[scribus] Ink mixing and representation (was Re: Some clarifications regarding Pantone [was: making your own Pantone color list])

[William Adams]

On Sep 25, 2013, at 1:17 AM, Christoph Schäfer wrote:

>> The one publishing application which got colour right was Cerilica's Truism 
> 
> Never heard of it. Do you have a link?

Sadly long-vanished --- can't recall who bought the copyrights. I'm sure some searching would turn up something beyond my wistful mentionings of it though.

>> --- it used individual ink definitions instead of multiple ones, and instead, had a concept of ``substrate'' w/ attendant colour and ink absorption characteristics at the page level.
>> 
>> This allowed one to define a spread has having two _different_ types of paper (which often happens when one has a cross-over ad at the inside front (or back) and first (or last) pages of a magazine) and to have the ad previewed on-screen as it would actually print.
>> 
>> One could also do coloured paper and preview how the ink would appear on it, or separations w/ arbitrary ink (an amazing example I saw once was a jeans catalog printed in blue and brown which looked amazingly lifelike despite being printed w/ only 2 inks --- this inspired me to do a bell pepper vegetable display box once using red and green inks which we mixed to create brown so as to make a quite nice print of a full-colour photograph despite using only 2 inks).
> 
> This is all extremely tricky, because one has to ask at which level this can be implemented. Is it the provider of digital colour swatches? The design program? The print operator?
> 
> IMHO, it's up to the operator and versatile printing software to handle this issue. Designers' options are fairly limited in this regard.

Designers' options are limited 'cause they limit themselves to the default featuresets of programs. If this becomes a default feature and is handled robustly it's a no-brainer.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.