The Designer's Guide to Color Management in CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5 by Gennady Petrov Corel Corporation 2010 Copyright © 2010 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. The Designer’s Guide to Color Management in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 Information is provided by Corel on an “as is” basis, without any other warranties or conditions, express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantable quality, satisfactory quality, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or those arising by law, statute, usage of trade, course of dealing or otherwise. The entire risk as to the results of the information provided or its use is assumed by you. 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Other product, font, and company names and logos may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. 117110 Contents Welcome . 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to color management . 3 Color management: the problem and the solution . 3 Problems with the solution . 4 Why should you care about color management? . 5 Summary. 5 Frequently asked questions . 5 Chapter 2: The color management architecture of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5. 9 Overview. 9 Application-wide settings . 10 Document-specific settings . 13 Export and Save color management settings . 14 Color management settings for printing . 15 Color proofing. 15 Color management of the operating system: monitor and printer profiles . 16 Transitioning from the color management of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 . 18 Summary. 22 Frequently asked questions . 22 Chapter 3: Color management workflows . 31 Overview. 31 Web workflows. 31 General printing workflows. 32 Black & White workflows . 39 Grayscale workflows . 40 Laser engraving, sign making, and embroidery workflows . 41 Digital photography workflows . 42 Color proofing. 43 Summary. 45 Frequently asked questions . 46 Chapter 4: Advanced color management. 49 Spot color workflow . 49 The spot color workflow in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 . 51 Rendering intents . 53 Contents 1 Wide-gamut color management workflows . 56 Color blending. 58 Windows Color System (WCS) . 59 Conclusion . 62 2 Contents Welcome Welcome to The Designer's Guide to Color Management in CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X5. This guide is a complement to the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 Guidebook, which is included in the suite as an Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) document. The CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 Guidebook provides an overview of general color management concepts and a brief description of the color management workflow in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5. This guide is both technical and practical — focusing not only on how color management works, but also why things work the way they do. The guide covers various workflows that are commonly used with CorelDRAW® and Corel® PHOTO-PAINT™. Each chapter of the guide finishes with an F.A.Q. section that answers questions frequently asked by our users. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 has introduced many changes to color management in comparison to previous versions of the suite. Making sense of all these changes can be a daunting task so this guide is here to help you. You can skip Chapter 1 if you do not need a general introduction to color management and continue directly with Chapter 2, which describes various color management workflows. About the author Gennady Petrov is a senior software developer at Corel Corporation. He led the overhaul of the color management architecture in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5. Welcome 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to color management Color management: the problem and the solution Sooner or later, every designer has difficulty reproducing colors reliably on different computer systems and using different media. The colors that a monitor displays can look very different on another monitor or when printed. The fundamental problem is that computer systems encode colors through methods that are hardware-oriented, which can be very much different from the way the human eye sees color. Computer software and hardware use RGB and CMYK color models to communicate to the monitor or printer how to reproduce a color. For example, when the RGB red (255-0-0) is sent to an LCD monitor, it’s converted to electric signals that are sent to the liquid crystal cells that control red, green, and blue pixels, resulting in backlight passing only through the red filter. The onscreen color that you see is red, but the exact hue of red depends on several factors: the LCD technology used, the spectrum of backlight, how color values are converted to the electric signal by the firmware, and more. As drastic as the difference in color representation can be between different monitors, it can be even more pronounced when a document is printed. The appearance of a color with the same color values can vary greatly on different monitors and when printed. Similarly to what the metric system has done for standardizing the units of measurement, color management standards have been established to ensure consistency in color representation. As soon as the length of a metre, the mass of a kilogram, or the volume of a litre was determined and accepted, any ambiguity surrounding these measurements was eliminated. The LAB and XYZ color spaces do the same thing for color representation. Designed to encompass all colors that the human eye can see, these color spaces define colors based on how they're perceived by the human eye. The LAB and XYZ color spaces, unlike the RGB and CMYK color models, are device independent. To define and measure color in LAB coordinates, you need very specialized hardware to measure the spectral characteristics of Chapter 1: Introduction to color management 3 the light that carries the color, such as colorimeters or spectrophotometers. Most devices, however, can reproduce colors reliably by measuring the spectral characteristics of several color samples and mapping between device-dependent colors defined in RGB or CMYK color model and their device- independent LAB coordinates. Color management is based upon a simple principle. Device-dependent color values are translated to a reference device-independent color space first. When the “true” device- independent color has been determined, it can be converted to the device-dependent color of your target device. For example, the process of converting RGB 255 0 0 (Red) color coordinates from the sRGB color space to Adobe® RGB (1998) color space works in the following way: 1 The sRGB color space maps the RGB color values (coordinates) to LAB coordinates. In this example, RGB 255 0 0 color coordinates are mapped to the absolute LAB 54 80 69 color coordinates. 2 The absolute LAB 54 80 69 color coordinates are then reverse-mapped to the RGB 219 0 0 color coordinates in the Adobe RGB (1998) color space. Although the RGB color values are different in each color space, they correspond to the same absolute LAB color coordinates, representing exactly the same color visually and solving the color management problem. The relationship between device color space coordinates and absolute LAB/XYZ coordinates is defined by International Color Consortium® (ICC) color profiles. An ICC color profile contains information that lets you map color values (coordinates) from a device-dependent color space to color coordinates in the device-independent LAB/XYZ color space and vice versa. The LAB and XYZ color spaces are often referred to as Profile Connection Spaces (PCS). A matrix within the ICC color profile converts input RGB coordinates to XYZ color space coordinates. Alternatively, there's a lookup table (LUT) that matches an input color value to its corresponding LAB color value. When the output color value has no exact match in the LUT, the LAB color values are interpolated from existing LUT entries. Problems with the solution So color management seems simple enough — establish absolute color references that allow you to translate and preserve color appearance regardless of the color space. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. The mind-boggling number of color-matching scenarios across different devices can make color management a rather complex task. Sometimes there are hardware imperfections and differences between devices that are beyond what color management can correct, making accurate color- matching impossible. By no means does this make color management redundant. Even when you can't match colors exactly, you can predict how they will look. Given the myriad of variables involved in precise color reproduction, the surprising part isn't the limitations of color management, but how accurate a color match a knowledgeable designer can achieve. Understanding color management can overcome any color-matching problem. Every color space has a range of colors it can accurately represent. For example, a printer's color space only defines colors that the printer can reproduce. The range of colors that a device can reproduce is called its gamut. Only the LAB and XYZ color spaces, based on the spectrum of color visible to the human eye, contain all the colors that people can see. 4 The Designer’s Guide to Color Management in CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X5 If a particular color is represented in both color spaces involved in a color conversion, the color matching is exact; if the color being converted is only found in the input color space, it's considered out-of-gamut, and the closest possible match in the destination color space is used.