I'm new here and this has probably been dealt with numerous times, but I have been unable to find it. I have an image I imported from a pdf, it has a process color (magenta) and a couple of Pantone spot colors. In one case the 2 pantone colors are used in a gradient fill of some text. My first samples were off (I had not noticed but the buyer did) and now I have to print 36 copies and I can't hit the colors my monitor shows me.
I use CorelDraw X3, I have a Brother GT-541 Garment printer (CMYK), I have color management turned off and I have the design set as RGB. The colors should be a sort of Pink to a Cerulean Blue, and a purple, but I'm getting Red to a lighter Navy and a darker Barn Red.
I thought maybe out of gamut colors (Illustrator said that- it also had the exact same problem). Any ideas? The buyer is picky or I would not be here.
I'm definitely not the color guru here... but I recently had an issue of my own. But first why would you turn off color management? Second you won't come up with an absolute match because you are talking different chemistries and too much to go into here (read some of the other posts on the site and you will understand the intricate business of color between desktop, printers and such). Next you can't expect the RGB world to give you a Pantone result. However; in my estimation you can get close. I had a logo with a specific pantone color, so I used the Pantone chart to translate the CMYK percentages. You can then go into the fill palette for the design and correct with that. This will give you a closer approximation - in fact the cards I worked on came back this week and looked spot on! Hope that helps. Oh and setup your color calbration with at least the basic of profiles.
The instructions for the printer advised specifically to "Turn Off" color management. I think they expect their driver will work perfectly. After some additional tweaking using their color pallette for CorelDraw, I have come to the conclusion that they are wrong. At least as it relates to these colors. It does not like to print pink, and that is what I need here. It isn't too great at purple either, I hope this is not a problem that gets a whole lot bigger. This is a Brother GT-541 Garment printer and normally, it is soooo easy to deal with. Thanks for your input! Oh yes, and they say that the driver is expecting RGB info. so we don't use CMYK unless you have to.
supermann said:The instructions for the printer advised specifically to "Turn Off" color management. I think they expect their driver will work perfectly.
If your design is CMYK and your printer is PostScript, the printer advised is correct, but your interpretation is incorrect. Printer advised specifically to turn off the printer color manager and not CorelDRAW Color Manager. If your objects in CorelDRAW are CMYK, Corel print engine doesn't not change the object color values, and if the printer driver is PostScript without Color Manager active, will not change the CMYK values you are sending from CorelDRAW. This is "THE ONLY WAY" that you could obtain good printing 100% of the time.
You need a good color profile to convert from RGB to CMYK your images. Generic US Negative Proofing color profiles are good, because they are SWOP. The one with light or medium UCR and 320 Total Ink is excellent to use when printing to desktop printers.