Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 03/22/2011 01:37 AM, Jacek Poplawski wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:30 PM, gespert...@gmail.com
 gespert...@gmail.com  wrote:
 Most of the people ask for CMYK because:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

CMYK is fundamentally different than LAB, HSV and RGB.

In order for RGB values to make colorimetric sense, meaning that the 
CIEXYZ tristimulus values are known, all you need to know are the 
primaries and the white point used.

The tristimulus values for a set of CMYK values depends on the 
characteristics of the pigmets, the pattern in which the colorants are 
arranged on paper, the order in which they are applied, the illuminant 
used, the characteristics of the paper they are applied on, and even the 
age of the print.

Another difference of the CMYK color space compared to e.g. RGB is of 
course it's subtractive nature, meaning that as you increase CMYK 
values, the resulting color will be darker, whereas with RGB, larger 
values means a brighter color.

HSV is just a different representation of RGB values, and LAB values 
makes colorimetric sense by themselves, without any additional information.

That CMYK is fundamentally different than light based additive color 
spaces is the reason why GIMP developers considers CMYK somewhat of a 
special case we can take care of later, we first need to make a program 
that is powerful in the additive color space world.

  / Martin


-- 

My GIMP Blog:
http://www.chromecode.com/
Why GIMP 2.8 is not released yet
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread SorinN
Jacek - you don't need CMYK for photos [I need CMYK support for photo
retouch, to create better colors].

CMYK eventually will kill some nuances - being dependent on the paper
(or other support) color.
RGB colors on screen make use of luminance of the screen pixels  - you
can have many nuances of a base color
because you can control the pixel luminosity.
CMYK is made for help transferring as much color as possible from
screen (other color spaces) to paper - the only white (read light)
come
from the printing support (paper, plastic, etc). True, there are some
special colors with fluorescent additives - but they can't go
everywhere. That's why CMYK is not so equal with other screen based
color spaces.
On short, CMYK can not reproduce the same number of colors.

The assumption that 4 channels is better than 3 is wrong on this case.

You can only make sense working in pure CMYK when you want to have a
very precise reproduction
- but for this goal you need to know exactly the paper they use
(printers) and color profiles they use for the
offset.   The best is to  send them your work in RGB [16 bits /
channel - for smoothest gradients ] and your monitor
profile, then they will know how to get it right. Think that for RGB
to CMYK you loose something anyway.

2011/3/22 Jacek Poplawski jacekpoplaw...@gmail.com:
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:52 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
 alexandre.prokoud...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 3/22/11, Jacek Poplawski wrote:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

 Right, all colorspaces are equal, but some are more equal than others
 :-) The willingness to go from a wider gamut to a narrower gamut for
 editing what will then go to a different color space once again is,
 er, equally amazing :)

 I just mean that they should be treated similarly :)

 For photography? I very much doubt that. When it comes to all things
 related to photography, the point is to preserve as many colors as
 possible. Which is how all those ProPhotoRGB and the like were
 introduced all those years ago. Jumping between wide and narrow gamuts
 effectively kills useful information. Hardly better colors, sorry.

 I was influenced by Dan Margulis. I try to follow his ideas in Gimp,
 instead Photoshop.
 He generally assumes that photography is made from 10 channels: R, G,
 B, L*, A*, B*, C, M, Y, K and you can use any subset of them to
 generate good quality image with good colours.
 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Margulis)

 And everything works as expected, with the exception of realtime
 preview. I just decompose image to LAB or CMYK then use these layers
 for increasing contrast, masking, etc... but using curves in LAB or
 CMYK is very hard without preview, because you have to imagine
 colors. The good thing is that GMIC has support for these colorspaces
 now, and RawTherapee is developing fast.

 PS. sorry for offtopic
 ___
 Gimp-developer mailing list
 Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
 https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer




-- 
Nemes Ioan Sorin
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Jacek Poplawski
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 8:19 AM, SorinN nemes.so...@gmail.com wrote:
 Jacek - you don't need CMYK for photos [I need CMYK support for photo
 retouch, to create better colors].

