[Scribus] CMYK image processing
Hal V. Engel
hvengel
Wed Mar 22 02:56:17 CET 2006
On Tuesday 21 March 2006 08:21 am, pixelnate wrote:
snip
> >> Having a fully color-managed workflow is a nice goal. But in practice,
> >> there are a lot of people who will not put a lot of effort into this
> >> since it's okay for them to work in CMYK and they are used to it. IMO
> >> it's a matter of complexity.
>
> It is also expensive to have someone set up your color workflow
> properly, and there are precious few who do it well. Where I work, the
> cheapskates I work for refuse to buy the devices so that I can set up
> the profiles for our printers and monitors, and they don't want to pay
> the very able area rep that can do it for us. So I am _the_ eyes in the
> agency where I work. All color is corrected on my monitor and approved
> by me before it goes to press. I rely on editing images in CMYK. If the
> tools don't support that, then I find tools that can. It is as simple as
> that.
Actually I think you made Craig's point here. If you do not have the hardware
and software to create good profiles and if you do not have a proper CM
workflow how can you claim to be doing proper color management?
It seems to me that your complaint is that your employer would rather
implement a manual process that depends on your very experienced (but
subjective) eye rather than spending a few thousand dollars on some equipment
and software to set up an objective measurement based process. That your
employer trusts this to you is indeed a testament to your abilities. But
what happens to your employers "color management process" if you get hit by a
truck or get a better offer from another employer? I know that every
employer I have worked for has tried real hard to implement processes that
are not dependant on one individual for this very reason.
You are correct that it is non-trivial to set up a proper CM workflow. There
is a significant learning curve to this stuff but it is also very powerful.
For someone to come in a set this up for a company takes a considerable
effort and is not cheap. On the other hand if you were to talk your employer
into spending a few thousand dollars on hardware and software and a like
amount on training for you and perhaps a few others you could work your way
into a proper CM workflow over the course of perhaps 6 months with minimal
expense.
You also said "And yes, I use the proper profiles for my image work, I am not
a rookie." OK where did you get your proper monitor profile if you don't
have measurement hardware? You seem to be contradicting yourself. Or
perhaps your employer is only willing to pay to have your monitor profiled
and not others in your shop.
Even though you appear to not be aware of them there are some OSS profiling
tools and in some ways these are a good as anything out there. The problem
that the developers of these tools are running into is that the measurement
tool vendors don't yet supply "drivers" that run on OSS platforms (this is
being worked on now). So there are a limited number of supported measurement
devices that will work with current OSS tools. But if you have access to a
supported device, for example a Spectrolino, ArgyllCMS will create world
class printer and monitor profiles and if you want to profile cameras and/or
scanners LPROF will create world class profiles for these devices. Both
apps are undergoing active development.
One more thing. GIMP is not the only OSS image editing tool. It is only the
most well known. I do however agree with you that it is not up to the task
of doing professional level imaging work. My point of view is that lack of
CMYK support is only one of many issues with the current stable release.
Other options include CinePaint and Krita both of which have the ability to
work with high bit depth CMYK images and have good color management support.
The GIMP developers are actively working on color management awareness for
version 2.4 and on CMYK and high bit depth support for a later release. So
at some point in the forseeable future GIMP will have most of the needed
functionality. But I suspect that this is 6 months to a year out at this
time.
>
> -End of line. Nate
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