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  1. #41

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

    @behzad & @Ander

    The issue isn't that the same colors defining spot colors do not hit a pdf. They do. But spot colors in Xara applications are only truly useful if you use them as spot colors...then it is the reference that matters not the colors displayed.

    The issue is spot colors use wrong definitions to begin with. And here's the, my, main gripe. They can never be transformed to correctly defined color values depending upon an output condition because there is no color management.

    Again, because Xara applications have no internal, user-configurable document color model reference (both for CMYK & RGB), no document color management, Xara applications do not know what to do, how to transform, spot color definitions. Period. Compounding this spot color transformation is the fact that without using a LAB color definition, spot colors defined in CMYK cannot ever be properly transformed into the proper colors if CMYK output is desired. RGB spot color definitions are a bit better in this regard, but still cannot be properly characterized by "dumb" numbers that have no concept of both the document color space and the eventual output profile.

    Professional applications use color management, use LAB spot color models and transform those colors properly.

  2. #42
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
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    Alexandria, VA, USA
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    968

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

    Well stated Mike. Thank you.
    ~Fred

  3. #43
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    UK
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    21,283

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

    just for a laugh some magix marketing blurb:

    Click image for larger version. 

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    note they carefully avoid saying the program actually manages colour space - you have to that, as best you can; me, I'd use another program, or even better someone like Mike to do it for me...

    note also it says any colour space but only references cmyk …..
    -------------------------------
    Nothing lasts forever...

  4. #44
    Join Date
    Jul 2019
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    Sweden
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    Default Re: Pantone, CMYK, RGB and Hex differences in Xara Designer Pro X

    Thanks @mwenz i know all that
    For me the only i am interesting in is that document i export to pdf has the correct cmyk and pantone value, i never print at home, i dont look what is on the screen color! In my job at prepress on printhouse our customer send us pdf to print, it could be with spotcolors rgb and cmyk, we convert these documents to cmyk, becouse the output of pictures looks better, the Fiery rip can handle spotcolors and cmyk these, but many of the pantone colors can never be converted to cmyk and look the same. We inform customer that. The only issue is when clients want a specific pantone then we print in offset and use the specific pantonecolor, its the only way to get exact print of spotcolor.

  5. #45

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Ander View Post
    Thanks @mwenz i know all that
    For me the only i am interesting in is that document i export to pdf has the correct cmyk and pantone value...
    You cannot have correct values without color management. This is especially true of converted spot color.

    With CMYK values, one doesn't even know what the pdf transformation will do until the pdf is exported with the intended output condition and then viewed in a color-managed application such as Acrobat, pdfToolbox or other RIP software because of the lack of color management at the document level. There is no soft-proofing...because of the lack of color management. In one sense, a person is flying blind.

    Don't get me wrong, I love to draw my illustrations in Xara. But I draw them mostly for inclusion in layout software which has color management. The ads and occasional 1- or 2-paged documents I do in my Xara application are not as important to me other than the pdfs are ok. Anything else simply has to be color managed--including some of the aforementioned ads, etc.

    LCMS is a widely available OpenSource color management system. I do not know if Xara's applications can even have the LCMS code rolled in. If it can, it should. This isn't the 1980s through the early 1990s when output had to be non-color managed PostScript to be ripped direct to film.

  6. #46
    Join Date
    Jul 2019
    Location
    Sweden
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    12

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

    Quote Originally Posted by mwenz View Post
    You cannot have correct values without color management. This is especially true of converted spot color.

    With CMYK values, one doesn't even know what the pdf transformation will do until the pdf is exported with the intended output condition and then viewed in a color-managed application such as Acrobat, pdfToolbox or other RIP software because of the lack of color management at the document level. There is no soft-proofing...because of the lack of color management. In one sense, a person is flying blind.

    Don't get me wrong, I love to draw my illustrations in Xara. But I draw them mostly for inclusion in layout software which has color management. The ads and occasional 1- or 2-paged documents I do in my Xara application are not as important to me other than the pdfs are ok. Anything else simply has to be color managed--including some of the aforementioned ads, etc.

