Color management/ output problems

Hi StickerBoy

Color management in X8 and since X5, is great. Equally often it's us the user's on both creator and client's who do wrong, or don't understand what is done wrong.

The first thing to understand: regardless of what YOU see on your screen and on printed material, your CLIENT have their own computer screen. And their computer screen can be a good or less good or even crap ;-) monitor. And that alone creates an issue. You and the client has different screens.

For example, if if I place my laptops next to my external desktop monitor/screen Dell Ultrasharp U2515H, really great screen for its price, and have the same image with grey colours. It will feel blue or blue-ish on the laptop screen, and grey on the Dell screen.

That itself show how impossible it is to see the same result on your screen and your clients.

Another issue is which colour mode/space you created your images in, and which color mode/space you set for your jpeg and PMS (solid coated)

So with my previous answer in mind, educate/inform your client this very simple fact, the screen/monitor example. Ask them what screen they use to look at your images.

Another thing could be to use the "Proof Color Settings" Docker. It creates a Soft proof. It will create a simulation of how your images will look, when exported to a certain color profile and color mode/space. From your RGB to CMYK for example.

Its a great nifty color management tool.

Its important to understand and inform your client that the jpeg or PDF you send them, is a simulation. And if they still look at a less good screen color wise.

Remember that many client not only might have a laptop, but often a less good laptop screen. Again, my new ASUS Zenbook Pro 510 is a laptop I love. It has a IPS screen, but it's still a laptop screen.

Another thing, when we talk about 100 % ICC compliance,  what is that for us, in the real world? Well see it this way. To accomplish 100% ICC compliance, to begin with, the image you create,  and the color space/mode/profiles you created it with, have to be mirrored by all others who will use and view and print your image. If not, then the ICC compliance is broken.

Hence why Hard Proof is the most reliable,  and Soft Proof is simply a simulation, that still works, and still is  aproximation

From farm to table (from wheet corn to loaf, like we say in sweden), it has to be the same. And no alteration be made that doesn't use the exact same color management settings, basically.

Take this example, again, with the monitors: you have a good screen, your client have a less good one. That could go for an example of a simulated brake in ICC compliance. It will in other words not hold as 100 % ICC compliance. Your not viewing the same result.

And to make a deeper journey, for yourself, to understand color management,  read/download this link. Its excellently written by one at Corel, for when the brand new color engine/Color management system was introduced with version X5. And what we use today with X8 and newer versions in the future.

And, inside CorelDRAW & PHOTO-PAINT, look in the Help menu and maybe via the welcome screen? There is an excellent writing explain in more short, about colour management. And there is also a text, article written by David Milisock in there, that I recommend.