[Scribus] cmyk workflow

[Axel Bojer]

David Eyre skrev:
> Just looking for some views from other users. At the
> moment, my workflow for placing images is as follows:
> 
> 1. Create image box
> 2. Import unedited image
> 3. Edit image to open in the GIMP
> 4. Re-size and crop image
> 5. Do CMYK-separation of edited image using GIMP
> Separation plug-in
> 6. Save separated edited image as tif
> 7. Back into Scribus to delete unedited image from box
> contents
> 8. Import edited image tif
> 
> Am I wasting time here? Do I really need to do the
> CMYK separation? Would the images be automatically
> CMYK-ed when I export the page to PDF?

As far as I have understood other advices on this list, you will not
have to import images as CMYK, but just RGB and then, yes, Scribus
should convert it to CMYK if you chose save as pdf *and* intended for Print.

Thus my workflow has been:
---------------------------
1. Import unedited image
2. Scale the image + its frame until it fits as I wish
3. Use Gimp to rescale my image to the size I found in 2)
4. Import the changed image
(3 and 4 are meant to save space, I don't think you *have* to do this)
  And when I am totally finished
5) Export the whole document as pdf -- then the image should be
converted to CMYK by Scribus, or so I thought it was at least ...

Another connected problem that I am currently having:
-----------------------------------------------------
Right now I got a telephone from my printer saying my pdf resulting from
the steps above are not usable, but greyish instead of grasgreen.

See the results yourselves here:
http://www.bojer.no/Ariadne2006/ariadnes_aarbok2006-omslag-ForSkjerm.pdf
http://www.bojer.no/Ariadne2006/ariadnes_aarbok2006-omslag-TilTrykking.pdf

("skjerm" means screen, and is the rgb variant, "Trykk" means print and
is the one intended to be printed).

When I look at it in XPD or Kpdf it really looks greyish, as he said (he
used Windows I suppose, at least he said he was using Acrobat), but on
acrobat on Linux it show as it should, no greyish tone to it as in xpdf.
  Having repeadedly read in thes thread, that acrobat is to be trusted
over all the other pdf-programs, I trusted it to be OK, but it seems
not. Or is he mistaken??

First guess
------------
What may be the problem is tranparancy, I thought, because:
What I have as a pdf-file is made out of many imageframes linking
to the same picture. They overlap and are partly transparent and not 
flattened. That way the the colur is darker where they overlap because 
it shines through. This gives a nice effect, and keeps the file pretty
small too. But the printer was in doubt wether his equipment would be 
able to use it, I am not sure, but said I think it ought to be ok (after 
all this function is quite the same as in other DTP programs, so I 
excpect this to be no different). But he wanted me to ?flatten the 
image?, that is merge all my layers into one.

The only reasonable way I found to do this (without having to redo 
everything) was to export as png, convert png to tiff, put this tiff
file as the only element in a new Scribus file with the same dimensions 
and then export to pdf again. The same thing happened: In acroread it 
seams ok, but not on Kpdf or xpdf. I have sent it, along with the tiff 
file (in rgb) to the printer. That way, if everything else fails, they 
may do the conversion to cmyk themselves, but I do not find this a good 
solution, it done out out of pure necessity :-(

BTW: It would be really good to be able to export directly to tiff, that 
way I would not have to convert it from png (which did not work) to 
tiff(wich perhaps worked, I am not quite sure, se above).

But I would really like to know how this was *supposed* to have been 
handled, all the more as I want to continue using this printer *and* 
Scribus.

Am I doing something wrong here?

I ought to have it sent and proofed today, so every help is appreciated :-)

Best regards
Axel Bojer