CMYK Export - Grayscale

[gwpriester]

The chances of ever seeing a usable CMYK export, or the ability to create a true Grayscale export option in Designer Pro+ in my lifetime are slim and none.

I am preparing to convert 40 Pro+ RGB images, 3000 x 2400px and 40 non-grayscale black and white RGB stereograms and depth images to CMYK TIFF and Grayscale for publication in Japan.

Just for chuckles I took the first image, a PNG image created in Pro+ and converted it to CMYK from Pro+. And then I exported the same image to CMYK from Affinity Photo.

First off, Affinity's export maintained most of the brightness and saturation of a particularly hard image with lots of purple and bright blue, difficult colors to reproduce in 4 CMYK.

Muddy and unsaturated, and unusable, the Pro+ image came in at 17.2MB. The brighter, more saturated Affinity Photo CMYK image was only 15.1MB.

My memory does not go back far enough the first time we requested a decent, professional-quality CMYK export filter, or a true Grayscale export filter.

But if it's not a Block, it's never going to happen. I accept this. But it does not warm the cockles of my heart.


(The side-by-side attached image was enlarged from the Windows preview images in Topaz Gigapixel AI. The photo with the A is the Affinity Photo export)

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes, a very poor second there Gary. Fortunately I've rarely needed to have a professional print so it's one of Xaras failings that doesn't effect me.

[gwpriester]

I think the color is better if you export as PDF/X. But that's not necessary.

[ernie-f]

Please don't forget that when converting from RGB to CMYK, an OutputIntent ICC color profile must always be present.
Otherwise, the software cannot perform reliable color conversion. A general CMYK is therefore not recommended.

Assessing the conversion only makes sense if you use calibrated devices. Because that's the only way you can judge colors.

In the screenshot we see the original image in RGB, in the second an export from Xara and in the third the export from Affinity.
With Affinity it doesn't matter which application the PDF is created from, Affinity only uses one PDF engine for all applications.

We only get true grayscale if we convert the image to gray beforehand. Either Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Corel Photo, Gimp etc.
can do this. In contrast to Affinity, Xara always converts a real grayscale image into CMYK and not just into the K channel as intended.
Even the open source software Scribus can do this. Why Xara doesn't offer this is beyond my knowledge.
I've asked Xara to change this so many times in the past, but in vain.