CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 Guidebook

Chapter 7: Color Management | 93

workflow. You should avoid assigning color
profiles and converting colors to other color
profiles while working on a document.

What is a rendering intent?

A color management system can perform
effective translation of document colors to
multiple devices. However, when converting
colors from one color space to another, a color
management system may be unable to match
certain colors. This translation failure occurs
because some colors in the source may not fit
within the range (or gamut) of the destination
color space. For example, the bright red and
blue colors that you see on your monitor are
often outside the gamut of colors that your
printer can produce. These “out-of-gamut”
colors can dramatically change the look of the
document, depending on how they are
interpreted by the color management system.
Each color management system has four
methods of interpreting out-of-gamut colors
and mapping them into the gamut of the
destination color space. These methods are
known as “rendering intents.” The choice of a
rendering intent depends on the graphical
content of the document.

Many colors in an sRGB document may be out of gamut

for the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 color space. The

out-of-gamut colors are mapped into gamut according

to the rendering intent.

The following rendering intents are available:

•The Relative colorimetric rendering

intent is suitable for logos or other

graphics that contain only a few out-of-

gamut colors. It matches the out-of-gamut

source colors with the closest in-gamut

colors at the destination. This rendering

intent causes the white point to shift. If

you print on white paper, the whiteness of

the paper is used to reproduce the white

areas of the document. Therefore, this

rendering intent is a good option if your

document will be printed.

•The Absolute colorimetric rendering

intent is suitable for logos or other

graphics that require very precise colors. If

no match is found for the source colors,

then the closest possible match is used.

The Absolute colorimetric and Relative

colorimetric rendering intents are similar,

sRGB color space U.S. Web Coated (SWOP)

v2 color space

Out-of-gamut colors