Design like Canva. Export like a prepress house.
Real ICC-managed CMYK authoring, PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4 (beta) export, spot colors as true separations — from a drag-and-drop editor anyone can use.
preflight: 41 rules · text: 100% K
Authored, not converted
Real ICC color management — your CMYK values are authored, not converted from RGB at export.
PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4 (beta)
Exports PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4 (beta) — a declared output intent, embedded fonts, and, in X-4, preserved live transparency.
True named separations
Spot colors as true named separations — named/Separation inks with tint transforms and overprint controls, not simulated as process color.
Text stays text
Text stays text — vector export with selectable, K-only black text by default.
Most design tools treat CMYK export as an afterthought: build in RGB, then run an automated conversion at export time. Black text gets swept into that conversion too, so a heading that reads as pure black on screen becomes a four-ink "rich black" on the page — cyan, magenta and yellow stacked under the key plate.
Four plates rarely land in perfect registration on press. Rich black text shows a colored fringe at small sizes, and hairline strokes go soft.
CMYKCanvas defaults body and headline text to 100% K — one plate, nothing to mis-register — with an explicit rich-black override for the cases where you actually want it.
CMYKCanvas has not launched. There is nothing public to try yet.
What exists today is real: real-time multiplayer editing is shipped; vector PDF/X-1a export ships with selectable, K-only black text; 41 committed preflight rules run today, with automated positive and negative test coverage.
The waitlist means one thing: an email when it launches.
The embeddable SDK and headless PDF API are in private beta — design partners wanted. If your product needs print-ready output from non-designer end users, we want to hear from you before general availability.