[Scribus] color management for local printing

[PLinnell]

On Saturday 12 November 2005 22:12, Matt Haber wrote:
> Peter--
>
> I'm using the 1270 and 1280 (which expect RGB data, as i
> understand), and for the sake of this discussion I would be using
> UbuntuLinux (at some point, as the win32 version is available, i
> may use that as well). There are profiles for those printers; I may
> also use 3rd party inks in the future, with their own profiles.
>
> I did a little more noodling around in the docs, and it appears
> that CUPS can handle profiles, so perhaps that is the answer?
>
> -matt
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Some clarifications:
> >
> > The Epsons, which models and what are platform are your printing
> > on. ?
> >
> > Some Epsons, the pro level proofers for example, are true CMYK
> > printers, often with their own color management/calibration app.
> >
> > Others expect RGB data and do the RGB >CMYK conversion in their
> > driver/firmware.
> >
> > If you have 'canned' profiles which came with your Windows or Mac
> > driver disk, those might work OK.
> >
> > Peter
> >
> > Peter
> >

Hi,

Yes, more recent CUPS versions can handle icc profiles, along with 
ghostscript which CUPS uses as a part of the print filtering. We are 
planning support for profiles for inkjets like yours in the future. 

For optimal printing on Linux, you should definitely look into 
gutenprint aka gimp-print 5.0, which is now beta. Having these 
drivers for your inkjet printers gives you very fine grained control 
over color printing. 

Gutenprint is not yet icc aware, but they do have very highly tuned 
drivers specific for inkjets. This would allow for example, very high 
quality prints from GIMP or Cinepaint. Gutenprint IIRC also supports 
16-bit color internally.

I'd also put in a plug to install kdebase - just to get kprinter. I 
use kprinter *everywhere*, even within gnome applications. An 
example, in Gnucash when sending invoices as PDF, I have more control 
and generate higher quality PDFs using kprinter, than using Gnucash's 
own PDF generator. 

Another example: replacing the lpr command in Acro Reader gives you a 
nice easy to use dialog to give you complete control over your 
printer settings, even reverse the order of print out. With kprinter 
installed you should never ever need to drop to the command line 
again to run ps2pdf. You can launch kprinter, open a PS file and 
convert to PDF with access to most all those arcane Ghostscript 
command line settings with one or two clicks.

Scribus' color management is more tuned for giving folks a real world 
idea of what file will look like when printed commercially using 
offset printing.

You can with some practice and know how of CMYK printing do some 
pretty good soft-proofing with an inkjet in Scribus. I have also used 
color management locally when printing directly to a sophisticated 
Fiery RIP. In this case, screen to output matching was within the 
same levels as proprietary apps. With similar attention to detail, 
you could also get the same level of matching using an Indigo, 
Docu-Tech or other digital printer im fairly sure. 

Where Scribus color management, shines in my experience is giving you 
very good realistic simulations on-screen of CMYK printing, 
especially with good print and monitor profiles. The second part,  in 
more recent 1.3.1+ versions is RGB > CMYK conversion in PDF. 

I just finished laying out a directory which will be printed on heavy 
glossy stock.  Previous versions done on a mac used spot colors to 
render a specific shade of green - a difficult shade to render 
correctly in composite CMYK. By carefully tagging the solid colors 
with RGB profiles and selecting an ISO press profile, the screen to 
output match in CMYK is amazingly close to the original spot color. 
Moreover, I can send that PDF to the printer with a very high degree 
of confidence the colors will match in final print.

Make sure you wander through the web links on www.scribus.net There 
are probably a few which you will find useful.

Cheers,

Peter