Difference between Quark colors and PDF CMYK colors

[davidokay]

Hi! I'm using Quark and when I do CMYK PDF the colors are paler. I do the test and in INDESIGN the same color looks like the PDF, so I think QUARK is the wrong one, what can I do? If I send the QUARK to the printer, the color print darker that what my client has approuved on the PDF. I have 3 choices here : send the rgb pdf to my client for approval and the QUARK files to the printer OR send the PDF CMYK to my client and PDF CMYK hi-res to the printer OR switch to INDESIGN, where all looks the same.

Can you help me please? I'm a little desperate here because I have lot of work on Quark to do for some client and they are pretty picky on colors... Thank you!

 

[MarcusStringer]

The RGB colour space and the CMYK Colour space are different, hence the duller looking CMYK.

You should be sending a Low Res CMYK PDF for the Client to okay, then send the High Res CMYK PDF to the Printer.

Remember, that The printer can only print in CMYK and Pantone they cannot print in RGB, so why are you sending RGB files to you client? They will only be dissapointed with the result.



Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[jimoblak]

You should also read up on 'color profiles' and use the same PS to PDF distiller settings. Assuming that you are using current versions, Quark and InDesign cannot be too different - - it is simply how you have each program configured to work with color profiles.

- - I hope this helps - -
[sub](Complain to someone else if it doesn't)[/sub]

 

[davidokay]

Hi! Here is a print shot of the difference between quark, Indesign and the result in PDF.

http://www.ektoplasme.com/quark/quark.htm

Everything in QUARK is in CMYK and the color is the same, but it looks much darker. When I output it it's ok, but my fear is to send the Quark file to the printer and that it will print like in QUark... there is a way to have the same same color in QUark, like it does in indesign?

 

[jmgalvin]

Due to all the vagaries of monitor settings, it's very hard for clients to see and understand colors properly. The same goes with their printers. Often they print out to an RGB inkjet, with little or no understanding of how to even make various print setting for that printer.

The ONLY answer I've found for this was to charge them a one time fee of $100 and send them the Pantone Solid to Process book. Then I tell them to look at the Right side swatches to get an idea of the actual print color.

Then I use only Pantone solids, in the solid to process guide, and change them from spot to process, which will closely match the color in the Pantone solid to process guide. The reason I change the solids to process is to avoid having a zillion spot colors in the project. When absolute color fidelity is necessary, I throw in a spot.

Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[jimoblak]

What color management settings do you have employed in QuarkXPress? This is why there is a difference.

- - I hope this helps - -
[sub](Complain to someone else if it doesn't)[/sub]

 

[jimoblak]

[editing/appending my last post]

This is why there is a difference on screen.

You will see a further difference at print, as jmgalvin notes. Never trust your screen, even if you employ proper color management.

- - I hope this helps - -
[sub](Complain to someone else if it doesn't)[/sub]

 

[Foamcow]

My guess in this instance is that Quark is applying some kind of profiling information to the output that inDesign isn't (or vice versa).

Colour profiling is designed to assist in the transformation of visible colour when going from device to device. Sadly few people understand it properly and even fewer implement it correctly.

You'd be much better off just getting a proper proof made.

Anything requiring accurate colour matching and/or proofing should be done from a Cromalin proof or equivalent. Once approved this should go to the press with the job so the printer can match his press output to what is expected by the client.

Even if your PDFs and colour spec charts were spot on accurate to one another, there is still an amount of variation that can happen when the ink goes on the paper.


Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[davidokay]

The color management in that case is OFF, but I tried different settings in QUARK and the colors always look that way on screen.

If I send the QUARK file with this dark color, will it print like that or lighter like I see it in the CMYK PDF (the right color I think)? Thanks!!

 

[Foamcow]

Sorry.. to clarify:

Are you comparing colours on screen in Quark with a PDF printed on your colour printer?

If so, it's highly likely that when the job is printed for real it will look like neither of those.

Unless you have a very well set up colour calibration regime it just isn't going to happen.

Foamcow Heavy Industries - Web design and ranting
Buy Languedoc wines in the UK

 

[davidokay]

In fact when I print, it looks like it do on screen, that is why I fear that the darker color on screen in QUARK print like that. If I send my quark file to the printers and I know that the color will print like it does in INDESIGN and PDF, I'm ok ! That why I'm asking the question : will it print at the end like the one in quark or like the same color in INDESIGN or PDFs, which seem to be more accurate? In my exemple, the color is 0/58/100/10, you can see the difference, its all the same in PDFs and INDESIGN but darker in QUARK. Thanks! (by the way excuse my bad english i'm a french canadian...!

