[Scribus] Example of what I would like to do

[Craig Ringer]

dbeach at klikmaker.com wrote:

> I would like to find out how much of this can be done with Open Source
> apps. I have a sample page from our current catalog at:

The answer is usually "all of it - but how quickly and how well?" . For
some tasks the current OSS apps are ideal, and for others they presently
fall somewhat short in that you must use more cumbersome production
methods or workarounds for technical limitations. The best way to find
out whether your task will work smoothly and well is to try it,
something it sounds like you're already working on.

> So far, I haven't been able to puzzle out how to make those blocks of  
> copy in my sample, with tabs and rules under each line. I also do not  
> know how to use The GIMP to generate CMYK TIFFs with clipping paths.

You don't need to. You can simply use RGB images, and have Scribus do
the colour managed conversion to CMYK on PDF export. For this you need a
good press profile and a reasonable idea of the nature of your source
images, but you need one of those to get a good result out of
Photoshop's CMYK conversion anyway.

This takes some getting used to as an idea, but it's probably the best
workflow with open source tools at the moment. It's also the direction
all the commercial stuff is moving in, as CMYK conversion gets pushed
back further and further toward the press its self (for very good
reasons). The unfortunate bit is that the GIMP not only lacks the
ability to save a CMYK image, but at present also lacks the ability to
use your press profile to warn you about out-of-gamut areas. Scribus can
help here, though it's gamut warning can be overly cautious for some
types of image.

As an alternative, you could look into CinePaint or Krita for your CMYK
editing work.

As for vector images - Scribus supports fairly decent SVG, EPS and (in
development versions only AFAIK) WMF import. There are some caveats if
your printer requires PDF 1.3 (which lacks transparency support) but it
should generally work well.

--
Craig Ringer