creating a cmyk based colorline

[jord]

I'm trying to create a colorline based on my own cmyk colors. By creating shades of a parent color I noticed that the colors don't have the cmyk values that it should have. Why do the colors shift in value and is there a way to avoid that?
An example: my color has the values C0-M5-Y5-K0, but when created it has the values: C4,4-M22,7-Y0-K0. That's a totally different color! These shifts happen on every created color.

[handrawn]

it's not clear, to me anyway, exactly what it is you are doing here

are you saying you make C0-M5-Y5-K0 a shade of a parent colour ?

if so then the colour of the shade will change to match the colour of the parent, that is what it is supposed to do

the colour that you use to make a shade [or tint] is used as a reference point for adjusting the parent colour to a shade [or tint] of itself

if I have misunderstood what you meant apologies...

[jord]

I've got the color red C0-M100-Y100-K0 and I want to make the color C0-M5-Y5-K0 the shade of previous red color but that color changes to something other. From what you replied I understand the xara makes its own color based on the red I specified. So I need to name the color a different way?

[handrawn]

ok

C0-M100-Y100-K0 is not red; salmon pink maybe

but that said, what you are seeing is the result of making a shade, where the saturation is 67%

this is the result you get:



on the top of the colour box you will see a cross on the left that represents the parent colour - a long way off pure red hue which is top left corner
the cross at the top on the right represents the shade you have created - because it is pulled even further away from pure red it no longer looks redish at all to the eye, but technically it is correct

if you make a tint rather than a shade you will see it is closer to the original hue visually as it does not reduce saturation in the way a shade does

[jord]

I made a new color and it stays as I want. I liked the way a shade was presented on the colorline as a slightly smaller square so I could easily see from wich color it was from.
Thanks for explaining.

[handrawn]

From what you replied I understand the xara makes its own color based on the red I specified. So I need to name the color a different way?

xara makes the shade you have told it to, as I hope i have explained - remember the program is defining shade [and tint] in a precise and technical way...

what you need in this particular instance is a tint

so make your C0-M5-Y5-K0 a tint - the values of M and Y will change, but you can use the slider on the colour editor to pull these back down to 5 [slide to left] - tint value of 5.2%



without a good grounding in colour theory the use of shades or tints can be confusing I know

EDIT - CROSS-POSTED WITH YOUR LAST POST

[handrawn]

Thanks for explaining.

you are welcome

[ernie-f]

It makes no snse to make a shade of a CMYK-Value-Color. CMYK has no shades, only transparencies make sense.
If you need a subtile color of a CMYK-Color so you must do it in CMYK-Values otherwise you are in HSL-Values and Xara can't handle this in CMYK and count it in RGB.
The best is a print CMYK-Value-Table where you got the right preview and the values. Like this one:

[handrawn]

and there speaks the guy who does stuff for printing - thanks ernie

me I just know how [some of ] the program works

[gwpriester]

Ernie - Exactly.

Jord, Xara is basically a Red Green Blue environment, all colors displayed on your monitor are made from red, green and blue pixels.

CMYK color is printed color, printed on paper or a substrate using printed cyan, magenta, yellow, and black transparent inks.

These two processes are very different.

In addition, RGB has a much broader gamut (the number of colors that can be reproduced). Many bright colors that you see on the screen cannot be reproduced in CMYK printing.

If you switch on Window > Show Printer Colors > Show Profiled Colors (new with the current release), you will get a better idea of how RGB colors will look when printed in CMYK.