I am familiar with this opinion. I don't want to continue offtopic
discussion in this thread, so I just give one example: curves. You can
get more interesting retouch when using curves in CMYK and in LAB and
in RGB than using only RGB curves. You can get more data from shadows
by using K curve in CMYK for instance. You can increase contrast
without touching the colors by using L curve. etc
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 03/22/2011 08:25 AM, Jacek Poplawski wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 8:19 AM, SorinNnemes.so...@gmail.com  wrote:
 Jacek - you don't need CMYK for photos [I need CMYK support for photo
 retouch, to create better colors].

 I am familiar with this opinion. I don't want to continue offtopic
 discussion in this thread, so I just give one example: curves. You can
 get more interesting retouch when using curves in CMYK and in LAB and
 in RGB than using only RGB curves. You can get more data from shadows
 by using K curve in CMYK for instance. You can increase contrast
 without touching the colors by using L curve. etc

We are talking about techniques to retouch photos on a mailing list for 
the development of an image editing application, so this is not offtopic.

Why would you transform to CMYK to lose color information just so you 
can increase the K value, rather than making a lossless transformation 
into LAB and decrease the L value?

Note that with GEGL, we will easily be able to have adjustment layers 
that work on the L component in CIELAB.

  / Martin


-- 

My GIMP Blog:
http://www.chromecode.com/
Why GIMP 2.8 is not released yet
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Jacek Poplawski
My current workflow:

1) choose photos in Digikam, copy them to another folder
2) open photo in RawTherapee
3) try to get good colour and contrast in RT, fix highlights, etc,
then export to Gimp (RT has no layers)
4) use RGB curves in Gimp, sometimes decompose to RGB and combine
layers to create BW version
5) use color mixer in GMIC, LAB mixer is good to create toned down
version of colors, CMYK is mixer is good to fix colors different way
(or use GMIC for quick BW version)
6) healing tool (only Gimp can do this)
7) save xcf, export jpgs

The thing I miss are LAB curves and CMYK curves. I asked GMIC
developer for LAB/CMYK curves support and it is there, but UI is hard
to use. RawTherapee has support for LAB curves and they work very good
(and in 16bit mode), but there are no layers in RT.

So I am fan of RT, Gimp and GMIC, this is very good, quite mature free
software. I am also aware of Photivo / LAB Curves. Never tried
Darktable and Krita for photos.

After looking at all available solutions the only way I see for me is
to develop simple application (of course GPL) which will open
jpg/tiff, process image in RGB/LAB/CMYK with curves/mixers/blend modes
then save tiff/jpg again. But I will announce it when ready (or won't
if I fail).

PS. CMYK is also best colorspace for skin color retouch by numbers,
that's why I wanted to fix CMYK values in Gimp colorpicker, but there
was big discussion on this mailing on this subject
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Martin Nordholts
On 03/22/2011 08:20 AM, Martin Nordholts wrote:
 LAB values
 makes colorimetric sense by themselves, without any additional information.

Correction: For CIELAB values to make colorimetric sense, it is 
necessary to also know the reference white point.

  / Martin


-- 

My GIMP Blog:
http://www.chromecode.com/
Why GIMP 2.8 is not released yet
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Jon Senior
On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:14:43 +0100
Jacek Poplawski jacekpoplaw...@gmail.com wrote:

 PS. CMYK is also best colorspace for skin color retouch by numbers,
 that's why I wanted to fix CMYK values in Gimp colorpicker, but there
 was big discussion on this mailing on this subject

Martin: I don't know if this originates with him, but a reference for
this can be found in Skin by Lee Varis. He describes a ratio of C-M-Y
which can be used to numerically adjust skin tone in an image. This
ratio appears to be based on PSes internal CMY(K) colour profile and
thus (I've since discovered) probably has no bearing on anything!

Jacek: My suggestion would be to use a calibrated monitor and an image
which has been curve adjusted in PS to get the skin tones numerically
correct, and then to learn to do it by eye. I think that the
numerical method is good for starting out, but after a while you should
be adjusting to what *you* want, not what the numbers suggest! :-)

Jon
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Martin Nordholts
2011/3/22 Jacek Poplawski jacekpoplaw...@gmail.com:
 CMYK is also best colorspace for skin color retouch by numbers,

No it isn't, because unless you go through a lot of extra work to
avoid it, colors in the image that the used CMYK color space is unable
to represent will get lost.

