I am curious about what palette to use for what purpose. I know you are supposed to use CMYK palette when designing for separations printing processes, but on the other hand - you could use the RGB palette just as well, if you have a color calibrated system and a printer profile and if you leave a PDF to the printer, which I suppose most people do. It works if you set the color output to CMYK and use the printer ICC profile for conversion.
So, what is your choice regarding color models? It would be interesting to hear how you all work.
Lars Forslin said:If my assumption that the colors in standard palettes mathematically are the same, then they should print the same, but something makes them not to and I don't know why
Monitors don't reproduce Cyan Chromatic correctly. Printed yellows are richer than monitor yellows. RGB color space is bigger, so there are some RGB colors that can be printed. There are so many Color Managers. Many Pantone Inks can't be reproduced with CMYK. This is why you don't get what you see.
The only way to obtain good prints (100% of the time) is reading ink, and printing via PostScript. There C100M80Y0K20 (blue) will print approximately correctly.
Michael Cervantes said:Monitors don't reproduce Cyan Chromatic correctly
What's cyan chromatic? Just a fancier word for pure cyan? Anyway that doesn't answer the question why C100 and G255B255 don't print the same if they are the same colors mathematically. I have a theory: when you print to an inkjet CMYK colors are converted to RGB and then back, while RGB colors are converted just once (to CMYK). When you print to a PS device only the RGB values are converted to CMYK, and if the profile isn't good enough, there will be differences. Right? In that case I have yet to find accurate printer profiles and I suppose I must build some better ones.
Michael Cervantes said:RGB color space is bigger, so there are some RGB colors that can be printed.
I suppose you mean can't be printed. Anyway, they should print the way they're reproduced on the monitor if CM is applied an you have a correct ICC profile for the output device. Right?
Michael Cervantes said:Many Pantone Inks can't be reproduced with CMYK.
I don't use Pantone inks. Not so far at least.
Michael Cervantes said:The only way to obtain good prints (100% of the time) is reading ink, and printing via PostScript.
I don't know. My Phaser Solid ink printer is a postscript printer, but it seems to have limited color space. I suppose an inkjet has a larger gamut and therefore better. Maybe one should use a software RIP and print to the inkjet? I tried that, but it looked awful, but I probably didn't understand how to run it. Can you explain why it has to be a postscript device? I would also be happy to hear what you mean by "reading ink".
>so it's easier to find a color you like.
The task is to fins a color you like that you can reproduce in your chosen output media!
One problem I see is that there has been little to no educated discussion of the requirement of X3 to run in RGB or CMYK mode.
Draw X3 will allow RGB, CMYK and Spot color file construction however there is no way to display this properly.
In RGB and CMYK modes the CMYK display ok on calibrated systems, spot colors never really look close.
In RGB mode the CMYK is ok as is the RGB but spot colors are again off.
This is not complicated, when working for display or web use sRGB as your internal RGB and when working for print use CMYK mode, convert your print work to sRGB and display in presentation or on the web. that way the print work will look close when displayed on the web.
There you go done, any other discussion has to be centered on expanded gamut printing, ( files that contain RGB, CMYK and spot color elements) printed to ink jets.