 

[jmgalvin]

Your color matches Pantone 1525. There is a shift towards lighter when going from spot to process.

One interesting thing - I made a 0-58-100-10 swatch in Quark 4. Then I made a Pantone 1525 swatch in Quark - both CV and CVP. They were both different from 0-58-100-10.

Did the same in ID 3 and all stayed the same.

Both were done with color management off.

You might try loading the pantones into Quark and ID and see what they look like.

The onscreen colors in Indesign did match the the Pantone solid to process guide book. The ones in Quark did not.

Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[davidokay]

Thank you very much! I think it validate what I think : all is good except onscreen in QUARK.

But when I print from here on my canon multipass printer the colors are like onscreen (too dark), will it be like that when my real printer will print it on his machines?

Thanks!

 

[jmgalvin]

Probably not. Professional printers use postscript cmyk printers. The vast majority of inkjets only recognize rgb.

A cmyk proofing printer is going to run you from 1-5000 bucks and your gonna wait a long time to print each page. Short of that read my first post about getting the Pantone solid to process guide. By picking from the process side of the pages you can very accurately predict color output at the production stage or, of course, use the Pantone spot on the other side of the page for even closer match.





Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[MarcusStringer]

As I said before...

Anything you send out should be PDFs, this fixes the problem.

The only person which sees the Quark file should be you only...

So long as the CMYK values are the same eg 0% 58% 100% 10%
then that's what will be printed as a final result, regardless of anything.

You monitor could show you a blue box, so long as the CMYK Values are correct, and the PDF you send to the client and the printer match, then it will be fine.


Once again...Send PDFs...this will fix your problem.

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[jmgalvin]

Marcus: Problem here is that he does not have any way of visualizing the actual color output. He's not sure what 0-58-100-10 will look like when printed 4 color process. That's why I suggest spending some money on Pantone stuff.

Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[MarcusStringer]

Yeah, sure, everyone working with colour should have a swatch book.

Here is a post from the Quark Forums.

I knew I read somewhere that quark will never match Adobe in colour because they handle it differently.

Okay, probably setting myself up for some abuse here but I thought I might have a crack at outlining how Quark CMS works (or at least how I think it works), as it seems to be one of the least understood parts of the Quark package. 

I invite everyone to comment as it would be good to have a definitive post to refer new and returning users to. 

Most people seem to be okay with Adobes CM implementation and have difficulty translating into Quark, this is most likely because Quark and Adobe have quite different approaches to colour management. 

When you look at the Color Settings in Photoshop, you can see it is laid out so that you can choose color preferences for each image type (CMYK, RGB or Greyscale) which makes for a tidy and easily understood set up. 

This apparent simplicity however, is largely due to the fact that Photoshop only ever deals with one kind of image at a time (an image will be either RGB, CMYK or Greyscale and either will, or will not, have a profile attached). Quark on the other hand, routinely deals with pages which can have multiple image types on it and therefore needs to manage a much more complex range of possibilities. It is probably worth mentioning at this point that PostScript (even level 3) cannot manage ICC data, for Photoshop this is not really a problem as it has other ways to attach ICC information to file formats - but for Quark to manage color output using ICC, it must apply the effects of ICC prior to output. The resulting PostScript output does not have ICC management contained alongside color data - the data has already been corrected and converted by Quark CMS. 

Furthermore, Adobe mangages much of its color management internally (frequently using the ACE color engine) where Quark utilises calls to Apple Colorsync at the system level (where ACE is not available). For those of you who have tried to get colours to match on screen between Adobe and Quark applications - now you know why it never quite works! 

Finally, it is worth noting that Quark CMS cannot color manage embedded images (filetypes eps, pdf, dcs etc) and no amount of set up in the Quark CMS dialog will affect how these images look on screen. 

Quark CMS in more detail 

-Color Management Active 

Obviously this switches CMS on or off for the current document. Quite often this is the simplest and possibly safest way to operate provided you are aware that you will not be able to evaluate any color Quark shows you! The good news about this option is that you know for sure that Quark will not correct color at any point and your final output will reflect the input - right or wrong! 

