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  1. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
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    Placitas, New Mexico, USA
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    41,487

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    That is a great story and not a rant at all. It should be Chapter One for every artist using print and electronic formats.
    Dan — (May 1995) Looking Good in Color, my book on color. Hit the remainder tables so fast it would make your head spin.

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    UK
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    21,283

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    yes colour can be very subjective [not really the right word but...]

    my mother had a house coat that she called red and I knew full well was orange

    we were both right, because we both saw the same thing , but differently, our visual spectrum not the same, our eyes/brain 'majoring' on different frequencies and so perceiving the non-pure hues differently... at least that is my take... hers was that I was being darft...
    -------------------------------
    Nothing lasts forever...

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    Bracknell, UK
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    8,659

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+


  4. #14
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Mönchengladbach
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    252

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    Quote Originally Posted by pauland View Post
    what a great page

    thx!
    no sicknature. for nearly 20 years. omg ...
    For many problems there are simple and easy-to-understand solutions that do not work.

  5. #15
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    StPeters, MO USA
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    10,819

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    Quote Originally Posted by gwpriester View Post
    At present there is only one export profile, which is industry standard (whatever that means). No I did not print the images.

    But I have used Xara since 1996 to create color stereogram images for books and magazines and the CMYK color has always been predictably muted in case of certain colors, such as bright green or purple. But in the end the question is, does it look convincing? Most people will never see the original of an image only the printed image.

    In the 70s when I was fresh out of art school and working as an advertising art director, I spent literally two months fine tuning a magazine ad for Datsun (now Nissan) featuring two cars. The original photograph was printed (dye transfer print) retouched, and then photoengraved for the magazine, with numerous revisions made until the proofs looked absolutely perfect.

    The ad ran in Time Magazine, Life Magazine and several other magazines.

    When I got my first copy of Time I was appalled. The color was shifted ten ways to Sunday and not at all like the proof we approved.

    I showed the ad to my wife and was going on and on about how terrible it looked. She took a look and said it looked fine to her. She could not see anything wrong.

    I learned two things. One if the color looks convincing, that is about as much as you can hope for. and Two, you are always at the mercy of the other photographs on the signature. So if in this case one of the images was a white car and on the same signature is a page of red roses, the white car is going to take on a tint of red. Because all the images on the spread are soft of balanced out.

    But I do think the PDF output for Pro+ shows a noticeable improvement and the colors are brighter and more saturated. (apologies for the rant)

    Very interesting Gary.
    Larry a.k.a wizard509

    Never give up. You will never fail, but you may find a lot of ways that don't work.

  6. #16
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    3,338

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    No matter what you do, your printer will take your pdf/x and convert it again to their own version of icc profile pdf.

  7. #17
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Lam, Bavaria-Germany
    Posts
    799

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    Quote Originally Posted by behzad View Post
    No matter what you do, your printer will take your pdf/x and convert it again to their own version of icc profile pdf.
    And this is the reason why you should always ask the print service provider for the used color profile (ICC)
    if you want to have some control over your printed colors.

    Of course, this is only one piece of the color management puzzle.
    To work with Xara in a really color accurate way, you need an image processing system with color management,
    Acrobat Pro to control the result in the PDF and calibrated hardware.

    I have been working with Xara like this for over 10 years and have never had any problems with incorrect colors.

    Servus Ernie

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Location
    UK
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    32

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    Quote Originally Posted by ernie-f View Post
    And this is the reason why you should always ask the print service provider for the used color profile (ICC)
    if you want to have some control over your printed colors.

    Of course, this is only one piece of the color management puzzle.
    To work with Xara in a really color accurate way, you need an image processing system with color management,
    Acrobat Pro to control the result in the PDF and calibrated hardware.

    I have been working with Xara like this for over 10 years and have never had any problems with incorrect colors.

    Servus Ernie
    I'd be very interested in a bit more detail on how you do this. It is the one thing with Xara that still frustrates me. (I do have a calibrated screen which helps a bit.)

  9. #19
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Lam, Bavaria-Germany
    Posts
    799

    Post Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob-H View Post
    I'd be very interested in a bit more detail on how you do this. It is the one thing with Xara that still frustrates me. (I do have a calibrated screen which helps a bit.)
    A quick tutorial how I work with Xara and Acobat Pro:

    1.) All images are judged in either Photoshop or Affinity Photo. There are also other image editing programs that support color management. Everything is left in the RGB profile.
    Exceptions are catalogues or reproductions for museums, art exhibitions etc. which are converted to CMYK and also edited in this color space.

    Warning: Xara cannot interpret CMYK images. Xara only accepts RGB! That’s why CMYK images of me are processed in Indesign, Affinity Publisher, CorelDraw, Quark or Scribus.

    2.) In Xara I upload the color corrected photos (RGB) into my design.
    Objects, fonts, and all other vector elements are colored with Xaras CMYK.
    In order to reliably match the colours here, I use printed colour reference books (CMYK in all different values, Pantone and here in Germany HKS-Color scales) on different types of paper.

    3.) After my design is done, the output will come as a print PDF. Now comes the conversion of images to CMYK with the color profile (ICC) stored in Xara that I received from the printhouse/printshop.
    The CMYK values of fonts and objects are passed on correctly by Xara.
    In Adobe Acrobat Pro I can then have the result simulated as a soft proof. Even small corrections such as converting 4C black to 100% K black can be done with Acrobat Pro.
    I don't know of any other PDF viewer besides Acrobat Pro that can do this.
    Since I work with calibrated hardware I see in the simmulation to approx. 90-95% the result. Of course, on the monitor we have a different color model than on the printed paper (aditive versus subtractive).

    The CMYK preview in Xara is a joke and I've never used it because nothing is right anyway. This is also the reason for Acrobat Pro.
    For very important jobs, I like to have a hard copy proof sent to me to be absolutely sure.

    So that's my workflow for color accurate printing with Xara and Acrobat Pro.
    If you get foreign images that are in CMYK (often happens from agencies that still work according to the old non-media-neutral standard), then it is advisable to return them to RGB.
    In Xara you can't do anything with the pictures anyway.

    A word about the media-neutral workflow: In the media-neutral workflow, all image data is left in the RGB color model in order to always have the same initial image for the most diverse scenarios.
    The conversion to CMYK is then only done in the print PDF. And here the color profile (ICC) is responsible for ensuring that the conversion is carried out precisely to match the paper and printing process and the printing machine.
    All of this data is stored in these color profiles. Therefore, always ask the printer about the color profile to be used.

    There are also printers who want a generic CMYK without ICC. They then convert the color information into their in-house color profile.
    But with that you give away control and without a hard proof it's a lottery what you get.

  10. #20
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    32

    Default Re: CMYK Previewing and accurate CMYK Profiles coming to Designer Pro+

    Thank you ernie-f that is really interesting and gives me plenty to experiment with!

 

 

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