Displaying a document using the printer colors

Because printers use CMYK
inks, there are limitations in the range of colors they can produce. It is not possible for a printer to exactly match all the colors that you can show on the screen. For example, the cyan shown on screen is a very light color, and typically comes out more of a sky blue shade when printed. Xara LX can alter the colors displayed on screen to more closely match what you will see when the image is proofed. Note that turning this on does not change any colors, it just shows them on screen so they look more like what will appear on the paper.

Some software packages provide an array of complex options for correcting the color on the screen. LX's 'show printer colors' function uses one single option which applies in all circumstances. A screen and a printer are very different and it is never possible to see on the screen exactly what will appear on paper. Exact tuning of screen color correction is of very little benefit because it will never be that accurate.

To display a document using the printer colors

1. Click on the document so the title bar of the window is highlighted.

2. From the Window menu, choose Show Printer Colors then select Simulate Print Colors.

Tips

A side effect of anti-aliased black text is that it will appear in 'fuzzy' way on all the plates, even though it won't on the real final plate. This is because the anti-aliasing of the edges of the text on screen introduces grayscales which separate differently than pure black text).

To return to the standard screen colors, select Screen Colors from the Show Printer Colors menu

Because this option can be set for each document, you could have two views on a document open where one uses regular colors and one uses the printer colors.

The Color Line, Color Gallery and Color Editor use the same setting as the selected document (the one with the highlighted title bar). If the selected document shows printer colors, so will the Color Line, Color Gallery and Color Editor.