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.
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.
Yep, understood, David!
I'm sure you'll understand my apprehension towards upgrading. first is the fact that Corel in the past has had many, MANY bad versions that just crash if you look at it funny (version 4 and 8 come to mind!), and second, which ties into the previous issue, is the fact that our busy shop cannot afford to be down for upgrade issues and setting up all the little things that make corel effecient in our shop.
Having said that, I'll start researching this weekend what latest 2 or 3 versions are the most stable with the least amount of crashes and other anomalies, as well as the option to install the photoshop edit and update functions, and the cutchoice plugin, into the program, as they are used all day long.
As for the settings, that's not the normal setting I use, I was merely saying that the screenshot really should be the way to turn all management off in corel, but it's not! My normal settings are far from that, this is what I normally run in my shop:
Seems to work good, although exporting via eps (and sometimes psd) is all we can really rely on.
My final question, I think, would be, how the hell do you just turn all the management completely off in Corel if my first photo I uploaded yesterday doesn't turn it off? Is there a hidden setting somewhere? Perhaps there's something in the corelapp.ini file I haven't seen or need to add in?
Thanks again for all your insight, its good to have an informed discussion with someone who knows Corel so well! As you know, there's not many folks who even know Corel, let alone are well-versed in the program!
try this: choose "Optimized for professional output" on presets, and enable those two arrows.
The problem with this arrow from the CMYK printer to the display is that RGB elements that can be sent to the Roland as RGB in PDF are shown as CMYK and will print at a wider gamut from the Roland.
Designworks, CorelDRAW was the first graphics application to support wide gamut printing to RIP driven device VIA PDF. What I mean by that is that VIA native color PDF files you can send RGB, CMYK, Graysclae and spot color in the same file to the RIP simultaneously
What a day! Busy printing and doing 30 magnetic signs for a client!
So, the new version has issues with custom spot inks? That's not a good thing, considering I use CutContour and PerfCutContour all the time! I was looking at buying X7 graphics suite, would you know if that has similar issues in reference to the contour spot colors?
So, I tried setting the above settings you posted, but one cannot set just those two, the printer must also be set to turn on management for the seps printer, as shown below:
The good news is, prints are finally printing identical to Photoshop-at least for RGB inks and spot colors,but CMYK is just washed out. I've been working in RGB for quite a long time now anyways, so I'm happy with the settings this way, a lot of my work involves powerclipped RGB images from photoshop with spot color borders and other elements. Almost all of my work is reproduction graphics for several RV dealerships and body shops in my area, re-creating graphics that are no longer available from manufacturers. This means that a good majority of my work is photos that are either retouched in photoshop and powerclipped into corel for borders with spot colors to overlap areas where old graphics used to be on trailers, or completely re-drawn by hand in photoshop then effects added to sort of match the original graphics. I've also been known to re-draw by hand all the elements of a decal, then add gradations and whatever else is necessary to look like the OEM decals! Corel has been rock-solid for these processes and what I hoped to accomplish is to just print direct from Corel without having to export, import then print elsewhere, and you've helped make that happen! Thank you, thank you THANK YOU!!!!!
Oh yeah, on the subject of pdf files in versaworks, I've always been happier with the output via eps files from corel, they too will handle both cmyk and rgb within the same file (even though illustrator freaks when I try to open one of them! One or the other, not both, that's what it says!). I also run postscript 3 and versaworks almost never has issues-aside from transparent raster images, but that's always been an issue!
actually the older versions have the issues with spot color palette, CorelDraw x6 and older versions allowed the user to make bad custom spot palette newer versions do not do that.. the cutcontour works fine and x3 custom spot colors I believe are ok if they were created properly. I use 2017 with versaworks and rasterlynk all the time, print and cut work perfectly.