Hello, This is my first email on this mailing list, so welcome everyone and keep up the good work.
This is the problem: I want to design some documents like flyers, business cards, etcetera. I want to do this with open source tools under Linux. I want to be able to deliver my files directly to the press without convert special things. I am very familiar with The GIMP. So I started to make my business-cards. Maybe I made my first mistake here, I don't know yet! I took a high resolution design because I wanted to use it for more things. (2400x2400) The business-card has a final size of 55x85mm and has colours to the edge. So I put 1mm on every size so the total size will be 57x87mm. I exported my file to Tiff without compression. I use to ImageMagick tools from here. convert "Image - Front - RGB.tiff" -colorspace CMYK "Image - Front - CMYK.tiff" identify -verbose "Image- Front - CMYK.tiff" > "Identify - Front - CMYK.txt" I converted my file to CMYK and did a check, good colour profile. 3 colors White for the background of the Tiff, Black and Aqua for text and lines. Know some issues here: Why do they what 300 dpi files? 300 dpi means 300 dots of inkt per inch? So if want 57x87mm file I must have a resolution of = ((5.7/2.54)x300)=673 ((8.7/2.54)x300)=1028 == 673x1028 at 300 dpi will result in a image of 57x87mm. convert "Image - Front - RGB.tiff" -colorspace CMYK -geometry 1028x673 -density 300x300 "Image - Front - Geometry - Density - CMYK.tiff" identify -verbose "PowerCraft Technology - Visitekaartje v1.6 - Front - Geometry - Density - CMYK.tiff" > "Identify - Front - Geometry - Density - CMYK.txt" Now the resolution and and color profile are good. But the Geometry option does a anti aliasing effect and turns my card in a full > 500 color file. I can correct this by using this command: convert "PowerCraft Technology - Visitekaartje v1.6 - Back - RGB.tiff" -font Courier -colorspace CMYK -sample 1028x673 -density 300x300 "Image - Back - Sample - Density - CMYK.tiff" identify -verbose "Image - Back - Sample - Density - CMYK.tiff" > "Identify - Back - Sample - Density - CMYK.txt" The resulting file I can send to my printer (HP Color LaserJet 8500DN) But the quality of a 300 dpi image sucks on my printer if I sent the converted CMYK file to my printer it looks fine. Why do they use such low resolutions? And here I think I made a mistake by using image based text made with The GIMP? What are the specifications of file's I can send to the press, end how can I create files according to these specifications I send the original RGB TIFF file and all converted TIFF CMYK images to a press but could not use them. They went creating new files. And wanted to now every color and text type and text size of every word. Now I can pay them. And I still don't now how to create a good file that I can sent to the press. What am I doing wrong here? Can't I bitmap based things in DTP should I only use vector based elements? I am feeling totally screwed here, please help me?