    LCMS is a widely available OpenSource color management system. I do not know if Xara's applications can even have the LCMS code rolled in. If it can, it should. This isn't the 1980s through the early 1990s when output had to be non-color managed PostScript to be ripped direct to film.
    It works just fine to export from xara when i work in cmyk color, and i dont let xara convert spot to cmyk.
    When exporting pdf i choose custom and Advanced, i have downloaded icc profiles from Adobes site, its free and i using CoatedFogra39 and embed profile. Open up in Acrobat all looks ok.

    Yes LCMS would be nice to see in Xara.
    I have testing the Trial of xara designer pro x now for 2-3 weeks, i must say i like the program very much but it could handle the color better, right now i think if i should pay for it.

    It have been interesting to join and read all answers here, Many thanks for all answers

    Included some picture of what i do when exporting to pdf.

    Click image for larger version. 

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  7. #47

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Ander View Post
    It works just fine to export from xara when i work in cmyk color, and i dont let xara convert spot to cmyk.
    When exporting pdf i choose custom and Advanced, i have downloaded icc profiles from Adobes site, its free and i using CoatedFogra39 and embed profile. Open up in Acrobat all looks ok...]
    Yes, it is OK. No, it isn't OK.

    In other words, it depends.

    I'll use a real color value of one element from an ad from this last spring. This ad was ran in several magazines in the US and in a few newspapers here and Europe. Color needed to be well represented from one media to another. There were a few output intents involved, but going from gloss paper ran on hot web offset to the cold run offset (i.e., newsprint) provides the most glaring challenge...that an Xara application is "incapable" of meeting that challenge properly.

    One of the reasons for color management I like to call "design once, output to many devices." So if we take this darker green color, 100, 80, 100, 10 (a TAC of 290, near the upper limit for say U.S. Web Coated SWOP, and way too high for newsprint) and output to a pdf using the U.S. Web Coated SWOP profile, that's exactly what you will see in the PDF. That's great!

    But now try outputting that PDF to say ISONewspaper 26v4 profile. What do you think happens? That's not so great. The numbers hold true when they should not, and if you embed the profile the representation in the PDF is also wrong.

    So what should happen when that ISONewspaper profile is used? The numbers all need to change to relatively lower numbers and allow for the grayness of the newsprint to make up for some loss/lower relative black values. In the end, the idea of color managed input/output is to design a single source that can be output to disparate media.

    This is all shown the the below screen shot. The two images on the left are from InDesign, the two on the right are from XP&GD. The top is the ISONewspaper profile, the bottom is the US SWOP profile.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    So #s 1&2 from ID pretty much match well in print while #s 3&4 do not. As well, #3 would have been either rejected or they would have silently done a conversion which likely would have not matched up as well as #s 1&2.

    Mike

  8. #48
    Join Date
    Jul 2019
    Location
    Sweden
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    12

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

    Quote Originally Posted by mwenz View Post
    Yes, it is OK. No, it isn't OK.

    In other words, it depends.

    I'll use a real color value of one element from an ad from this last spring. This ad was ran in several magazines in the US and in a few newspapers here and Europe. Color needed to be well represented from one media to another. There were a few output intents involved, but going from gloss paper ran on hot web offset to the cold run offset (i.e., newsprint) provides the most glaring challenge...that an Xara application is "incapable" of meeting that challenge properly.

    One of the reasons for color management I like to call "design once, output to many devices." So if we take this darker green color, 100, 80, 100, 10 (a TAC of 290, near the upper limit for say U.S. Web Coated SWOP, and way too high for newsprint) and output to a pdf using the U.S. Web Coated SWOP profile, that's exactly what you will see in the PDF. That's great!

    But now try outputting that PDF to say ISONewspaper 26v4 profile. What do you think happens? That's not so great. The numbers hold true when they should not, and if you embed the profile the representation in the PDF is also wrong.

    So what should happen when that ISONewspaper profile is used? The numbers all need to change to relatively lower numbers and allow for the grayness of the newsprint to make up for some loss/lower relative black values. In the end, the idea of color managed input/output is to design a single source that can be output to disparate media.

