idea of color managed input/output is to design a single source that can be output to disparate media.

This is all shown the the below screen shot. The two images on the left are from InDesign, the two on the right are from XP&GD. The top is the ISONewspaper profile, the bottom is the US SWOP profile.



So #s 1&2 from ID pretty much match well in print while #s 3&4 do not. As well, #3 would have been either rejected or they would have silently done a conversion which likely would have not matched up as well as #s 1&2.

Mike

Ok Mike now i know what you mean and talking about and it's not easy to print and get exactly the same color on different machines, even if the color management make right profiles in pdf.
On a digital machine hopefully the have it calibrated, different result on coated and uncoated paper, papers gram weight can also change color as the machine is working with heat it compensate for different paper.
In offset machine they use right color balanze on coated and uncoated paper, much can go wrong. Too be shure the print will be ok it's best to do Proofprint and mayby compensate, yes but it cost.
But as you say the first thing is too make the pdf's right, and that is xara not good program for now.

[mwenz]

Just to finish up as I ran out of gumption yesterday...I should have reported the color numbers of the change that a proper profile did, in the case of ID and didn't occur, in the case of XP&GD.

ID's values & XP&GD did great on the SWOP, the values were the same at 100, 80, 100, 10.

The values for XP&GD when using the ISONewspaper profile held the same values, which is over the desired TAC, but appearance changed due the the profile.

ID changed the color values to compensate for the newsprint color to 45, 12, 36, 68, for a total TAC of 161 and kept the appearance required for the printing.

Output profiles, just like RIPs, have output curves in them and are meant to change color characteristics due to the substrate they are intended to print to, to compensate for their ink's characteristics, etc. Without color management in play from end to end and the ability to chose whether profiles either keep the numbers, tag the elements, embedding the profile or convert color numbers to the destination, we are at the mercy of conversions downstream.

I would be remiss if I also fail to mention that of the pieces I do direct from Xara, I have never had color surprises. The pieces I have done start to end in Xara products have generally all been designed for digital presses using RGB in the main, some with spot color, a few for offset using CMYK values and/or spot color, and all using SWOP and/or FOGRA profiles to gloss or uncoated standard/premium non-newsprint paper.

Otherwise, my use of Xara products are what I mentioned earlier: designing assets for page layout software. They are excellent design products and have the best PDF editing capabilities of anything I've ever used.

[Ander]

Just to finish up as I ran out of gumption yesterday...I should have reported the color numbers of the change that a proper profile did, in the case of ID and didn't occur, in the case of XP&GD.

ID's values & XP&GD did great on the SWOP, the values were the same at 100, 80, 100, 10.

The values for XP&GD when using the ISONewspaper profile held the same values, which is over the desired TAC, but appearance changed due the the profile.

ID changed the color values to compensate for the newsprint color to 45, 12, 36, 68, for a total TAC of 161 and kept the appearance required for the printing.

Output profiles, just like RIPs, have output curves in them and are meant to change color characteristics due to the substrate they are intended to print to, to compensate for their ink's characteristics, etc. Without color management in play from end to end and the ability to chose whether profiles either keep the numbers, tag the elements, embedding the profile or convert color numbers to the destination, we are at the mercy of conversions downstream.

I would be remiss if I also fail to mention that of the pieces I do direct from Xara, I have never had color surprises. The pieces I have done start to end in Xara products have generally all been designed for digital presses using RGB in the main, some with spot color, a few for offset using CMYK values and/or spot color, and all using SWOP and/or FOGRA profiles to gloss or uncoated standard/premium non-newsprint paper.

Otherwise, my use of Xara products are what I mentioned earlier: designing assets for page layout software. They are excellent design products and have the best PDF editing capabilities of anything I've ever used.

Yes Mike i see what you meen, Adobe CC is outstanding and i use it at my work, now when i playing around with XP at home i begin too like the program and hopefully Magix work on too do it better. Export to pdf with Fogra39 is what i want right now. Our digitalmachines at work is Fogra39 certified, so its fine for me.
Thanks /Anders