[XeTeX] cmyk encoded files

Sun Nov 20 17:01:10 CET 2011

Thank you for the color information. It just seems that there should
be a color printing standard that print houses strive to follow and
that someone would produce a booklet based on that standard.

I saw this in a document from one print house:

"Consumer quality printers have a wide margin for variation. The best
way to verify the final color output, when submitting a file to a
printer, is to purchase a Pantone to Process Swatch booklet from a
local professional art supply shop. This book contains Pantone
calibrated color swatches that you can compare to the CMYK color
percentages of your digital file"

But if there is no "professional art supply shop" around, where does
one find such a booklet?

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2011/11/20 Daniel Greenhoe <dgreenhoe at gmail.com>:
>> 2011/11/20 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
>>> Printed colour samples are commercially available.
>>> They are printed on different types of papers and CMYK values are given.
>>
>> Is there any such thing available in book form? That is, could you
>> make a recommendation? Here in Taiwan, there is something commonly
>> sold called Pantone彩色聖經 (Pantone Cai3Se4 Sheng4Jing1 = Pantone Color
>> Bible). I did finally locate one in a bookstore yesterday, but it was
>> sealed up and I wasn't allowed to open it without buying it.
>>
> Hard to say but Pantone is not exactly what you need. I bouhgt some
> small samples here in the Czech Republic, this is a link:
> http://www.dtpstudio.cz/vzorniky/cmyk/basic
> Using CMYK just limited colours can be printed. The colours are
> obtained by subtractive mixing, therefore saturated colours cannot be
> printed. You can only print colours that fall into the CMYK gamut. If
> you do not print in full colour but need only one, two or three
> colours, custom colours can be used. This is the time when you can use
> Pantone. Often company logos are designed using custom colours. You
> can also find CMYK approximations of custom colours, it may be in the
> Pantone Bible. When using a custom colour, it need not be necessarily
> 100%, for instance the cover if this book was printed with the
> following three colours: Blue GS 4C12, Red GS 3C41, Black. This is the
> link to the book:
> http://www.canopus.cz/dilo_ps/ps.html
>
> Hope it helps
>
>> Dan
>>
>>
>>
>> 2011/11/20 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
>>> 2011/11/20 Daniel Greenhoe <dgreenhoe at gmail.com>:
>>>> 2011/11/20 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
>>>>> No.
>>>>
>>>>> LCMS is a good choice.
>>>> LCMS is "Little Color Management System"?
>>>> (http://www.color.org/opensource.xalter)?
>>>>
>>> Yes.
>>>
>>>>> 1. It ensures that the colours you specify in the document will be converted to cmyk.
>>>>> However, the corrections are wrong.
>>>>> 2. xcolor does not look into inserted graphics,...
>>>>
>>>> But what if I hand define all my colors using cmyk syntax like this for example
>>>>     \definecolor{magenta}{cmyk}{0,1,0,0}
>>>> and create all my graphics using pstricks and related packages (with
>>>> no inserted graphics)?
>>>> Then won't the resulting pdf be cmyk compliant and contain exactly the
>>>> colors I defined?
>>>>
>>> That's what I do. Printed colour samples are commercially available.
>>> They are printed on different types of papers and CMYK values are
>>> given. Thus you select the required colour on a proper paper and use
>>> it. Sometimes I select the colour in gimp and then using LCMS convert
>>> the values from RGB to CMYK. Scanned images are also easy. I keep them
>>> as TIF, using LCMS convert them to CMYK and then by tiff2pdf to PDF
>>> that can be included by \includegraphics.
>>>
>>>> Dan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2011/11/20 Zdenek Wagner <zdenek.wagner at gmail.com>:
>>>>> 2011/11/19 Daniel Greenhoe <dgreenhoe at gmail.com>:
>>>>>> Print shops often require pdf files containing color to be encoded
>>>>>> using CMYK colorspace values.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Version 2.11 of the xcolor package says that cmyk is "supported by
>>>>>> Postscripts directly" (page 8). So if I simply specify
>>>>>>  \usepackage[cmyk]{xcolor}
>>>>>> in the preamble and compile with XeTeX/XeLaTeX, is that sufficient to
>>>>>> ensure the resulting pdf is cmyk encoded?
>>>>>>
>>>>> No.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. It ensures that the colours you specify in the document will be
>>>>> converted to cmyk. However, the corrections are wrong. If you wish to
>>>>> convert the colours properly, you have to use colour profiles. LCMS is
>>>>> a good choice. Useful ICC profiles come with different products as
>>>>> Adobe Reader, colour printers, scanners etc. They can also be
>>>>> downloaded from the web. Calculations in the xcolor package can only
>>>>> be used if you are satisfied with approximate colours. It is written
>>>>> in the documentation that conversions are device dependent.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. xcolor does not look into inserted graphics, you have to convert
>>>>> your images to cmyk separately. Again LCMS is a good tool for this
>>>>> purpose.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Secondly, is there any free utility available for checking the
>>>>>> colorspace encoding of pdf files (maybe similar to foolab's pdffonts
>>>>>> for checking embedded fonts).
>>>>>>
>>>>> I have not found any. Since I produce PDF files for printing very
>>>>> often, I calculated that commercial Adobe Acrobat is cheaper than the
>>>>> risk of paying unusable books, thus I have bought it.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Many thanks in advance,
>>>>>> Dan
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Zdeněk Wagner
>>>>> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
>>>>> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>
>>> --
>>> Zdeněk Wagner
>>> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
>>> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
>>>
>>>
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>
>
> --
> Zdeněk Wagner
> http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
> http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz
>
>
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