This is an output extension for color separation. I have a feeling that it is somewhat inadequate, but I'm unsure. Maybe the color experts here can give us a hint. JonCruz?!
http://www.cimcomunica.com/site2/
Felipe Sanches
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Felipe Sanches wrote:
This is an output extension for color separation. I have a feeling that it is somewhat inadequate, but I'm unsure.
As far as I can tell, it simply rasterizes everything and uses ImageMagick to convert stuff. Not funny :(
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
2012/6/14 Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...>:
This is an output extension for color separation. I have a feeling that it is somewhat inadequate, but I'm unsure. Maybe the color experts here can give us a hint. JonCruz?!
I'm by no means a color expert, but I have some years of experience in professional print using free software, so I guess this might help: The promise looks good, but if this extension does the same than the previous "Export CMYK TIFF" and "Export CMYK PDF" extensions did, I'm afraid it won't be very useful. The old extensions choked with most of my work. They worked for small and simple stuff, but complex designs took ages to export, needed massive amounts of temporal space and the result was far from perfect. In every test I did it was faster and I got better results by just exporting two PNGs, one for color and one for pure black, separated them to CMYK with CMYKtool or Separate+ and combined them in GIMP. Sure, you can't create custom CMYK values with that method and you have to rely on color-managed RGB>CMYK conversions, but in my experience that's probably as reliable as picking arbitrary CMYK combinations expecting they'll print all the same no matter what press and stock you're using.
If that's the path this extension will follow, I'd spare the effort and think again about more useful things to bring a proper CMYK/Spot support to Inkscape. We have initial support for color-managed swatches and spot colors. They need more work and some bug fixing and overprint options are still missing, but there is something already to work on. After that's completed, the next challenge is to take that outside Inkscape. IMO that has to be done through color managed PDF. It became a print industry standard, it supports all the features needed for print and Inkscape already has an exporter. iirc there are some limitations (in Cairo?) that prevent our exporter to create press ready. I guess that helping or pushing Cairo devs to fix that would be a better investment of time. Another route could be to help Scribus devs to support all the features needed to import inkscape SVGs properly, so we can use Scribus to create press-ready PDFs.
On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:43:57 -0300 "gespertino@...400..." <gespertino@...400...> wrote:
2012/6/14 Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...>:
This is an output extension for color separation. I have a feeling that it is somewhat inadequate, but I'm unsure. Maybe the color experts here can give us a hint. JonCruz?!
I'm by no means a color expert, but I have some years of experience in professional print using free software, so I guess this might help: The promise looks good, but if this extension does the same than the previous "Export CMYK TIFF" and "Export CMYK PDF" extensions did, I'm afraid it won't be very useful. The old extensions choked with most of my work. They worked for small and simple stuff, but complex designs took ages to export, needed massive amounts of temporal space and the result was far from perfect. In every test I did it was faster and I got better results by just exporting two PNGs, one for color and one for pure black, separated them to CMYK with CMYKtool or Separate+ and combined them in GIMP. Sure, you can't create custom CMYK values with that method and you have to rely on color-managed RGB>CMYK conversions, but in my experience that's probably as reliable as picking arbitrary CMYK combinations expecting they'll print all the same no matter what press and stock you're using.
If that's the path this extension will follow, I'd spare the effort and think again about more useful things to bring a proper CMYK/Spot support to Inkscape. We have initial support for color-managed swatches and spot colors. They need more work and some bug fixing and overprint options are still missing, but there is something already to work on. After that's completed, the next challenge is to take that outside Inkscape. IMO that has to be done through color managed PDF. It became a print industry standard, it supports all the features needed for print and Inkscape already has an exporter. iirc there are some limitations (in Cairo?) that prevent our exporter to create press ready. I guess that helping or pushing Cairo devs to fix that would be a better investment of time. Another route could be to help Scribus devs to support all the features needed to import inkscape SVGs properly, so we can use Scribus to create press-ready PDFs.
It would be useful if the Inkscape PDf output allowed for the use of icc profiles. I don't know the level of complexity here. The other path, through Scibus is certainly possible, but a native CMYK pdf export would be worth pursuing (but not through ImagaMagick which rasterizes all imports.
participants (4)
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Alexandre Prokoudine -
Felipe Sanches -
gespertino＠...400... -
john Culleton