Color consistency in CorelDraw 12

[aboyd]

I've just started using CorelDraw 12. I'm stuck and could use advice.

I got a logo from a client. I opened it in CorelDraw, and at the same time I opened up the client's Web site. I used an eyedropper tool to compare the RGB value of the logo in CorelDraw to the RGB value of the logo on the Web site. Wow, perfect match. Great.

I added the text the client needed, and went to export the image as a GIF. The color turned from dark green to neon green. Problem. I retried the steps, but the second time I made sure to check "use ICC" in the GIF export panel. It got closer (just eyeballing it, it seemed like a match), but when I used the eyedropper tool, it was still quite off numerically.

So here's the deal. I don't care about color consistency from screen to printer. I don't even care if the logo appears dim or bright or otherwise on different monitors. But what I do care about (because the client cares) is that when I use an eyedropper tool on the image, it always has the same RGB value, no matter what computer opens it. How do I accomplish this?

-Tony

[cbscreative]

Tony, could you post a copy of the logo? Dealing with GIF limits you to 256 colors. I hope not to insult you by asking if the image on the web is also a GIF. I cannot rule out software issues either. I am a big fan of Corel, but I have had problems that Adobe just handles better, and I have had Adobe files drive me crazy only to switch over to Macromedia and get the results I needed.

Welcome to the forum, you have come to the right place to learn.

Steve
www.cbscreative.com (http://www.cbscreative.com)

[Keyare]

You can get absolutely perfect, number-for-number color from Corel. Really, it's true.

Set TOOLS->COLOR MANAGEMENT-> to "Optimized for the Web" instead of default settings or professional output.

Then when you go to export something to GIF, have your ICC profile ON and select OPTIMIZED pallette. Adaptive will round off colours. Plus, if you have a more than 256 colours in anything you're exporting, the Gif format will round them to the nearest colour, depending on how many colours you are saving.

[cbscreative]

Cool. Since I usually do my final outputs in Photoshop or Fireworks, that is good advice.

Steve
www.cbscreative.com (http://www.cbscreative.com)

[aboyd]

Tony, could you post a copy of the logo? Dealing with GIF limits you to 256 colors. I hope not to insult you by asking if the image on the web is also a GIF.[/url]
I'm not insulted, I just started working with CorelDraw 12, and I really have no idea how it works.

The image is here:

[url]http://www.agitar.com/images/logo_and_tagline.gif (http://www.cbscreative.com)

The green color is what is at issue. Use an eyedropper on that. The hex or RGB values that you get are exactly what the original .ai file displays. Somehow, they managed to keep the color exact when they exported from .ai to .gif. I'm not having such luck. However, I have not tried the suggestion from Keyare to check the "optimize for Web" option, so I'm going to do that now. Hopefully, it works. :)

-Tony

[cbscreative]

Tony, I have not tested Keyare's advice yet either, but this should also work. Corel has a very smooth integration between DRAW and Photo-Paint. If you select the original image in DRAW, your Property Bar will display some bitmap editing icons, one of these is Edit Bitmap (also available in the Bitmap menu from the menu bar). This will open the image in Photo-Paint. Whatever changes you make in Photo-Paint will update live in DRAW when you Save in Photo-Paint.

In Photo-Paint, you will want to delete the existing text to recreate it. Draw a marquee around it with the Rectagle Mask tool and either Delete or Ctrl+X.

Using the eyedropper in Photo-Paint, select the green, then enter the text you want with the Text tool. Do a Save and then switch back to DRAW to see your file. You could also Save As a GIF directly from Photo-Paint, but it will not update the copy in DRAW. The advantage here to is that the text is on a new layer and can always be edited in Photo-Paint. The GIF is not so easily edited.

Now when you export the graphic from DRAW as a GIF, it should act as expected.

Ohterwise, Keyare's method would allow you to work without switching to Photo-Paint, but knowing this technique can be very useful.

Steve
www.cbscreative.com (http://www.cbscreative.com)

[aboyd]

Keyare's suggestion didn't work. :(

I finally resorted to two tricks, which I hate. First, I exported the image as an SVG graphic, converting all text to curves. Then I opened the SVG image in Inkscape. I corrected the colors, and exported to PNG. The colors stayed the same. Whew. The second way was to use CorelDraw to save the image as a GIF, however miscolored. Then I opened the GIF in the Gimp, and selected to edit the color palette. I changed the wrong colors to be correct, and resaved it. The colors were fixed.

