Hi all, new member, old user (since coreldraw 1.1!), having issues with color management. I'll try to keep it simple, although I doubt this is an easy one to fix.
Printing within X3 shows white as yellowish hue, and most colors are incorrect (CMYK, RGB, Pantone spot colors) when printed, although very close on screen.
I have an i1Pro and X-Rite Profilemaker 5.0.10 installed, monitors are calibrated correctly and from photoshop and Illustrator, printer prints correctly after full profile done.
If I export a file with 1 inch squares of R, G, B, C, M, Y and K (as eps), then brought into photoshop for testing (imported as cmyk, exported from X3 as cmyk), I can see all the colors are correct, and the file prints perfectly. However, if I print from X3, colors are incorrect.
I've screwed with the color management for hours today and a bit yesterday, even turning off the ICC profiles within win 7 64 to make it completely "stock", and nothing I can do will change the colors at all from printing within X3.
I've also disabled color management in X3 and printed, no change at all. Changing the monitor profile from generic to the custom ICC profile in win7 creates a grey-brown hue over the whole page when printing, even where there are no elements!
I've attached a photo of the color variation in printing so I can further relay how far the colors are off, not sure what else to try at this point since I've completely turned off color management and the problem still exists!
This is also not something new, its been around for quite a long time now, I'm just tired of exporting everything so I can print relatively correct colors to my proofing printers (an HP 451DN, standard color proofing, more for art design and not so much color intent, and an Epson i9900 which is for full-color match proofs).
Luckily, exporting as an eps file works flawlessly, which is what we use for our Roland XC-540 printer/cutter, which is calibrated and Roland's RIP runs from an old XP machine, completely separated from our main design machine.
So much for keeping it short! Any help from you pros out there on getting colors to print better without messing up the export as eps function would be HUGELY appreciated!!!
Chris
Print:
Are these non-poscript devices?
Thanks for the quick reply! I have HP's PS drivers installed for the laserjet. No ps drivers for the i9900 are available, but it usually does a good job handling prints and really not used very often.
I would start by making sure windows is set back to default except for the created ICC profile for the display. Then you need to set x3 to use the monitor profile and what ever ICC profiles you want. This cannot be preset via f8, x3 will by default use two different rendering intents, saturation for vectors and perceptual for images. I wrote a book about this and the process is complicated for driver based devices was designed for export to EPs or PDF. try default cmyk to start with. I believe still have a combo book at www.graphictechnology.com
Thanks David!
I have double-checked all setting to make sure windows is at defaults (cross-checked it against on of your vids from your website), still the same issue with colors, and I really don't want to reset X3, as I have the roland cut choice and photoshop edit/update toolbars installed (and they're a pain to get set up correctly!).
At this point, I'm almost positive that its corel doing something whacky with the profiles! I just can't seem to find the correct setting to make this work right. Luckily, most of my work from Corel is exported as eps files and thrown into Roland's Versaworks, which bypasses all this headache. I've also learned to just run photoshop and illustrator to properly print files from corel when I need to proof, but I'd really like to not have extra steps just to print something correctly! If all of this is set to generic with nothing managed, shouldn't it just print normally?
Honestly, I'm just trying to completely bypass corel's management of color and profiles, and would like win7 handle the calls to the monitors and printers via color management. I'm pretty sure I have my ICC profiles working correctly, as I said, everything works wonderfully within Adobe's (and other) programs for color, its just Corel being stubborn as a mule!
I really do love Coreldraw, and still have my Corel v1.1 5¼" floppys somewhere (circa 1987!!!), so I'm no stranger to Corel's quirkyness! As for X3, I've been using this since '08 or so I think, and its been one of the most stable versions I've run, but the color thing just makes me nuts!
Oh yeah, I don't think your books cover X3, so its probably not going to help me unless X4 is identical, but I'd rather just upgrade to a newer version of Corel if I'm gonna have to spend money on correcting this issue. Guess I'll leave that discussion for a new thread once I've exhausted all avenues to correct the color anomolies, or just end up exhausted from trying to accomplish this!
I can tell you four things, first your color management settings you've posted in X3 are never going to work, second X3 and X4 color management are the same, third Corel color management was so bad after I wrote my book Corel rewrote their color management system and fourth you are six versions behind so the new color management is very similar to adobe and expect a learning curve. I would upgrade soon before X3 is no longer eligible for upgrade pricing.