Getting an Inkscape generated PDF in CMYK
Hello everyone,
I have a colour document I want to get printed by a print shop. It is a monochrome (shades of the same hue with different lightness/saturation, basically all brown) fully vector document. Currently I have the SVG exported in PDF.
The print shops want a CMYK PDF, as expected. They don't seem too smart (insist on using photoshop on the PDF, don't pay much attention to the superposition of recto and verso, etc.) so I would like to do as much as possible myself. However, even with a CMYK document I guess they would still need to do a CMYK to CMYK conversion between my CMYK profile and the one of their printer. Would this be any better than going straight from my RGB to their CMYK?
If I do need to convert in CMYK, I explored the possibilities. The SVG does not import correctly in Scribus so this is out of the question. I have Adobe Acrobat, which looks like it can do the conversion on the PDF. I am just not sure what it assumes as a starting colour space, if any. What would the knowledgeable people on this list advise as a workflow to get an Inkscape generated PDF in CMYK?
As a related note, what is the advised workflow within Inkscape? I have a display and proofing profiles set in the preferences (NB: Jon, does the "Retrieve profile from display" works on Mac? It does not inactivate the drop down menu when checked at least, while it looks like it should.). My understanding of the 0.46 release notes is that as soon as a display profile is set, it is used, and clicking the indicator at the bottom-right corner turns soft proofing on, using the specified proofing profile. Am I right? What part of all this is currently retained in the SVG? in the PDF?
Sorry for the numerous questions. I would like to get this one right. Thanks in advance,
JiHO --- http://maururu.net
El Wed, 6 Jan 2010 13:41:01 +0100 JiHO <jo.lists@...400...> escribió:
If I do need to convert in CMYK, I explored the possibilities. The SVG does not import correctly in Scribus so this is out of the question. I have Adobe Acrobat, which looks like it can do the conversion on the PDF. I am just not sure what it assumes as a starting colour space, if any. What would the knowledgeable people on this list advise as a workflow to get an Inkscape generated PDF in CMYK?
in my experience (some brochures printed in offset) there are two options:
- if inkscape svg is complex (bluring, transparencies), then export as 300dpi (or more) png, and convert to cmyk tiff with imagemagick or gimp separate pluggin, and import into scribus to generate pdf
- if svg no complex, then yes! I imported it into scribus, and manually correct the problems and changing color from rgb to cmyk
regards,
Juan Suarez
JiHO
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On Jan 6, 2010, at 4:41 AM, JiHO wrote:
If I do need to convert in CMYK, I explored the possibilities. The SVG does not import correctly in Scribus so this is out of the question. I have Adobe Acrobat, which looks like it can do the conversion on the PDF. I am just not sure what it assumes as a starting colour space, if any. What would the knowledgeable people on this list advise as a workflow to get an Inkscape generated PDF in CMYK?
For the rgb work, Inkscape follows the SVG standard and uses sRGB as the colorspace. That should give you a starting point there. (sRGB and Adobe RGB are the two most common rgb colorspaces).
As a related note, what is the advised workflow within Inkscape? I have a display and proofing profiles set in the preferences (NB: Jon, does the "Retrieve profile from display" works on Mac? It does not inactivate the drop down menu when checked at least, while it looks like it should.). My understanding of the 0.46 release notes is that as soon as a display profile is set, it is used, and clicking the indicator at the bottom-right corner turns soft proofing on, using the specified proofing profile. Am I right? What part of all this is currently retained in the SVG? in the PDF?
Retrieving the profile from the display fetches a profile attached to the X11 display via xicc.
With 0.46 and 0.47 you would need to link a color profile into the document you were working on (manually in the case of 0.46) and then only change colors via the "CMS" color picker. This preserves the separate CMYK values in icc-color() in the XML.
Unfortunately the development version of Scribus is the only other software I am aware that respects the icc-color() settings.
Thanks for the answer.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 17:17, Jon Cruz <jon@...18...> wrote:
Retrieving the profile from the display fetches a profile attached to the X11 display via xicc.
And foes that work on OS X in your experience? It does not seem to do anything in my case.