Both ways suck to varying degrees, but both ways got me something that the client will approve of. I'm really frustrated that CorelDraw cannot do this. I think I've decided to try to recreate the image from scratch in CorelDraw and see if that helps.

-Tony

[aboyd]

Plus, if you have a more than 256 colours in anything you're exporting, the Gif format will round them to the nearest colour, depending on how many colours you are saving.The image only ends up with about 200 colors, at least in the one I'm exporting. You know, Photoshop (I think, but it might have been an old Mac program I have from MicroVision or something) has an interesting option. If you select part of the image before you do an export to GIF, it will consider the selected colors to be law, and attempt to keep those exactly as intended, even if it has to shift hundreds of other colors around.

I discovered that almost completely by accident. I had selected a part of the image that had about 250 colors in it. When I exported, it kept that exactly as-is, but then reduced the rest of the image -- thousands of colors -- down to just the 4 or 5 remaining color slots. It really looked interesting, sort of a posterization effect.

Anyway, I just tried that with CorelDraw. It didn't seem to work. Must test more. :)

-Tony

[cbscreative]

I was figuring from the problems you were having that you did not have the source files from the original logo. That always makes it "fun" to work with. The solution to recreate the logo will definitley solve your problems. Did you try the solution I outlined above?

When you are working with bitmaps, it is important to realize that DRAW is a vector program. It does provide a lot of built in bitmap editing, but not nearly to the degree of Photo-Paint or Photoshop options. If the entire document is vectors, then converted to bitmap on export, everything will go smooth. When you mix the two, then you already know what can happen. The intregration between DRAW and Photo-Paint is very useful to modify a bitmap within a CDR file.

If you expect much more work from the same client, I would definitely take the time to recreate the entire logo. Having the vector version will prove useful for any future modifications in addition to solving the problem you are now having. Corel is probably the easiest program to work with for recreating a logo like this too (less than 5 min once you are used to it, and 4 of those minutes are to match the font unless you get lucky right away).

Steve
www.cbscreative.com (http://www.cbscreative.com)

[Keyare]

Don't forget that to properly display it on screen, you will need to antialias it, Not like the one you've shown above. The edges of the image will not have the same rgb values, because they are antialiased to merge smothly with the white background.

It's also important to follow ALL the steps.

Are you exporting the BITMAP from corel or the .ai? Because Corel WILL output the proper colours. Make sure the .ai is not CMYK before exporting.

[aboyd]

Steve, I have the original .ai file that was used to create the .gif file I linked to in an earlier post.

Keyare, I thought you were onto something with the CMYK there. I had already gone through the colors and made sure each was using RGB 0, 146, 64. However, I double-checked after reading your post. I used "document properties" to get a summary, and it did say there were CMYK colors in my image. So I went back and found some objects with outlines in CMYK, and I changed them over. Resaved, re-exported. No dice. Tried every color model. No dice.

Finally, I switched from Optimized to Adaptive. It got REALLY close. So close that I think the client won't care or notice (I hope I hope I hope). I note that in the GIF export, there is a tab for optimized selections. I wonder if that is similar to the old Photoshop trick I stumbled upon.

In any case, I now have my images exporting almost accurately. That's good enough for now. Woo hoo!

-Tony

[Keyare]

yup - in the options use optimized.
"OPTIMIZED pallette. Adaptive will round off colours."
i did have it in there, i just forgot to say it was under the options section when you export.

[aboyd]

Hmm. I wrote poorly. I switched away from Optimized, and began using Adaptive. Even if it is rounding off colors, it is doing less damage than Optimized. The "optimized selection" that I mentioned isn't the same thing -- and I have the name of it wrong. It's a panel on the export window that allows you to designate colors that must remain exactly as-is. It turns out it is indeed like the old Photoshop trick.

I can't recall what it's actually called. Let me start up CD.... OK, it's called "Range Sensitivity." The help doc explains that it allows you to select a color that must be present in the exported image. My only problem is that I cannot get it to work -- the panel is always grayed out.

-Tony