 / Martin


-- 

My GIMP Blog:
http://www.chromecode.com/
Why GIMP 2.8 is not released yet
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread SorinN
No it isn't, because unless you go through a lot of extra work to
avoid it, colors in the image that the used CMYK color space is unable
to represent will get lost.

True.
Lot of work in studio then offset hardware will trow out different
things ..because :  paper quality, paper type ( coated / uncoated )
which affect reflection of white light (color nuances) ..hardware
color profile ..etc.

2011/3/22 Martin Nordholts ense...@gmail.com:
 2011/3/22 Jacek Poplawski jacekpoplaw...@gmail.com:
 CMYK is also best colorspace for skin color retouch by numbers,

 No it isn't, because unless you go through a lot of extra work to
 avoid it, colors in the image that the used CMYK color space is unable
 to represent will get lost.

  / Martin


 --

 My GIMP Blog:
 http://www.chromecode.com/
 Why GIMP 2.8 is not released yet
 ___
 Gimp-developer mailing list
 Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
 https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer




-- 
Nemes Ioan Sorin
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On 3/22/11, Jacek Poplawski wrote:

 I am familiar with this opinion. I don't want to continue offtopic
 discussion in this thread, so I just give one example: curves. You can
 get more interesting retouch when using curves in CMYK and in LAB and
 in RGB than using only RGB curves.

LAB curves are fine. Transparent work in LAB makes sense, but the
prerequisite is still GIMP 3.0 with high bit depth precision,
otherwise you still lose color data due to rounding errors in 8bpc
mode.

Reference 1: http://brucelindbloom.com/index.html?RGB16Million.html
Reference 2: http://bit.ly/gIjQUh

 You can get more data from shadows
 by using K curve in CMYK for instance.

Oh come on. K curve is simply not the only and even not the best way
to work on various tonal ranges selectively. Check out zone system
implementation in both commercial LightZone and free-as-in-speech
darktable.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-22 Thread Chris Mohler
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 5:30 PM, gespert...@gmail.com
gespert...@gmail.com wrote:
 Those operations are:
 - Combining the alpha channel of the pure C, M, Y, K areas with the
 corresponding separated channel via screen blending mode.
 - Converting desired CMYK percentages to grayscale values and fill the
 selection (the alpha of the area that should have a specific CMYK)
 with the resulting values for each layer created by Separate+

 The resulting file will be perfectly fine, but reaching that point is
 tedious and several things can go wrong in the process.
 So, what if the ideas of spot layers is applied to Separate+, using
 naming conventions to define what to do with them?

This approach you outline would solve most of the use cases I have for
CMYK (overprint, underlay (for dark substrate), one or more CMYK as
spot/solid color, rich black).

What I really miss from photoshop is the poorly-named apply image
command.  It basically allows you to combine any two channels using
the available blending modes (Multiply, Screen, etc.).  Right now, I
have to do a lot of bouncing back and forth between layers, selections
and channels.  But that's probably well beyond the scope of what
you're suggesting so I'll shut up now ;)

Chris
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread gespert...@gmail.com
Hi. Although it's a good idea to have the separate- plugin bundled in
default GIMP installation, I'd like to discuss some enhancements that
could be done in its bigger brother Separate+ to make it more
functional for people who needs more advanced CMYK usage.
The idea is quite simple and wouldn't even require changes in GIMP,
although I think we should discuss the default behavior of GIMP when
opening CMYK files (and that would probably require the modification
of the import plugins of formats that allow that color mode). But
that's a different story, let me explain the idea first :-)

After reading about (Pippin's) idea of CMYK/spot projections instead
of a native CMYK mode for GIMP I realized that some of those concepts
could be applied to extend the existing separate+ plugin.
It doesn't look too difficult to implement and it would probably calm
down most of the people who needs CMYK and grasps every opportunity to
start endless discussions about why GIMP isn't adequate :-p, at least
until the real thing is ready*

Currently, Separate+ plugin separates a flattened RGB image into CMYK.
it uses layers (or layers with layer masks) to display the separated
CMYK channels.
It's effective for color managed conversions (it even allows to use
devicelink profiles) but when some manual tweaking is needed there's
no way other than working on the fake channels or the pseudo-composite
masks directly, with the disadvantage of not having a reliable
feedback of the operations performed.

