How to BUILD UP an design in CMYK ?

**Mcffee** · 29 June 2021, 09:02 AM

I'm using good old Xara Xtreme 5 and I love it, don't see a reason to update (and I believe the new versions don't have a light interface if I remember correctly, otherwise I might upgrade)

How to BUILD UP an design in CMYK color profile? My printer requieres this, images build up in RGB become darker when later converted to CMYK.

I tried exporting in different ways, but important is (following the printer) that the design is made with CMYK profile and not exported/converted to RGB afterward.

Any tips?

Thanks!

**Acorn** · 29 June 2021, 11:10 AM

Later versions do have an unsupported Light Skin - Shift+Ctrl+Alt+S (Skinned UI). Do not this is a toggle and the Light UI is unsupported and it resets stuffs.

The XX5 Help states:

The color models

CMYK colors are stored in 32-bit format. When printed or output as EPS or PDF they are output in CMYK format.
CMYK colors and transparency effects

When using any effect that involves transparency, including feathering, color calculations are performed in RGB. This is also true of live effects.

PDF Export Filter Settings: General Options

Color Model

The color encoding standard for the PDF document can be selected from RGB and Native. The Native option represents colors in the PDF file as they are specified in the drawing using RGB and/or CMYK.

To recap, export as EPS/PDF with the Colour Model set as Native.

Hope that helps.

Acorn

**gwpriester** · 29 June 2021, 11:33 AM

Acorn - I am not sure how much of that is supported in Xara Xtreme 5. PDF maybe, but I am not sure if PDF/X was supported back then.

Mcffee, if you are serious about CMYK consider upgrading to a later version with support for PDF/X which converts colors to CMYK. In the more recent versions, Xara has done considerable work upgrading their PDF import and export capabilities.