I am a graphic artist for a screen printer. We just recently made a major leap from CorelDraw 11 to X6. I am having a problem in that when I use Pantone colors they look correct on my monitor (Matches Pantone book), they look fine when converted to .jpgs, but they do not always print out correctly from my printer. As an example Pantone 375 is a lime green, but it prints out like a darker Kelly green.
I know x6 has a lot of color management options. But there are too many options and I am confused with what to change. So far all changes have had no effect on the print outs.
Any other suggestions? I have tried all suggestions so far to no avail. I have changed almost all of the color management settings at one point or another and my colors on paper are still darker and weirder as an example like this...
Hi Andy,
If you do not know what each color management setting does exactly it is best to leave them in factory default state, "playing" with settings usually does more harm than good.
We still do not know how you print spot colors - what is the printer, do you use PostScript driver/RIP? The reason colors print the way they do for you might have nothing to do with color management settings. Many Pantone spot colors ( Pantone 375 CV too) are very bright and saturated, some printers simply can not simulate them at all - their inks can not pull such bright colors, especially on uncoated paper. Using factory settings I did a quick test printing Pantone 375 CV to few consumer-level inkjets and laser printers and in all cases I have got a reasonable color match. The results you show are a bit extreme and almost look like you are printing on newspaper stock.
Gennady
All ink colors looked fine on paper before we went to CorelDraw X6 including Pantone 375.
I have two printers that I print to.
I print actual film to a OYO Tech Styler using a Rip station as we are in the Screen printing business. No problems there.
The thing we are having problems with is printing paper using a Ricoh C830. It is a color laser printer. Very large, but quite similar to a desktop printer.
This actually started with a different printer though.
We had a Xerox 7400 printer using CorelDraw 11.0 and all colors were fine. We then switched to CorelDraw X6 and that is when the colors were out of whack. We then traded the Xerox for the Ricoh printer and the colors are off but much worse.
We use pantone colors and not RGB or CMYK so that when we print the separations to film we have spot colors as opposed to full CMYK..
EXAMPLE:
The only reason we need to print to paper is to pass on to the customers for artwork approval or just for our print out records.
Pantone colors are specially mixed inks, none of the laser printers can print them, what they do is simulate with own CMYK inks/toner a particular Pantone color, the point is spot colors are eventually converted to CMYK anyways by the printer's driver/firmware. Depending on the printer model, its toner , printer color settings and Pantone color the result may wary. The closest I have is Ricoh CL4000 color laser and with default X6 settings it prints Pantone 375 CV simulation as bright lime, not as bright as on the screen, but this is exactly what I would expect.Look at the Print dialog, Color tab, make sure that default settings are set: "Use document color settings", "Color conversions performed by: CorelDRAW", "Output colors as: Native", "Convert spot colors to" box is unchecked. Make sure you are using PostScript driver for your printer. Finally, make sure that any color management in the printer driver is turned off ( this is just more predictable, you can keep it on, but then you should change "Color conversions performed by: to "Printer".
At the moment I do not see a reason why possibly it wouldn't work, short of messed up settings in Print dialog or perhaps in printer's driver. But if it still doesn't, check "Convert spot colors to" box on the Color tab of Print dialog and try CMYK and RGB color models.
I have all settings as you have described with no luck.
Did a test out of Illustrator 6 which I do not usually use and the colors seemed fine.
I will try to get with the printer people and see if there is a better/different driver I should be using.
Thanks anyway. I appreciate it.
Andy47240 said:I have all settings as you have described with no luck
Can you post screen captures of your CorelDRAW and printer dialogs, all the tabs but especially the color tabs.
I have no idea why I seen the separations dialogs.
I printed out some test pages from the printer itself and I have printed Pantone 375 from Photoshop and Illustrator and they both printed fine. CorelDraw is the only one printing too dark.
Here are my current Color management settings
And here are the two main print dialogue screens to my printer.
Are your Adobe products CS6 or CC?
If they are before CS6, then they are not using LAB values for PDFs or printing. X6 is by default using LAB values I believe.
My Adobe products that are printing fine are cs6.
On the Color tab of Print dialog you have "Use color proof settings" mode activated. Is there reason for that? It shouldn't affect spot colors though. Could you please print a Pantone 375 CV test sample to PostScript file (check "Print to file" box in General tab) and share it so I can look into what is going into PostScript stream.
Could you post captures of the printer dialog from the Windows control panel access points, please expand anything that has to do with color.
How do I share the .prn file?
If I click on or off "Use color proof settings" nothing changes.