I rarely use gradients in my designs but recently i foud out that Draw seems to display those as RGB even though my primary color mode for the document is set to CMYK. Below is the example: from left to right: 1. original gradient displayed as it is in document, 2. the way it looks if i turn color proofing on (fogra 39, same as i have set in my document) or flatten it to CMYK bitmap 3. the way it looks if i flatten it to RGB bitmap and then convert to CMYK. Colors in that scenario are similiar to first example, however differ slightly in values. Why isn't Draw representing color gradients according to document color primary mode? Out of curiosioty i've checked how it works in Illustrator and if document color mode was set to CMYK, colors were rendered properly (like second gradient in my example) and if color mode was changed to RGB it looke like third gradient)
Turn on soft proofing.
David, please read carefully before you reply. I already mentioned that I was using colour proofing. My question was about something else.
What I meant is turn on color proofing for the initial creation to get the build to display as you want it.
The answer to your question is quite extensive. Unlike Illustrator CorelDRAW can work in RGB, CMYK, GRAYSCALE and Spotcolor simultaneously.
CorelDRAW X4 was an application color managed application, meaning that to change color management you had to close and restart the application.
When X5 was developed it was created as an ICC Compliant, document color managed application. Meaning that you can have open multiple documents with different color management settings. All versions of CorelDRAW since X5 use the X5 color management process.
Because CorelDRAW works simultaneously in 4 different color spaces to more efficiently manage limited system resources the developers had to choose a color space for display for complex processes, fountain fills, transparency, blends. They chose RGB. To properly display effects in CorelDRAW you must turn on soft proofing.
The ICC process controls conversions, you cannot convert an RGB object to CMYK and back to RGB and have it return to the same RGB numbers. The same goes for a CMYK object, convert it to RGB and back to CMYK and the resulting CMYK numbers will be different than the original CMYK numbers.
The reasons for this would take about 20 pages to explain but it has to do with ICC Compliance.
Tahnks David. I know all of that regarding color conversion, i've been working with Draw since version 9. I didn't know that it also uses RGB to display gradients in CMYK. It's is misleading for designers in my opinion.
The RGB display has been that way for the last 9 versions.
Just leave soft proofing turned on and there is no problem.