On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Easyword wrote:

It is like you would have a car without tyres. You have very nice car, but you cannot use it. Hopefully, developers would consider this type of problems in the future.

And what makes you think they are NOT in fact considered right now? Here's a hint: They are and have been for some time. Work towards supporting whatever pixel representations has been ongoing for years now and is going to take a few years more. If you want it faster, come and help us do the work. Please find out where development is headed. Also, have you ever tired to make your tires from scratch?

On Fri, 7 May 2010 12:24:19 +0200 (CEST), Easyword wrote:

One of these problems is:

- GIMP supports only RGB color space

This is a limitation, which prevents the use of the software in professional use. You may use GIMP to create graphics for professionals, but you may not receive any professional graphics.

It depends what „professional” for you means. I am working in television/video area, where all graphics are in RGB (sometimes with additional key channel (alpha)). For me the CYMK color space is of no use (and I get in trouble when someone gives some color specifications in non-RGB values).

(perhaps the 8 bit per color limitation might be a limitation in my professional area)

Cristi

On 05/07/2010 06:13 AM, Cristian Secar? wrote:

On Fri, 7 May 2010 12:24:19 +0200 (CEST), Easyword wrote:

- GIMP supports only RGB color space

This is a limitation, which prevents the use of the software in professional use. You may use GIMP to create graphics for professionals, but you may not receive any professional graphics.

It depends what „professional” for you means. I am working in television/video area, where all graphics are in RGB (sometimes with additional key channel (alpha)). For me the CYMK color space is of no use (and I get in trouble when someone gives some color specifications in non-RGB values).

As a professional graphic designer I think that there's a real lack of understanding about color spaces among graphic designers. I know lots of designers that do color corrections in Photoshop with an image in CMYK color mode. In fact they do everything in CMYK mode if they open Photoshop at all.

Unless you are creating a graphic that is intended to specifically match a printed color, this method of working in CMYK is unnecessary and ill advised. The belief that working with photographs in CMYK mode is 'professional' and more color accurate is wrong. An image should only be translated to CMYK mode once it's finished and ready to go to press. And that translation needs to happen in a color managed process.

The CMYK mode in Photoshop is merely an estimation of the CMYK color space. It understands the gamut of CMYK but the representation of those colors on the screen is an estimation dependent on a calibrated display and fully color managed workflow. After all, your display renders colors in RGB.

It's much more important to work in a color managed environment. I've worked with many, many 'professional' designers that have very little or no understanding of color profiles or color management. I've even seen them discard the color profiles of images when they open them in Photoshop. That was actually the recommended practice at a magazine I worked at. Unbelievable. Don't believe it? I still can't believe it.

Of course, this is all anecdotal. I don't mean to start a flame war. My point is that Gimp is not Photoshop. A lot of folks give Gimp a try and frequently criticize Gimp for not being a complete clone of Photoshop. Granted, Photoshop is a great tool in many ways and a good ruler for Gimp to measure itself against. But assuming that Photoshop is infallible and that every aspect of it is sacrosanct is a mistake.

The developers are addressing aspects of Gimp that they find useful and interesting. The CMYK color mode is complex I'm sure, mostly due to all of the color estimation that is needed to display the mode on screen (as mentioned above). Alexia is right. This is building things from scratch. And we do have the Separation plugin to export to CMYK. But no, Gimp does not have the safety blanket of CMYK color mode to give graphic designers the assurance that their colors look right (even if the accuracy of those colors is an estimation dependent on a color managed and calibrated display).

Gimp CAN be used to create professional graphics. You can also make professional graphics with printed photos, rubylith, paste, pens, ink, lead type and paper. Both of these approaches are dependent on the creator having a certain level of knowledge about the printing process.

The trouble that most contemporary designers have when it comes to creating professional graphics with the Gimp (and Inkscape, Scribus, etc.) is due to their lack of knowledge. That's not an insult. They're just used to working with a lot of programs that handle most of the technical details that graphic designers and prepress workers needed to know in the past. These open source programs, as great as they are, just aren't entirely to that point yet.

One of the big reasons that they aren't to that point is because they are developed by very smart people that only need the program to take the project to a certain point. The other reason is that most of the developers are not professional graphic designers. Along with that, most professional graphic designers know very little about programming.

If graphic designers want great open source tools that meet their needs, they're going to have to start contributing to the projects. That's what I've been trying to do. You got to put your money (or time and effort) where your mouth is.

Thanks for listening.

-Jason Simanek

hey guys,

we went last year through a big discussion here with input from pre- press
professionals. The result from that is that I filtered out the needs of these users and taking the concepts from pippin, made UI/workflow solution that avoids copying old hacks and bad ideas.

this was presented at last year's LGM and blogged:

so there we go,

--ps

founder + principal interaction architect man + machine interface works

http://mmiworks.net/blog : on interaction architecture

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Jason Simanek wrote:

The trouble that most contemporary designers have when it comes to creating professional graphics with the Gimp (and Inkscape, Scribus, etc.) is due to their lack of knowledge.

(Also anecdotal) - personally, the trouble I have is with the vendors that require CMYK artwork. If we could convince the entire industry to accept color-managed RGB, well sure we'd not need to design anything in CMYK except corner cases like rich black and overprinting. However, from what I can tell of the printing industry (at least in the US), this is just a nice dream. As long as they insist on CMYK artwork, CMYK mode is a necessary evil.

I worked for a printing company for a while. They preferred CMYK artwork, the rationale being: people tend to send something with a #0000FF background and get angry when the final printed item comes out different (of course a good proofing system helps here).

But this has all been discussed in depth on this list, and once gegl is fully integrated we'll have all the tools needed for a managed workflow, and also the necessary evil of CMYK mode :)

Chris

If you take a look on the list archives you'll find that I was one of those designers saying that GIMP sucks because it doesn't have a CMYK mode. But I changed my mind! :-D
Honestly, It took me to really understand how color management works and leave some old bad habits alone to get it. Now I'm working in RGB and sending to print shops with good results. I send sRGB images or CMYK separated with Separate+ or CMYKtool. CMYK mode is a legacy from the past, and with the growing adoption of CTP and DI systems we shouldn't be discussing this. Both Adobe and Pantone are recommending to work with late binding, although Adobe software still allows to work with early binding. So no matter what designers say, even their loved flagship companies are thinking different.

What is hard to understand for desingers is that the problem isn't CMYK but spot colors. We tend to use CMYK because we see it as an image created by 4 spot colors instead of a device dependent interpretation of an RGB image. It took me some time to get used to it, but the idea of creating a separation projection on the top o a color managed RGB image, letting the user define spot colors, is growing on me as the best way to tackle this difficult issue.

So forget CMYK, The projections system proposed by Peter will take spot channels in consideration and that will solve most of our problems. Not going back to a legacy hack.

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Chris Mohler wrote:

As long as they insist on CMYK artwork, CMYK mode is a necessary evil.

I guess I thought Separate+ handled that necessary evil. But I don't use it myself, so it might be pretty sketchy.

But this has all been discussed in depth on this list, and once gegl is fully integrated we'll have all the tools needed for a managed workflow, and also the necessary evil of CMYK mode :)

Yes, indeed. Thanks, Peter, for the URL of your post discussing the plan for addressing CMYK and other color mode outputs. That sounds beautiful.

-Jason Simanek