Printing Ad Hoc Color Spectrums

[bob]

In the finest sense of things learned enroute to other things the other day I was contemplating printing a spectrum of one flavor of red to another flavor of red in an endless effort to be able to consistently print something resembling a decent red.

I figure that if I printed a gradient from one color to another I could then find on that gradient the precise color I was after and then using the eyedropper on that point in the spectrum in Flexi I could devine the CMYK or RGB components of the color at just that point along that spectrum.

Fat chance since in Flexi the eyedropper on a gradient yields that gradient, not a spot color. But not being one to give up on what I just knew had to be a good idea, I was messing around in Corel Draw, 9 if it matters, and drew a rectangle about 20" wide. I filled it with a gradient from red [RGB 255,0,0] to blue [RGB 0,0,255]. Just to see what might happen I did a control-c copy from Corel and did a control-v paste into Flexi, 7.6v2 if it matters.

Lo and behold, what I got were 256 rectangles overlapped half way upon each other, each with its own color based on just where it is in the spectrum of the gradient. So I quick printed this entire gradient. I then found what I considered to be a pleasing color along its length. I made sure that nothing was selected, very important, and displayed the color mixer dialog. I selected the eyedropper, positioned over the color I wanted, left clicked, and as if by magic, the Color Mixer Dialog displayed the RGB components of this particular color.

Upon further messing around I found it's better to have the 'Calibrate Colors For Display' option in Tools->Color Management in Corel unchecked.

I also found that I could past the copied Corel gradient into Flexi with the Edit->Paste Special and select 'Picture (metafile)' with exactly the same result.

Subesquently, I've gone mad with power, creating a collection of gradients and adding a numbered index bar then better to identify a precise location.

I have no idea if this will work with other packages like Illustrator or whatever, but it works just fine out of Corel 9.

[jayhawksigns]

There is a way to do it with Flexi.

Draw two boxes, one with either color to start and end the range you want to print. Now select both boxes and go to Effects - Blend, and select how many steps you want. Now you will need to Effects - Seperate Blend, then Arrange - Group - Ungroup, and you will have RGB colors for each step in between your two choosen colors.

[Neil]

Ah yes Matthew, in Signlab it's called metamorphosis - whereby you can select 2 rectangles of different colors and tell it how many steps to produce between them.

But Bob brings up a good point ( and impeccably worded I might add...).
That's a great tip to share, and one to (try to) remember!

I used this method once to create my own step wedges.
I wanted to see at what percentage my colors maxed out so created a step blend from 0 to 100% of pure CMY & K.