Working in CMYK

[zee]

I'm still trying to get a handle on printing in CMYK. I have produced several CMYK .tif files that have been printed by a company that uses 4-color process printing (CMYK) and they have turned out great. I just wanted to share my technicque and see if anyone else does it differently or has a better way.

1. In Xtreme, I set my monitor to "simulate print colors" (windows > Show Printer Colors > Simulate Print Colors)

2. Set "color units to percent" (Utilites > Options > Unit Tab and set color units to percent"

3. Open up "color editor" (Ctrl+E) - (set to CMYK color model) I also check the 3D box because I find it easier to adjust colors in the 3D mode.

4. AFTER I'm done creating the image....
File > Export (Ctrl+Shift+E)
Save as type: TIFF(*.tif)
Click on Export
Set dpi to either 300 or 600
Set Color Depth to CMYK
Click on Export

I have also tried something which has helped me to better understand the differences between RGB & CMYK.

I have both X1 and Xtreme installed on my PC. I open up X1 application and set it up to work in RGB (make sure color units is set to 0-255 and not percent) and then I open up Xtreme and set it up to work in CMYK as described above. I minimize both X1 and Xtreme so that they each share half the screen and then do comparisons. It's interesting to copy & paste a image done in X1 (RGB) to Xtreme (CMYK) and see the differences.