Most of the people ask for CMYK because:
- they want to use C, M, Y, K channels as spot colors in certain parts
of the image (for pure cyan, magenta, yellow, green, red or blue)
- they want to control black generation (for pure black text or grays.
Which is again using the K plate as a spot plate).
- They want to create custom rich black or super black areas.
- they think they can get perfect Pantone colors.

For the rest of the cases there's no better choice than relying on
color management, so it's reasonable to expect a proper conversion
when the right profiles are used.

But what happens with those particular cases I mentioned? Is it
possible to do that currently in GIMP?
Pretty much, yes. But it's tedious and error prone.
Using Separate and then tweaking the pseudo-channels allows to solve
those problems, but with some time consuming operations.

Those operations are:
- Combining the alpha channel of the pure C, M, Y, K areas with the
corresponding separated channel via screen blending mode.
- Converting desired CMYK percentages to grayscale values and fill the
selection (the alpha of the area that should have a specific CMYK)
with the resulting values for each layer created by Separate+

The resulting file will be perfectly fine, but reaching that point is
tedious and several things can go wrong in the process.
So, what if the ideas of spot layers is applied to Separate+, using
naming conventions to define what to do with them?

Example 1:
Adding overprinted pure black text and strokes on a color illustration.
Preparation: put the color illustration to be separated with Separate+
in the bottom layer, in other layer named pure-k put the text and
strokes.
Procedure (to be automated):
a) Separate with Separate+ as usual.
b) take the pure-k layer's alpha channel in the original file, blend
it using screen mode on the separated k pseudo-channel.

note: pure-k, pure-c, pure-m, pure-y would be the names for
these special layers.

Example 2:
Creating a logo with a custom rich black or Pantone color
Preparation: put the color illustration to be separated with Separate+
in the bottom layer, in other layer named c60m50y30k10 put the logo.
Procedure (to be automated):
a) separate with Separate+ as usual.
b) take the c60m50y30k10 layer's alpha, copy the selection to the
separated document, convert every porcentage to a grayscale value  and
fill the selection with the corresponding values for each
pseudo-channel.

note: choosing arbitrary ink amounts may exceed the TAC for the target
profile. Ideally this should be controlled but probably this is too
fine-grained for a temporary solution and the user should take this
precaution (after all, this can also happen with a native CMYK mode if
the user doesn't check warnings)
About Pantone colors: it's pretty much useless to rely on Pantone CMYK
values since they only work if very precise printing conditions are
met. In my experience it's better to recourse to a color managed
conversion from the Formula swatches (which are stored in Lab and GIMP
can use them converted to RGB in a GPL palette).
In my opinion converted formula colors look closer to spot colors than
official Pantone CMYK values in most of the print shops I printed
with.
This method is actually endorsed by Pantone as the most appropriate
for intermediate/late binding workflows.

Example 3:
In this post from David Revoy he used the previous cases together, but
he used Photoshop for the task:

Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread Jacek Poplawski
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:30 PM, gespert...@gmail.com
gespert...@gmail.com wrote:
 Most of the people ask for CMYK because:

I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.
Instead focusing on CMYK I would give Gimp access to use any defined
colorspace in realtime, just as RGB.

Any RGB image can be coverted to LAB/HSV/CMYK, it works in current
version of Gimp.
The thing which doesn't work is realtime display, after decomposing
layers user see only grayscale representation of each layer.

So adding support to display group of layers as RGB/LAB/HSV/CMYK could
be good first step.
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread gespert...@gmail.com
2011/3/21 Jacek Poplawski jacekpoplaw...@gmail.com:
 On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:30 PM, gespert...@gmail.com
 gespert...@gmail.com wrote:
 Most of the people ask for CMYK because:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB.

