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

[ClubleyM]

Having a little difficulty understanding what might be going wrong here.

One of our customers sent us a design which used PANTONE Spot Colours. We imported the colours, but upon printing them, they come out TOTALLY different. (We understand that some colour shading will be different on a CMYK Printer as the colour process has to try and match up the closest to the colours we've used, but what is weird is that when we create the colours based on the Pantone Web site, the CMYK Values are causing different colours in Xara than they do in Illustrator.

I've added attachments, in the hope it explains things better than I can... any questions, please ask and I'll try and clarify a little more. I'm hoping we've missed a setting in Xara somewhere which we can change ?

I've uploaded 3 files, the Xara file (Test.xar) which hopefully shows the 4 created colours, a PDF which shows how all 4 colours look correct upon converting, and a PNG which shows a screen grab with the PDF under my Xara file in case the Xara file works fine on your version of Xara and mine is incorrectly set up.

Many thanks for any advice / Tips.

Matt


Pantone 3145C.pdf
TEST.xar

[behzad]

What your customer sees on their monitor is different from what you and I see on ours. So the only way to have a perfect match is to get the pantone numbers and assign them again in xara to those squares. Even then you you can not verify that they are the same one as the pantone website (because the website is showing you colors in RGB). You need the booklet to get the numbers and see the colors on the booklet. How many pantone colors are there in the design? If more than 2, then it is best to do the whole thing in CMYK. Pantone printing is expensive.

[gwpriester]

Xara works in an RGB environment. CMYK as you know cannot print the same number of colors. The colors on the bottom are pretty much what I would expect the printed results to be.

If your customer uses Window > Show Print Colors > Simulate Print Colors she/he will get a better indication how the actual printed colors will look.

Also RGB to CMYK color values vary from program to program.

[ClubleyM]

Xara works in an RGB environment. CMYK as you know cannot print the same number of colors. The colors on the bottom are pretty much what I would expect the printed results to be.

Thanks for your reply.

I understand that Xara works in an RGB environment, but I would hope that when you pick a spot colour or a CMYK colour that it would print that colour.

The colour in the screen grab at the top is how Xara is showing exactly the same colour on various squares...

When we print, the colours are coming off wrong too..

If you use Xara, try recreating those colours we have in the example, and print them off locally on a colour printer.. Does your Xara do the same? If so, then surely we shouldn't ever use Pantone Colours or CMYK colours in our designs as they will never match what is expecting upon printing.

[handrawn]

but a screen grab is no use with xara, that is the point - you have to print to see the colours accurately in anything other tham rgb

[ClubleyM]

but a screen grab is no use with xara, that is the point - you have to print to see the colours accurately in anything other tham rgb

Ok Maybe I'm totally missing the point here, to which I apologise.

https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/3145-C

That is the reference page from Pantone that provides the Pantone colour, and associated CMYK, RGB and HEX values to achieve that same colour.

The screen grab is not what we are printing from. It's there to show everybody what I see in Xara compared to what is being converted to PDF.

Working from right to left...

The pantone colour 3145C is the colour square on the far right.

Next on the left of that is the CMYK value which is from the web site namely C (100) M (10) Y (29) K (20)

The next swatch is made from the HEX code provided on that website 00778B

The final swatch on the far left is from the web site again, but the RGB values.

If all those colours are meant to represent the same colour , why are the two on the right different on screen AND when it prints?
When I put those colours in other software, they all match the same tones as the RGB and Hex.

If a customer provides me artwork which contains Pantone colours, or CMYK values, and Xara is translating these colours incorrectly, then why would Xara provide the facility to work with these colours knowing that the print off will look nothing like it should do?

[handrawn]

if the print is wrong then then the cmyk/pantone assigned within
xara is incorrect

[gwpriester]

It has been years since I made this observation but about 1/2 of all Pantone colors can be matched exactly or very closely in CMYK. About 1/4 are close, and the other 1/4 don't come close.

Pantone colors were designed years ago as a system of mixed inks that would produce the same color anywhere in the world if the inks were mixed according to the formula.

I'm preaching to the choir here I know.