Dan — (May 1995) Looking Good in Color, my book on color. Hit the remainder tables so fast it would make your head spin.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.That is a great story and not a rant at all. It should be Chapter One for every artist using print and electronic formats.
Gary W. Priester
Mr. Moderator Emeritus Dude, Sir
gwpriester.com | eyetricks-3d-stereograms.com | eyeTricks on Facebook | eyeTricks on YouTube | eyeTricks on Instagram
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...
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Nothing lasts forever...
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
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.
Thank you ernie-f that is really interesting and gives me plenty to experiment with!
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