Well, CMYK is quite different than LAB actually.
Could you please elaborate about how you can create better color in a
colorspace which is device dependent and has tipically a smaller gamut
than most of the RGB working spaces?
When you work in CMYK mode in a program like Photoshop, the visual
feedback you get is an on-screen soft-proof of the CMYK color
converted to your working RGB profile. So what you see isn't really
what you get, and it's probably better idea to do your photo
retouching in RGB soft-proofing to your target CMYK.
The good thing about this is that you'll keep the larger gamut and
your colors won't be unnecessarily and irreversibly clipped to a
smaller gamut.
CMYK (and it's not just me saying this) is an output colorspace to
send images to four-inks process printers. With color management the
CMYK mode should be legacy.

 It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

That's not completely true. If inks were perfect, the fourth channel
wouldn't be necessary.
Black was added to compensate CMY inks imperfections and also to save
ink and make prints cheaper.
Tell me if that's not a declaration of device-dependent colorspace!
When it comes to monitors, it's obvious you need to work in a device
dependent colorspace. You can't use another device to see your images
when you manipulate them, so there's a reasonable excuse to use device
dependent colorspaces as working profiles in that case.
But how your RGB image is separated to CMYK is defined in the target
profile. Messing with those separations individually is modifying the
way they were separated by the profile, which is the one in charge of
converting the colors to the best possible values for the target
device.
Despite it's a pretty common practice, it doesn't sound correct.

 Instead focusing on CMYK I would give Gimp access to use any defined
 colorspace in realtime, just as RGB.
...
 So adding support to display group of layers as RGB/LAB/HSV/CMYK could
 be good first step.

As far as I know (please correct me if I'm wrong), the idea with GEGL
is to work in device-independent, 32bpc float linear space and then go
to Lab, RGB (or even CMYK) depending on the need.
So the first step you mention is on the works. What I discussed in my
previous message was an interim solution mostly for black generation
and pure CMYK primaries, the things that management won't solve
exactly as the user wants.

Gez.
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On 3/22/11, Jacek Poplawski wrote:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

Right, all colorspaces are equal, but some are more equal than others
:-) The willingness to go from a wider gamut to a narrower gamut for
editing what will then go to a different color space once again is,
er, equally amazing :)

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread Jacek Poplawski
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:12 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
alexandre.prokoud...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 3/22/11, Jacek Poplawski wrote:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

 Right, all colorspaces are equal, but some are more equal than others
 :-) The willingness to go from a wider gamut to a narrower gamut for
 editing what will then go to a different color space once again is,
 er, equally amazing :)

I just mean that they should be treated similarly :)
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On 3/22/11, Jacek Poplawski wrote:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

 Right, all colorspaces are equal, but some are more equal than others
 :-) The willingness to go from a wider gamut to a narrower gamut for
 editing what will then go to a different color space once again is,
 er, equally amazing :)

 I just mean that they should be treated similarly :)

For photography? I very much doubt that. When it comes to all things
related to photography, the point is to preserve as many colors as
possible. Which is how all those ProPhotoRGB and the like were
introduced all those years ago. Jumping between wide and narrow gamuts
effectively kills useful information. Hardly better colors, sorry.

It *might* be OK to go from RGB to CMYK in case the picture will then
be saved to CMYK TIFF or CMYK PSD and inserted into a DTP app, an even
then you need a profile for exactly the printing device that will be
used, because in case of printing color reproduction depends on things
like the kind of paper and the kind of inks. There simply is no such
thing as device independent CMYK profile. So editing an arbitrary
picture in arbitrary CMYK color space defined by an arbitrary ICC
profile simply doesn't make any sense. For some reason this has become
a sad common practice, but it doesn't mean that it's the right thing
to do :)

Even working in CMYK natively from scratch makes sense in just one
case: when you create an illustration for printing and, again, you
have the profile for the device that will do the printing. Otherwise
you just screw up color reproduction.

Given how design tends to be multidevice now, especially branding
(same pictures used in e.g. printed leaflets and on website) the best
workflow is to work with high bit depth precision in a color space
with as wide gamut as possible (not CMYK) and then selectively tune
things for every output device. The earlier proposal by Peter Sikking
(a special projection in output device color space) makes quite a lot
of sense there, *if* there will be additional tools implemented to do
on-site work like trapping etc. and *if* it will be possible to assign
spot colors and export them properly to PDF. The latter right now
simply isn't possible, because the existing PDF exporter  uses Cairo
which is still missing spot colors implementation in thePDF backend.

