Gimp and CMYK &DTP
On Tuesday 29 October 2002 09:23, John Culleton wrote:
On Tuesday 29 October 2002 01:50 am, a.pumeper@gazeta.pl wrote:
I want to use Gimp for work on photo files(.tiff) and I have a
question what about CMYK mode in Gimp ? How can I make me sure
that my photo will be good when it will be printed in magazine ? I
want to give my work to a profesional print office and they say :
You must work in CMYK mode( like in Photoshop) or have a CMYK
preview. How can it be done in Gimp ? Please, help me
APU
--
You can't, and this is the major shortcoming of Gimp. It is possible
to convert to CMYK at the end of the process, but given the
difference in gamut between the RGB and CMYK versions of the same
image the quality of the result can be best described as uncertain.
In an earlier post I discussed the program pnmtotiffcmyk which will
indeed create a cmyk version of the file. However the colors do
shift. This is especially problematic in photos of people involving
flesh tones.
The Gimp manual addresses this issue in chapter 13.
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters, Rowse Reviews, Culleton Editorial
Services
http://wexfordpress.com
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We might also mention that this the fault of Adobe and not the Gimp
programmers. I believe Adobe owns the right to this process and has
been very reluctant to release any rights to it. I think the Gimp
programmers or others have tried and continue to work on ways around
this limitation as John pointed out here. Although Gimp doesn't
provide the simplest process of doing CMYK, it can do it in most
respects. Like the old saying though, you kinda have to go around the
elbow to get to the hand. :o)
Hopefully a solution to the CMYK seperation problem will be forthcoming
in a later version of Gimp, because that seems to be it's only weak
point at the moment for most professional users.
Patrick
Magic Page Products
