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[Gian Paolo Mureddu]

Máirín Duffy escribió:
> Hi Gian,
>
> Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
>> Clint Savage escribió:
>>> I do.  I have done that before many times.  I'll look into doing that
>>> on sunday.  I assume you are referring to the fact that I need to make
>>> the images CMYK and making them pdfs so printers won't complain.  I'm
>>> capable of doing that :)
>>>
>>> Thanks for the vote of confidence.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Clint
>>>   
>> You don't have to do that, actually... 
>
> Why don't you need to do it? The printers must have sent the cd and 
> sleeve designs for Fedora 7 back and forth with me at least 20 times 
> before they could do anything with them. They couldn't get the colors 
> to come out right at all and eventually gave up (You'll note that the 
> Fedora 7 discs are actually purple, not blue. That's why.) That was a 
> nightmare and ever since I've used Scribus for setting up colors 
> (definitely for Fedora 9 and I think Fedora 8's media artwork) and it 
> just went so much more smoothly.
>
> So I do really think you have to do it, unless you know something I 
> don't? :)?

I wouldn't *DARE* to say I know something you don't, Mo ;)

However in my experience (and that may very well too subjective) Scribus 
can pretty much represent all colors on screen through CMYK (kind of 
converting them on-the-fly, or so it would seem). I have also struggled 
for the longest time to get colors right on print-outs with Linux (any 
distro, pretty much any program). However since F8 (IIRC, or was it F7?) 
the inclusion of lcms has actually helped a lot for color management 
(still a bit rudimentary as it would seem you have to do it in a 
per-application basis instead of being applied to the X session, like 
Windows or Mac seem to do it [and they still have per-application settings])

>
>> However Scribus SVG support is rather flaky and most of the time 
>> (except for really simple "kosher" SVG files) you will get an error 
>> stating that some features of the file were not supported. Also it 
>> tends to get the size "wrong", not the actual size of the drawing, 
>> but rather it kind of adds an additional "holding box" to the 
>> drawing. My personal recommendation when handling graphics with 
>> Scribus would be to export to EPS and then import that into Scribus, 
>> or export to bitmap (with the added side effect of reduced quality 
>> and "raster artifacts" [pixelation]). Regarding color management, I'd 
>> recommend you use the very latest snapshot of Scribus available from 
>> the OpenSuSE repo (there is a Fedora yum repo for it) because the one 
>> included in Fedora is quite outdated, and now largely unsupported (v 
>> 1.3.4), then you may grab the package with ICC profiles off Adobe's 
>> download section and install one of those ICC profiles into scribus 
>> so you get a color managed window (it is NOT recommended to install a 
>> printer ICC profile into Scribus unless you *REALLY* need it and the 
>> target printer supports it). Then you can generate the desired PDF 
>> and you may even embed an ICC profile into it to ensure proper 
>> display/print, don't forget to select the desired target media when 
>> generating the PDF!
>
> Is it effective to use the color profiles if your monitor isn't 
> calibrated? (I honestly don't know but I wouldn't assume so which is 
> why I don't bother with color profiles right now)
>
> I assume that doing the artwork first in Inkscape and then importing 
> it into scribus and modifying the palette in Scribus to have the exact 
> CMYK colors needed will ensure the colors come out right in the end 
> since a CMYK value is a CMYK value (maybe not as reproducable as a 
> spot color but more reliable than picking blindly based on what shows 
> up on my monitor.) Past experience printing Fedora swag has shown this 
> to be close enough / true enough that I'm comfortable with this method.

The main problem with CMYK (again, at least in my experience) is that 
support for this color space in Inkscape is MORE than flaky, it would 
seem that color values "wouldn't stick", that may be due to the fact 
that Inkscape follows as close as possible the SVG specification which 
IIRC only support SRGB, and Inkscape actually converts those SRGB color 
values to CMYK color space on-the-fly (or so I remember reading, albeit 
some time ago, on the Inkscape mailing list, most likely things have 
changed in 0.46, maybe I'll ask in the list again). I'm not sure if the 
color values are perfectly preserved when you import the vector graphics 
from Inkscape to Scribus (SVG, EPS or PS format), but I can tell you 
that *perceptually* speaking it would seem that colors you *see* on the 
screen (when you color manage Scribus, of course) indeed is the color 
you *get* (or very close) on the print out. This, though good, is a bit 
problematic, as you can't actually change the colors of the objects you 
import into Scribus and can only see the resulting colors as they may be 
printed, and any modifications imply that you have to go back to 
Inkscape, modify the color, and "test" again in Scribus (at least that's 
how I've done it, not the best way, though). Inkscape also supports (or 
has initial support for) color management in 0.46, but I have not been 
able to get reliable color representation with it. Another way I guess 
would be to get this with The GIMP whose color management seems to be 
more reliable than that of Inkscape and also support SVG files (both 
read and write to), but I must confess I have not tried with it. What I 
have done, though, is that since Inkscape has this color management 
support, I load the same color pofile into it as I do on Scribus and I 
seem to get much better results in that way. However this is with 
perceived colors, and not specific *actual* values (like those of the 
Fedora logo, and what is stipulated in the guidelines). I'll have to 
play around with the color values of the logo and see how are they 
represented in the different programs (The GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus) and 
how do they actually "print" from the different programs.

>
> However, i don't really know so much about using monitor profiles and 
> color profiles at all and if you do I would love some advice/help!
>
> Thanks,
> ~m

I'm only starting to get into this whole new world (to me) of color 
management, and have been following a few guides (for Mac or Windows, 
and trying to apply them to LCMS and the array of programs that actually 
support loading profiles, etc) and I can't yet say I "understand" a 
whole lot. I understand the basic idea behind color management, and why 
it is a must (especially in the print and publishing industries), and am 
struggling to understand "color accuracy representation across media 
types", etc. It would seem that with all these tools available, there is 
no way to ensure 100% accurate color representation, there are simply 
too many factors  (no two monitors render colors exactly the same, no 
two printers print colors exactly the same, regardless of the ink, 
apparently there might even be  slight colorimetric variations in two 
different color cartridges from the *same vendor*, color perception may 
even vary from person-to-person). I must confess that I'm only an 
amateur at this, and am only starting to get into the theory behind the 
magic of color management, publishing and design altogether.