2010/9/15 Krzysztof Kosiński wrote
Logically, if correct color reproduction is the objective, they should accept either RGB documents with an ICC profile for your monitor
You say *that* and then you discuss someone else's color management incompetence? No way Jose :) What use would be for someone to have your monitor's profile? :)
In reality press bureaus differ from each other. Some demand already separated files. Some want to do separation themselves. Some will even ask for source documents like Corel's CDRs or Adobe's AIs. Or Quark XPress documents, with fonts (I really mean it).
Or is there some special aspect of using CMYK that I don't understand?
This aspect is called it-is-me-who-decides-how-to-get-my-job-done :)
The point of working with CMYK natively is that you
a) immediately see what your print is going to look like and b) can tweak things right away.
CMYK is not the only holy grail. There are other features like [1] and [2] that some people like to delegate to press bureaus even though you are going to see lots and lots of users who in their *real* life have to deal with different press bureaus and have different workflows supported.
The world of printing is a mess. You can't change it. Saying "Uh. Oh. This is wrong, we won't do it." is not going to make users happy, because it won't help them to get their job done.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_%28printing%29 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposition
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org