Using Roland Colour Palettes in CorelDRAW

by Roger Wambolt, Corel Product Expert at Alludo

This article in our guest blog series is from Roger Wambolt, Product Specialist at Alludo, developers of CorelDRAW vector graphics editor. Roger discusses using Roland colour palettes in CorelDRAW, essential reading for users of CorelDRAW and those wanting more information on colour libraries in general.

Before starting a discussion on using the Roland colour palettes, it might be best to review a few of the colour models.

Common colour models include RGB, CMYK, and Pantone. What are they?

• RGB The RGB colour model is an additive colour model. The colour gamut for the RGB model is quite large in comparison to CMYK, so it is the preferred colour model when images are being created for the web, sublimation printing, or output to a digital device such as in web graphics.


• CMY / CMYK The CMY model is a subtractive model that is made up of three colours cyan, magenta, and yellow. Typically, the CMYK colour model is used for Offset printing and Digital printing. In practice, though, CMY is usually not the only colour to use. True black cannot be produced by mixing inks due to imperfections in the inks and other limitations. To achieve purer blacks and shades of grey, printers do this by adding black ink, denoted as K. The practical application of the CMY colour model in printing is, therefore, the 4-colour CMYK process.


• Pantone Spot colours, or PANTONE colours, are created with user-defined colours and are typically used when CMYK colours cannot be used to create a specific shade or for consistency. Pantone colours are used when creating artwork for screen printing or offset printing.





The Roland Colour Palettes

Included with CorelDRAW, there are three Roland colour palettes. They include the Roland Color System Library, Roland Metallic Color System Library, and the Roland VersaWorks Color Palette.




The Roland Color System Library is Roland's original spot colour library. It consists of more than 1,000 spot colours. The Roland Metallic Color System Library allows you to add the luxury of gold, silver, bronze, and pearlescent colours to a design. The Roland VersaWorks Color Palette provides specialised colours for creating a CutContour, White, Gloss, and Silver. There is also the ability to customise the palette to add a special PerfCutContour.




The advantage of the Roland Color System Library is the easy creation of a colour chart using your printer. Unlike commercial colour charts, this feature generates a colour chart to precisely check the colours on your printer using your media. This shows you what your configuration is capable of reproducing as there may be slight colour differences depending on the conditions of the printer and media. By selecting a colour from this chart and creating an illustration using that colour, you will be able to easily reproduce the exact colour that your customer wants.

Four Steps for Adding the Roland Colour Palettes to CorelDRAW

Adding any colour palette to the workspace in CorelDRAW is a fairly straightforward process:

1. Colour palettes can be accessed through the Palettes docker. To open the Palettes docker, go to Window > Dockers > Palettes. Here you see the whole array of Process and Spot colour palettes available, including the Roland colour palettes.


2. Expand Palette Libraries, and you will see Process and Spot. By expanding Spot, you will see PANTONE, Roland, and five other palettes.


3. Expand Roland and place a check in the box beside the Roland palette that you want will cause it to open on the right side of your workspace. These palettes can be dragged to the top, bottom, or left side of the workspace, or left floating.


4. Clicking on the small triangle at the top of the palette opens the palette options. In here there are a number of options that will allow you to Set As Default, Show Colour Names, or dictate how many Rows of the colour palette are displayed. You also have some Customise options that will allow you to have wide borders, large swatches, and show no colour well.





How to Use Roland Colour Palettes in CorelDRAW

To get the most out of the Roland Color System Library, it is best to print out a colour chart.

As previously mentioned, when printing colour from the colour palette, it may appear differently from one printer to another. There may be slight colour differences depending on the conditions of the printer and the media on which you are printing. By printing the colour chart, you will see exactly what you can produce.

To print the Roland Color System Library colour chart, follow the steps below:



1. Start by loading the media to which the colour chart will be printed on and prepare the printer for printing.


2. In VersaWorks, on the Quality tab, select the media that you will be printing on, and then in the Colour Management tab and select Density Control only as the preset. This is used only for printing out the colour charts. This must be done in the Queue properties, as you cannot change the quality settings in the Job Settings panel.


3. From the Media tab, you can select Colour Chart Type – 1.


4. Once the Colour Selector is fully loaded in the queue, you can then RIP and Print or Print only.


5. If you don’t want to print the entire chart, then you can simply select the pages containing the colour swatches you actually need.


6. Under Layout, in the Job Settings, check the box for Page Range and indicate the page range you wish to print. You would typically print the page that has the colours closest to the colours in the CorelDRAW design with which you are working.


7. If you have colours from different areas of the colour palette and want to print those as well, select Clip and Tile in the Job settings dialog and identify the different areas from the colour palette that you require.


8. Now it is just a matter of printing this job out, and you can use the exact colours to match the job in CorelDRAW.





Conclusion

With a little preparation time to create the colour chart on your specific media, you can go forward to your customer with the knowledge that you have dialled in on the colours to your device. This will enable you to present them with an accurate representation.

If you’d like more information on anything mentioned in this article, please contact your Roland DG representative, or talk to an expert here.