There are so many things regarding CMYK and printing like GCR and UCR
and best method for rendering intent for each job that should be taken
into consideration when going from RGB to CMYK that treating CMYK as
any arbitrary color space is simply impossible. I can understand how
this could be frustrating for someone who is used to treat CMYK
exactly that way, though.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-21 Thread Jacek Poplawski
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:52 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
alexandre.prokoud...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 3/22/11, Jacek Poplawski wrote:

 I need CMYK support for photo retouch, to create better colors.
 CMYK is no different than LAB, HSV or RGB. It is colorspace like
 others, but uses 4 channels instead 3.

 Right, all colorspaces are equal, but some are more equal than others
 :-) The willingness to go from a wider gamut to a narrower gamut for
 editing what will then go to a different color space once again is,
 er, equally amazing :)

 I just mean that they should be treated similarly :)

 For photography? I very much doubt that. When it comes to all things
 related to photography, the point is to preserve as many colors as
 possible. Which is how all those ProPhotoRGB and the like were
 introduced all those years ago. Jumping between wide and narrow gamuts
 effectively kills useful information. Hardly better colors, sorry.

I was influenced by Dan Margulis. I try to follow his ideas in Gimp,
instead Photoshop.
He generally assumes that photography is made from 10 channels: R, G,
B, L*, A*, B*, C, M, Y, K and you can use any subset of them to
generate good quality image with good colours.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Margulis)

And everything works as expected, with the exception of realtime
preview. I just decompose image to LAB or CMYK then use these layers
for increasing contrast, masking, etc... but using curves in LAB or
CMYK is very hard without preview, because you have to imagine
colors. The good thing is that GMIC has support for these colorspaces
now, and RawTherapee is developing fast.

PS. sorry for offtopic
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


[Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-12 Thread Yoshinori Yamakawa
Hi,

According to the GIMP Roadmap, it seems to take time very much for the
CMYK support to be added to the GIMP.

Now we can use the separate+ plug-in, but I think that the separate+
plug-in is not proper for the GIMP distribution because the separate+
plug-in has unnecessary features for general users and the separate+
workflow is not very seamless.

The Separate+ team has written the subset version of separate+ (named
separate-) as a GIMP file plug-in. Separate- is the CMYK file exporter
and is very simple to use. It supports TIFF, JPEG and Photoshop PSD formats.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=640613

-- 
Yoshinori Yamakawa y...@yellowmagic.info
___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer


Re: [Gimp-developer] CMYK file export plug-in

2011-03-12 Thread Joao S. O. Bueno
On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Yoshinori Yamakawa
y...@yellowmagic.info wrote:
 Hi,

 According to the GIMP Roadmap, it seems to take time very much for the
 CMYK support to be added to the GIMP.

 Now we can use the separate+ plug-in, but I think that the separate+
 plug-in is not proper for the GIMP distribution because the separate+
 plug-in has unnecessary features for general users and the separate+
 workflow is not very seamless.

 The Separate+ team has written the subset version of separate+ (named
 separate-) as a GIMP file plug-in. Separate- is the CMYK file exporter
 and is very simple to use. It supports TIFF, JPEG and Photoshop PSD formats.

 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=640613


From the feedback I have from users here in Brazil - and I mean
professional artists
working with FreeSoftware, I'd say it would be very important if we
could get this in GIMP 2.8

Even if for gimp 3.0 and beyod we think of CMYK exports in a totally
different way - all plug-ins will have to be rethough when we get to
GIMP 3.0 anyway. The demand for this ability however we agree that it
is not the best approach, is very high in the professional levels. At
least around here, where the print stores  use to require
pre-separated artwork from the authors.

Regards,

  js
 --


 --
 Yoshinori Yamakawa y...@yellowmagic.info
 ___
 Gimp-developer mailing list
 Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
 https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer

___
Gimp-developer mailing list
Gimp-developer@lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU
https://lists.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer