EPS Exports to CMYK... Argh!

[ddonnahoe]

Alex, (or anyone who might know), Do you know why in CD11 (I'm not sure about other ver.), that when you export a vector design to EPS that is colored in RGB, the resulting EPS is converted to CMYK? I need to have the artwork stay in RGB color space if possible. I thought of creating a macro that would change the CMYK back to RGB, but I am using the resulting EPS in a different program and it is the one that needs RGB.

Very perplexing. I thought it might have something to do with postscript, but not sure.

[Alex]

Sean,

I'm not sure about that, but my impression was that EPS is for output (printing) and CMYK is the color model most suitable for that. RGB is more for monitor output. So, I'm not sure if EPS can even support CMYK. Probably it can, but I guess CorelDRAW doesn't allow you to do that because in most cases you would need CMYK. Again, these are my thoughts and they may not be what happens exactly...

What program do you use which can import EPS and doesn't understand CMYK?

[ddonnahoe]

It's actually a problem that a client is having. They are using a RIP program that bases it's conversions on RGB, I was kind of skeptical when I heard this, but they do a lot of oversize output. I can't remember the name of the program they use, but it is used as a dye-sub onto nylon or polyester. Anyway, I was just hoping someone might have a solution. They say that their work around is to export the graphic from Corel (version 9 BTW) and then import the art into Illustrator, change the color space to RGB and re-export it. Whew! That's a lot of work. LOL Anyway, thanks for helping. Would it be possible to write a VBA solution that would do this for them if they moved up to CD11? I was'nt sure if Illustrator could be controlled through VBA.

The only workaround for this is to save the file to a PDF from within CorelDraw. You will need to setup the page size correctly as unlike the EPS export it does not crop to the selected objects size.

Have a play with the settings, If you have Acrobat you can then load the PDF in to Acrobat and save as an EPS, But most RIP's will open the PDF directly and all the colours should still be in RGB.

Its frustratings as exporting to EPS SHOULD support both RGB and CMYK, However Corel forces everything to CMYK as you mentioned, this is annoying, especially as Corel does allow bitmaps to be either CMYK or RGB.

This forced RGB>CMYK conversions is even a problem exporting to AI ...