With 0.46 and 0.47 you would need to link a color profile into the document you were working on (manually in the case of 0.46) and then only change colors via the "CMS" color picker. This preserves the separate CMYK values in icc-color() in the XML.
I guess I should attach a CMYK color profile right?
Unfortunately the development version of Scribus is the only other software I am aware that respects the icc-color() settings.
So it would take care of the SVG part. But what support is there in the PDF export of Inkscape currently?
Thanks again,
JiHO --- http://maururu.net
This shouldn't pose any problem at all. They shouldn't need cmyk, if it's monochrome. You should be able to provide any image format of high enough quality. They'll only be using one plate, so you can specify a specific pantone color for it.
Or am I missing something???
JF
On 01/06/2010 07:41 AM, JiHO wrote:
Hello everyone,
I have a colour document I want to get printed by a print shop. It is a monochrome (shades of the same hue with different lightness/saturation, basically all brown) fully vector document. Currently I have the SVG exported in PDF.
The print shops want a CMYK PDF, as expected. They don't seem too smart (insist on using photoshop on the PDF, don't pay much attention to the superposition of recto and verso, etc.) so I would like to do as much as possible myself. However, even with a CMYK document I guess they would still need to do a CMYK to CMYK conversion between my CMYK profile and the one of their printer. Would this be any better than going straight from my RGB to their CMYK?
If I do need to convert in CMYK, I explored the possibilities. The SVG does not import correctly in Scribus so this is out of the question. I have Adobe Acrobat, which looks like it can do the conversion on the PDF. I am just not sure what it assumes as a starting colour space, if any. What would the knowledgeable people on this list advise as a workflow to get an Inkscape generated PDF in CMYK?
As a related note, what is the advised workflow within Inkscape? I have a display and proofing profiles set in the preferences (NB: Jon, does the "Retrieve profile from display" works on Mac? It does not inactivate the drop down menu when checked at least, while it looks like it should.). My understanding of the 0.46 release notes is that as soon as a display profile is set, it is used, and clicking the indicator at the bottom-right corner turns soft proofing on, using the specified proofing profile. Am I right? What part of all this is currently retained in the SVG? in the PDF?
Sorry for the numerous questions. I would like to get this one right. Thanks in advance,
JiHO
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
Thanks for the reply.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 18:48, Joshua Facemyer <jfacemyer@...400...> wrote:
This shouldn't pose any problem at all. They shouldn't need cmyk, if it's monochrome. You should be able to provide any image format of high enough quality. They'll only be using one plate, so you can specify a specific pantone color for it.
Or am I missing something???
You're not, I was. Until yesterday, I assumed that we would print on a regular laser printer because the number of copies was low (hence the need for CMYK). But yesterday evening, after a discussion with the print shop, we realized that, since the work was monochrome, it was actually cheaper to use offset printing even for a low number of copies. So indeed I am now converting most of the work to black tones and we'll use a pantone 426U as the ink.
BUT... (there's always a but) some related work will still be done on a laser printer. So I still need CMYK for this. And I need CMYK values that *match* the Pantone 426U brown we chose. I found the CMYK equivalent through photoshop: C50 M56 J60 K26. However, when I try to input those values in the CMYK color picker of Inkscape, they don't stick and they are converted to other numbers. I guess the corresponding color cannot be expressed in RGB. I am not sure. I tried creating a jpeg filled with this color in Photoshop, with the sRGB profile, then importing it into Inkscape and getting the color with the color picker. It gives me C0 M16 Y25 K56. It looks approximately similar to photoshop in the non-color managed view but looks very different in the color managed one, even though I use the same profile when proofing in both software (Coated FOGRA27, which Photoshop suggestion for general work in Europe). Does someone have a suggestion on how to input the correct CMYK values? What other solutions are out there?
Thanks in advance.
JiHO --- http://maururu.net
I'm not trying to dissuade you from this, but the easier and more accurate route may be to just have them do a visual match at the printer. Unless your color workflow and theirs are extremely accurately matched to the pantone model, there's no way the outputs will really match. I'd have them print whatever you have on the laser, adjust it until it's a good color match to what you want, then pick a pantone color that matches the laser output.
Again, I'm not saying color correction isn't useful, but in this case I think there's a much simpler (and more accurate) way to go about it if you don't have an established workflow. Color matching to one color (if it's a relative match) should be simple enough in this manner. If you were doing a full-color layout, I'd definitely provide accurate cmyk output, but I don't see why you'd want to bust your brain over it in this case :)
Just my thoughts.
JF
On 01/07/2010 06:03 AM, JiHO wrote:
Thanks for the reply.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 18:48, Joshua Facemyer<jfacemyer@...400...> wrote:
This shouldn't pose any problem at all. They shouldn't need cmyk, if it's monochrome. You should be able to provide any image format of high enough quality. They'll only be using one plate, so you can specify a specific pantone color for it.
Or am I missing something???
You're not, I was. Until yesterday, I assumed that we would print on a regular laser printer because the number of copies was low (hence the need for CMYK). But yesterday evening, after a discussion with the print shop, we realized that, since the work was monochrome, it was actually cheaper to use offset printing even for a low number of copies. So indeed I am now converting most of the work to black tones and we'll use a pantone 426U as the ink.
BUT... (there's always a but) some related work will still be done on a laser printer. So I still need CMYK for this. And I need CMYK values that *match* the Pantone 426U brown we chose. I found the CMYK equivalent through photoshop: C50 M56 J60 K26. However, when I try to input those values in the CMYK color picker of Inkscape, they don't stick and they are converted to other numbers. I guess the corresponding color cannot be expressed in RGB. I am not sure. I tried creating a jpeg filled with this color in Photoshop, with the sRGB profile, then importing it into Inkscape and getting the color with the color picker. It gives me C0 M16 Y25 K56. It looks approximately similar to photoshop in the non-color managed view but looks very different in the color managed one, even though I use the same profile when proofing in both software (Coated FOGRA27, which Photoshop suggestion for general work in Europe). Does someone have a suggestion on how to input the correct CMYK values? What other solutions are out there?
Thanks in advance.
JiHO
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 14:36, Joshua Facemyer <jfacemyer@...400...> wrote:
I'm not trying to dissuade you from this, but the easier and more accurate route may be to just have them do a visual match at the printer. Unless your color workflow and theirs are extremely accurately matched to the pantone model, there's no way the outputs will really match. I'd have them print whatever you have on the laser, adjust it until it's a good color match to what you want, then pick a pantone color that matches the laser output.
Again, I'm not saying color correction isn't useful, but in this case I think there's a much simpler (and more accurate) way to go about it if you don't have an established workflow. Color matching to one color (if it's a relative match) should be simple enough in this manner. If you were doing a full-color layout, I'd definitely provide accurate cmyk output, but I don't see why you'd want to bust your brain over it in this case :)
Thanks for the advice. I think we'll take that route indeed. The CMJK "equivalent" of the Pantone does not look right on screen. I guess it will also be different on the printer.
Thanks again,
JiHO --- http://maururu.net
"JiHO" == JiHO <jo.lists@...400...> writes:
JiHO> Thanks for the advice. I think we'll take that route indeed. The JiHO> CMJK "equivalent" of the Pantone does not look right on screen. JiHO> I guess it will also be different on the printer.
If you can get the CIELab value of the Pantone ink from ps you can try converting that to sRGB -- the formulas are well documented on wikipedia and other sites. I expect that you will find that the sRGB values for that ink are outside of the sRGB gamut.
-JimC
On 1/6/10, JiHO wrote:
Hello everyone,
I have a colour document I want to get printed by a print shop. It is a monochrome (shades of the same hue with different lightness/saturation, basically all brown) fully vector document. Currently I have the SVG exported in PDF.
The print shops want a CMYK PDF, as expected.
Open the SVG in sK1, export to CMYK PDF. That's all.
Alexandre
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 13:06, Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre.prokoudine@...400...> wrote:
Open the SVG in sK1, export to CMYK PDF. That's all.
thanks for the pointer, unfortunately I don't have a linux machine nearby, only my OS X one. I hope the port will happen soon, it looks interesting.
JiHO --- http://maururu.net
participants (6)
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Alexandre Prokoudine -
James Cloos -
JiHO -
Jon Cruz -
Joshua Facemyer -
minombresbond