    This is all shown the the below screen shot. The two images on the left are from InDesign, the two on the right are from XP&GD. The top is the ISONewspaper profile, the bottom is the US SWOP profile.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Capture_000114.jpg 
Views:	194 
Size:	57.0 KB 
ID:	124576

    So #s 1&2 from ID pretty much match well in print while #s 3&4 do not. As well, #3 would have been either rejected or they would have silently done a conversion which likely would have not matched up as well as #s 1&2.

    Mike
    Ok Mike now i know what you mean and talking about and it's not easy to print and get exactly the same color on different machines, even if the color management make right profiles in pdf.
    On a digital machine hopefully the have it calibrated, different result on coated and uncoated paper, papers gram weight can also change color as the machine is working with heat it compensate for different paper.
    In offset machine they use right color balanze on coated and uncoated paper, much can go wrong. Too be shure the print will be ok it's best to do Proofprint and mayby compensate, yes but it cost.
    But as you say the first thing is too make the pdf's right, and that is xara not good program for now.

  9. #49

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

    Just to finish up as I ran out of gumption yesterday...I should have reported the color numbers of the change that a proper profile did, in the case of ID and didn't occur, in the case of XP&GD.

    ID's values & XP&GD did great on the SWOP, the values were the same at 100, 80, 100, 10.

    The values for XP&GD when using the ISONewspaper profile held the same values, which is over the desired TAC, but appearance changed due the the profile.

    ID changed the color values to compensate for the newsprint color to 45, 12, 36, 68, for a total TAC of 161 and kept the appearance required for the printing.

    Output profiles, just like RIPs, have output curves in them and are meant to change color characteristics due to the substrate they are intended to print to, to compensate for their ink's characteristics, etc. Without color management in play from end to end and the ability to chose whether profiles either keep the numbers, tag the elements, embedding the profile or convert color numbers to the destination, we are at the mercy of conversions downstream.

    I would be remiss if I also fail to mention that of the pieces I do direct from Xara, I have never had color surprises. The pieces I have done start to end in Xara products have generally all been designed for digital presses using RGB in the main, some with spot color, a few for offset using CMYK values and/or spot color, and all using SWOP and/or FOGRA profiles to gloss or uncoated standard/premium non-newsprint paper.

    Otherwise, my use of Xara products are what I mentioned earlier: designing assets for page layout software. They are excellent design products and have the best PDF editing capabilities of anything I've ever used.

  10. #50
    Join Date
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    Sweden
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    Default Re: Pantone, CMYK, RGB and Hex differences in Xara Designer Pro X

    Quote Originally Posted by mwenz View Post
    Just to finish up as I ran out of gumption yesterday...I should have reported the color numbers of the change that a proper profile did, in the case of ID and didn't occur, in the case of XP&GD.

    ID's values & XP&GD did great on the SWOP, the values were the same at 100, 80, 100, 10.

    The values for XP&GD when using the ISONewspaper profile held the same values, which is over the desired TAC, but appearance changed due the the profile.

    ID changed the color values to compensate for the newsprint color to 45, 12, 36, 68, for a total TAC of 161 and kept the appearance required for the printing.

    Output profiles, just like RIPs, have output curves in them and are meant to change color characteristics due to the substrate they are intended to print to, to compensate for their ink's characteristics, etc. Without color management in play from end to end and the ability to chose whether profiles either keep the numbers, tag the elements, embedding the profile or convert color numbers to the destination, we are at the mercy of conversions downstream.

    I would be remiss if I also fail to mention that of the pieces I do direct from Xara, I have never had color surprises. The pieces I have done start to end in Xara products have generally all been designed for digital presses using RGB in the main, some with spot color, a few for offset using CMYK values and/or spot color, and all using SWOP and/or FOGRA profiles to gloss or uncoated standard/premium non-newsprint paper.

    Otherwise, my use of Xara products are what I mentioned earlier: designing assets for page layout software. They are excellent design products and have the best PDF editing capabilities of anything I've ever used.
    Yes Mike i see what you meen, Adobe CC is outstanding and i use it at my work, now when i playing around with XP at home i begin too like the program and hopefully Magix work on too do it better. Export to pdf with Fogra39 is what i want right now. Our digitalmachines at work is Fogra39 certified, so its fine for me.
    Thanks /Anders

 

 

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