Software Needed for Flyers, etc. using CMYK

Hi,
I am a more than 10year Linuxuser now, and I all my environment (personal and business) I try to use and distribute free software as much as I can. My wife is a pro photographer, working mostly with Lightroom on windows (could not yet get to convert her). Luckily she works better with Gimp 2.10 than with Photoshop. She likes Gimp more (what makes me super happy).
Now we wanted to create a kind of flyer and send the files to a printing company (flyeralarm.de) here in Germany.
Now my question is such: There is - naturally - a huge difference between rgb and cmyk. “Professionals” would create a Photoshop Project directly in CMYK colorspace to work in it, to avoid huge color differences to rgb.

Now we created a wonderful graphic in Gimp, and asked ourselfs: what would be the best way to convert it to cmyk colorspace? We OWN photoshop, but my goal is to get away from all adobe products (she doesnt use but lightroom); is this separat++ plugin (never tried it) good / pro enough to convert it in gimp?

I also checked out, that Krita can convert it to CMYK, but after that it looks totally the same (what cant be, right?)

How would you do that?
And:
Is there a software I could create such a (printing) project directly beginning in the cmyk ?

I would be so happy if you could help us

Kind regards from germany

Pragomer

Krita or Scribus are probably your best options. FYI a GIMP developer is working on CMYK support right now!

1 Like

hey paperdigits. thanks for your answer and help. Krita is the way I will got I think. I will take the graphic that I compozed in Gimp (because my gimp skills are better that other skills) , loaded the finished jpg-file in krita an just converted it. This method was easiest and seems to be ok.
So great to hear that a dev works on cmyk support for gimp. Do you have any further info or link to an info about this?
thanks again, and kind regards

You can see a post from the gimp dev here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cmyk-progress-22901518

Depending on your needs, you might also want to try my PhotoFlow editor. It has basic CMYK support. It is for example possible to open a RAW, Jpeg or TIFF image, convert to a CMYK profile, apply some adjustments (like curves) directly on the CMYK channels, and then save the output as a CMYK TIFF file.

Here is an appetiser:

Let me know if that might be useful, in which case I’d be happy to give you additional help on how to set-up your edit with PhF!

5 Likes

For a conversion both in and out try Cyan https://cyan.fxarena.net/

Easy to set up in linux, copy the Cyan file (24 MB) to /usr/bin, check that it is executable, run it once to set up the icc profiles

It creates its own plugin in the Gimp profile

Looks like this

Still early version, not keen on embedded thumbnails

However Gimp is RGB. As far as I know the only one in linux, start to finish in CMYK is Krita

Hello Pragomer, there are some options to convert from rgb to cmyk on Linux. Of course there is no native option in Gimp but alternatives are from good to excellent. I work with printing services (http://www.acpack.es/, http://www.andurina.com/) from a long time and I had no problems sending cmyk files from linux.
The first method is using an external application as Cyan

The second method is using another external application CMYKTool

Method%2002%20CMYKTool

The third method is using Krita

And the forth method is using Gimp with the plugin Separate+ created by Alastair Robinson the author of CMYKTool

At this time, for me and IMHO Krita and Cyan are the best options both from quality and live projects.

2 Likes

@Carmelo_DrRaw OMG! that dog! such a cutie! Is it part boxer ? alsolutely adorable. Any change you’d make the raw available for Play-Raw? :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

I also checked out, that Krita can convert it to CMYK, but after that it looks totally the same (what cant be, right?)

As far as I know it depends on the colors in the image. It can look the same but with some colors it does not. I remember flyer I made years ago in RGB and the text was in a yellowish/golden color. After converting it to CMYK the text had a more neonyellow color.

You said that you own photoshop so you could just test it. If it looks the same there krita converted it correct also and you can deinstall photoshop :wink:

That’s actually from an old PlayRAW… I need to find out which one!

Does it look the same in standard view or in soft proofing mode (Ctrl+Y)?

1 Like

She was beagle and boston terrier. I guess that’s now a designer mutt, but she was OG before that particular mix was a thing.:grinning:

1 Like

do you still have the raw?

I deleted it off of Google Drive, but @patdavid added it here. Just click on the [PlayRaw] post and you’ll see it.

1 Like

@MLC yeah sorry I just noticed it was linked to :stuck_out_tongue: oops. thanks @Jacal for linking!

hi, thank you so much for your answer. I will try Photoflow and let you know about my experience. Kind regards