Pantone, CMYK, RGB and Hex differences in Xara Designer Pro X

[ClubleyM]

Having a little difficulty understanding what might be going wrong here.

One of our customers sent us a design which used PANTONE Spot Colours. We imported the colours, but upon printing them, they come out TOTALLY different. (We understand that some colour shading will be different on a CMYK Printer as the colour process has to try and match up the closest to the colours we've used, but what is weird is that when we create the colours based on the Pantone Web site, the CMYK Values are causing different colours in Xara than they do in Illustrator.

I've added attachments, in the hope it explains things better than I can... any questions, please ask and I'll try and clarify a little more. I'm hoping we've missed a setting in Xara somewhere which we can change ?

I've uploaded 3 files, the Xara file (Test.xar) which hopefully shows the 4 created colours, a PDF which shows how all 4 colours look correct upon converting, and a PNG which shows a screen grab with the PDF under my Xara file in case the Xara file works fine on your version of Xara and mine is incorrectly set up.

Many thanks for any advice / Tips.

Matt


Pantone 3145C.pdf
TEST.xar

[behzad]

What your customer sees on their monitor is different from what you and I see on ours. So the only way to have a perfect match is to get the pantone numbers and assign them again in xara to those squares. Even then you you can not verify that they are the same one as the pantone website (because the website is showing you colors in RGB). You need the booklet to get the numbers and see the colors on the booklet. How many pantone colors are there in the design? If more than 2, then it is best to do the whole thing in CMYK. Pantone printing is expensive.

[gwpriester]

Xara works in an RGB environment. CMYK as you know cannot print the same number of colors. The colors on the bottom are pretty much what I would expect the printed results to be.

If your customer uses Window > Show Print Colors > Simulate Print Colors she/he will get a better indication how the actual printed colors will look.

Also RGB to CMYK color values vary from program to program.

[ClubleyM]

Xara works in an RGB environment. CMYK as you know cannot print the same number of colors. The colors on the bottom are pretty much what I would expect the printed results to be.

Thanks for your reply.

I understand that Xara works in an RGB environment, but I would hope that when you pick a spot colour or a CMYK colour that it would print that colour.

The colour in the screen grab at the top is how Xara is showing exactly the same colour on various squares...

When we print, the colours are coming off wrong too..

If you use Xara, try recreating those colours we have in the example, and print them off locally on a colour printer.. Does your Xara do the same? If so, then surely we shouldn't ever use Pantone Colours or CMYK colours in our designs as they will never match what is expecting upon printing.

[handrawn]

but a screen grab is no use with xara, that is the point - you have to print to see the colours accurately in anything other tham rgb

[handrawn]

if the print is wrong then then the cmyk/pantone assigned within
xara is incorrect

[gwpriester]

It has been years since I made this observation but about 1/2 of all Pantone colors can be matched exactly or very closely in CMYK. About 1/4 are close, and the other 1/4 don't come close.

Pantone colors were designed years ago as a system of mixed inks that would produce the same color anywhere in the world if the inks were mixed according to the formula.

I'm preaching to the choir here I know.

[ClubleyM]

but a screen grab is no use with xara, that is the point - you have to print to see the colours accurately in anything other tham rgb

Ok Maybe I'm totally missing the point here, to which I apologise.

https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/3145-C

That is the reference page from Pantone that provides the Pantone colour, and associated CMYK, RGB and HEX values to achieve that same colour.

The screen grab is not what we are printing from. It's there to show everybody what I see in Xara compared to what is being converted to PDF.

Working from right to left...

The pantone colour 3145C is the colour square on the far right.

Next on the left of that is the CMYK value which is from the web site namely C (100) M (10) Y (29) K (20)

The next swatch is made from the HEX code provided on that website 00778B

The final swatch on the far left is from the web site again, but the RGB values.

If all those colours are meant to represent the same colour , why are the two on the right different on screen AND when it prints?
When I put those colours in other software, they all match the same tones as the RGB and Hex.

If a customer provides me artwork which contains Pantone colours, or CMYK values, and Xara is translating these colours incorrectly, then why would Xara provide the facility to work with these colours knowing that the print off will look nothing like it should do?

[mwenz]

There are a whole lot of issues here. And in my current condition I am likely going to poop out before I can type it all out...

1) The only numbers on the Pantone website that mean much for the representation onscreen of spot colors are the RGB values, for obvious reasons...it's what are monitors use and is in a wider gamut than CMYK.
2) The CMYK numbers on the Pantone website are "uncharacterized" numbers. In other words, they are "dumb" values that mean, well, nothing. They are number values without being transformed by any CMYK color space both as regards a CMYK working color space and/or an ouput color profile.
3) Xara has no ability for having/using a CMYK document color space. I have long asked that LittleCMS be integrated. It isn't and likely will never be though it is an OpenSource color management system.
3) Xara only transforms Pantone and/or colors to an output profile in the case of PDFs. It uses, by default, a rather generic profile by default but the color values when working with CMYK are transferred to a PDF accurately.
4) The proper Pantone numbers use LAB values to characterize the colorants. This color model is the only accurate model that can then transforms the color values both for onscreen using a document color profile in conjunction with an output color model.
5) Xara applications cannot use LAB color values.
6) LAB values for spot color is what all professional applications use.
7) Pantone or other spot colors as characterized in Xara applications are only viable when actually using them as spot colors in a PDF and for printing professionally as spot color. However, that said, any print establishment worth a hoot can, using most any RIP or Acrobat, transform the spot color itself to CMYK values as accurately as any Adobe desktop application from the start.
8) The Pantone LAB values in say AI will vary when converted to CMYK depending upon the document CMYK working space. So using 3145C in conjunction with US SWOP as the document color space, the LAB 3145C swatch is transformed the CMYK values of 100,35.77,38.11,7.5, well different to the dumb numbers on the Pantone website.
9) Nearly every consumer desktop printer I am aware of convert CMYK, well all color values in whatever color space, to RGB inside the print driver and then convert again to CMYK inside the printer's RIP. There are exceptions as to what happens to inkjets with more than 4 inks as to what happens in both the print driver and the internal RIPs. There are also exceptions as regards higher-end PostScript consumer printers as well--some do have CMYK print drivers, for instance as well as some also have Pantone look-up tables.

my arm is getting fatigued and so i'm done for now...

[Acorn]

...[colour spaces reprise]...

Mike, Still my go-to-guy for this worthy detail.

Thanks,
Acorn