-Destination Profiles 

This is where you set the color profiles for output. 

The monitor profile is probably the most important setting here, it effectively tells Quark what colors your monitor is capable of displaying and will be used to map output colours to make them look right on your screen. The Monitor profile should be a profile used to linearise your monitor (these can be built using hardware and software calibrators or downloaded for manufacturers sites, Apples own monitor control panel can also build ICC profiles for your monitor). The listing here will show you all possible RGB output profiles based on your installed colorsync ICC list, this will include RGB profiles such as Adobe 1998 and sRGB - these are not suitable for this purpose, they are general RGB gamuts and are used elsewhere. 

Composite and Separation output profiles should match your output devices. I guess Quark thought that users would proof as composite to a proofing device (composite profile) and then final output to a separation device (separation profile). This is obviously a little dated since most modern workflows are now composite PDF and Quarks separation technology is quite limited. 

These output profiles can be set to match any profile in your Colorsync folder, or switched to none. When Quark CMS is active, you will notice that the profiles you set here are shown in a new profile tab in the Quark output window where they can be changed prior to output. 

Its about here that users can get nervous that Quark CMS will take their carefully managed Photoshop images and mangle them to output something completely different - I won’t pull any punches, it is quite possible (and occasionally desirable) to get Quark CMS to do this - but only if you are careless with your CMS set up, so DON’T PANIC. 

-Display Simulation 

I’ll skip to this next as it is closely related to the Destination Profiles settings. Basically this option lets you define how you want Quark to show you softproofing on your monitor. It will take your chosen output condition (Monitor, Composite or Separation) and use your chosen monitor profile to map colors to your screen. This does beg the question - why would I choose my Monitor color space to render display correction? Well, if you switch off composite and separated profiles, Quark CMS will color correct based on your Default Source Profiles. If all you want to do is soft proof on screen this is quite a safe approach as it means that your PostScript output cannot be modifed when you print - see, I told you not to panic. 

The downside to this approach is that Quark will not pick up and convert images which are saved in the wrong format (ie RGB images in a CMYK document) as you have switched off the output correction. However, it is arguable that using Quark to auto correct color spaces on output without operator knowledge is not necessarily a good thing! 

-Default Source Profiles 

These are the profiles Quark assumes are used when it encounters images which have no specified or attached profile. In essence, if an image is placed in Quark with no qualifying profile, then Quark must assume a profile in order to be able to manage the color at all - it needs a starting point. 

The profiles used here are of the general colour space type (which we ignored in the monitor set up earlier). So RGB source profiles would be Adobe 1998, or ECI RGB - CMYK profiles would be SWOP coated or ISO uncoated etc. Because these are the assumed profiles for non profiled images, this is the assumed color space for your monitor display correction if you have not used composite or separated as a match. 

Rendering intents will depend on your document content and type. In a print environment where your output cannot be RGB, I would suggest saturation for RGB solids and perceptual for RGB images. CMYK may be better working as colormetric since conversions are not so likely to fall outside of gamut. 

- Color Manage sources to destinations 

This is possibly the most risky switch in the Quark CMS set up. When this switch is off, Quark CMS will only apply actual color correction when an image is in the wrong color space format for the chosen output (ie, an RGB image will be converted when ouput into a CMYK print stream), this is the normal operation for Quark CMS and can save you from spoiling output if you miss an RGB image - remember this behaviour can always be switched off in the profile output tab or by setting destination profiles to none. 

However, when this switch is on, Quark CMS will alter all output to a single profile (ie, all images, tagged, RGB, CMYK untagged may be converted to your output profile when printed) which is generally a far less desirable scenario - not to say this option doesn’t have its uses, but problems matching color after this type of conversion are going to be quite difficult to explain to a client! 

phew! 

I believe this information is correct, I’m sure someone out there will be happy to correct me if not, but hopefully a useful starting point!
_________________
Tim Jones 
Target Direct Print

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[davidokay]

By the way, which color profile should I use? I'm in Quebec, Canada, I think the country makes a difference? Thank you very much, I'm more confident with Quark now!

 

[MarcusStringer]

I use a SWOP Coated 20% GCR, but you can make your own. So long as it's the same for all the programs you use.

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au