CMYK jpegs display with wrong colours

[Robolovsky]

Just an update on this. Sent in a support ticket to Corel and received an email with a link to their standard colour management PDF.

This document does nothing to address the problem so I sent them all the details as posted here with a link to the sample file. Heard nothing back for two days and so emailed again explicitly requesting that they respond. There response is below:

"After carefully reviewing this incident it is recommended that you call into our technical support center for further assistance. E-mail is an alternative option for technical support on resolving minor issues. Due to the nature of this particular issue, and the need for interaction, contacting Corel directly via telephone will provide you with a quicker and more tailored solution for the issue you are facing."

I guess that's supposed to mean that they think it is a problem at my end, when we all know it is not. I will contact them next week and see what happens.

[LeviFiction]

I'm sorry but the response seems to indicate that the problem is not something they handle over email and not that the problem is on your end. Since the email service is of no help they recommend you call into those who can help this is everything from trouble-shooting actual problems to just letting you know that they are "working on it." Honestly, unless it's in the knowledge base or at least was I never go to email. It's a worthless hassle that causes more frustration than anything.

[wds937]

I have also tested the graphic in version 8 of the (then) Jasc PSP which I have on another machine. It appears fine and with the correct colours. In those days there was an option in the general preferences to specify a CMYK colour profile. This is blank in my version.
[...]
I suspect that if it was possible to turn off CMYK profiles, it would display correctly. This is obviously not a satisfactory state of affairs though.

This is just a shot in the dark, from someone that only rarely works with CMYK jpegs. Maybe you could create a new CMYK profile in PSP 8, accepting the default settings, and then copy that profile to PSP X3. I don't know if doing so would create a CMYK profile that is essentially the same as having no CMYK profile. I also don't know if the profiles are compatible between the two versions of PSP.

I guess another possibility would be to do your CMYK editing with PSP 8.

[Robolovsky]

The machine I am working on at present is a 64bit Win 7 one and only PSP X3 is fully compatible with this. As previously mentioned a good workaround is to open the file in another program such as Photoshop (which does display the image correctly) and then copy, paste into PSP. This is time consuming though when a large number of images are involved.

The issue seems to be that all of the colour working spaces provided with PSP are essentially RGB ones. This means that when it opens a CMYK image it has to convert it and it is in the conversion that things go awry. For most people a warning pops up informing them of what is happening. From this warning you can see the CMYK profile of the incoming image and the colour working space that it will be converted to (usually sRGB).

Obviously if PSP provided support for working in CMYK mode this problem would probably not occur as no conversion would be necessary. I have tried every combination of colour working space and CMYK profile and, apart from a slight shift in the image colour on some of the combinations, it still displays incorrectly. I am not sure if this is down to the profiles that are supplied with PSP or simply that the conversion process is flawed.

In any event I will see what their phone support has to offer and keep you all posted.

[LeviFiction]

Well, that isn't entirely accurate, a computer screen cannot display CMYK color spaces only RGB equivalents, conversion is still necessary even in PhotoShop the difference comes in the values that the program uses to interpret this color. In PaintShop Pro a full conversion of the values to RGB occurs while in PhotoShop the differences are calculated on the fly. They are obviously important differences but to suggest that not doing a conversion to a specific RGB colorspace would solve the problem is inaccurate as PSP would still have to get it right. Now I know this problem is something specific with how PSP interprets CMYK and I believe they are working on a solution. The downside? I doubt it'll come to X3 but I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.

[Robolovsky]

Thanks very much for the clarification LeviFiction. I have to admit I was a little foggy on the technicalities.

Very promising to hear that they could be working on a solution already! Where does your info on that come from?

Crazy thing is, if they know this to be an issue, why do they not hold their hands up and tell us that they are working on it, instead of fobbing us off with stuff to try that is obviously not going to work?

[LeviFiction]

The only definitive claim I made was that it is a PSP problem. My belief that they are working on a solution comes from something I heard while on the phone with tech support but I make no claim that it is accurate. If I am known for one thing here it is my optimism that Corel is trying to fix what they have broken. That is why I used the words "believe" and "probably" instead of only saying "they are" because I don't know any of their plans for a fact.

[Robolovsky]

At last! A word of hope for all those who have suffered with this problem. I have received the following message from Nelson of the Corel Customer Support team:

I recently tried your image files and had the similar behavior in our installed PaintShop Photo Pro X3. I have already forwarded this limitation to our engineers. So they could add the fix for this in the upcoming Service Pack and next version of this program. We suggest to visit our website regularly for any updates and thank you for your patience regarding this matter.

Sounds good? Maybe this will get it sorted once and for all.

Fingers crossed!

[wds937]

I have received the following message from Nelson of the Corel Customer Support team:

...So they could add the fix for this in the upcoming Service Pack and next version of this program.

Upcoming service pack?? Hmmm.

[Robolovsky]

Aha! I see that X4 has now been released. Can anyone confirm whether or not the CMYK issue has been fixed in this version?

[Ken Berry]

When I open your CMYK file in X4, I get a "Color Profile Mismatch" error. Then X4 automatically converts the CMYK image to sRGB and it displays correctly as yellow rather than the incorrect brownish version.

[Robolovsky]

That sounds promising. In X3 you would get the mismatch and conversion but the end product was the brown version.

[Ken Berry]

Your could always download the trial version and see for yourself...

[LeviFiction]

At the time of my last post I was already confident X4 had fixed the issue because during the beta I tried all of the samples submitted to the forums and they came out as expected. Hopefully it remained fixed between my last tests and the final version. XD But yes, try it out, see if it handles all of your CMYK files as well as I think it will.

[Simone Corel UK]

I only want to tell you that PSP from old JASC to version X3 had never had any CMYK converter engine. Most visible if you create a simple red in CMYK and save it, PSP all version would open it as dark lilac or similar.

However, now the good news, PSPX4 opens CMYK files (more) correctly, but of course, you can't save as CMYK.
CMYK is is bit more complicate because it's related to print questions. Therefore, programs which work correctly with CMYK are a bit more expensive.