Addressing Inkscape's Biggest Problem: CMYK
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- Inkscape is amazing. There's lots of things I love about Inkscape. However, there's one flaw it has that I'll be addressing in this video, and that is working with CMYK color profiles.
When designing something for print, a CMYK color profile is required to ensure that your design looks the same in print as it does on your screen. Unfortunately, Inkscape doesn't yet have the ability to work in the CMYK environment, but there are a few workarounds that I'll be exploring in this video.
Video Breakdown:
00:00 Intro
00:48 Difference between CMYK and RGB
03:49 ExportPDFCMYK extension
04:37 Scribus
05:43 Krita
06:50 RGB2CMYK
07:41 Illustrator and Affinity
Links:
ExportPDFCMYK extension: github.com/jonata/Inkscape-OU...
Scribus tutorial: • Create CMYK Files with...
RGB2CMYK: www.rgb2cmyk.org/
Convert RGB to CMYK with Illustrator: • Easily Convert RGB to ...
Want to learn more about how Inkscape works? Check out the Inkscape Master Class - a comprehensive series of over 50 videos where I go over every tool, feature and function in Inkscape and explain what it is, how it works, and why it's useful: logosbynick.com/inkscape/
Intro song: "In Da Mood" by Combustibles, used with written permission
The Irony calling the program Inkscape, but the output can't be reproduced by Ink. Should call themselves Lightscape instead.
That’s the limitation of printing inks. Even the most expensive coffee-table-quality colour printing process cannot match the range of colours that a common-or-garden computer monitor can display.
Hahaha! I was watching this video and thinking about that, dude. It's so true!
Like professional industrial printers have quite decent RGB CMYK nowadays. Why is this still an issue?
@@Morjensful but not all user use professional printers, ofcourse it still an issue
@@Morjensful Inkjet printers have better colour gamut but are expensive for long run printing. But I don't think anyone here has a clue about commercial printing, so not an issue.
I'm a printer who has used Inkscape, Illustrator and Corel over the years. I love inkscape and have used it successfully. In my experience, no software will truly represent the printed final. This is why we do printed proofs. So much depends on the screen it's on, even when using Illustrator. I've displayed the same electronic proof on multiple displays and get different representations on each. Even printed on different equipment types give different results using the same cmyk defs.You have to do printed proofs on the machine that will produce the final until it's where you want it.
Thanks for your input! Great to hear from someone in the business.
that could be because, when you even open illustrator on CMYK;
your screen is still RGB, so it works like converters. and we know that converters doesn't work well.
I have the same experience. Screen to print conversion is so much trouble that pro photographers even have special equipment attached to their LCD screens so it mimics what the colors will look like when printed. Even so the kind of paper its printed on and the ambient lighting will always make it look different from what you see onscreen.
@@LogosByNick Love your channel, btw. Great job you do.
Particularly since printing inks vary from one batch to the next. So you need to recalibrate for every print run. Does having CMYK-format files really help? It seems to me they just get in the way.
I've been in printing for 25 years. We used to convert RGB support files individually before prepping for print. But, now ALL files come in RGB, unless it's from an old-school design house, or very experienced designer. We have software now that converts all of the on the fly. But, yes, your point that you may not get back something that looks like your PDF on the screen is right on. Also, never in my career has any place I've worked rejected a file for not being CMYK, or spot colors. Especially nowadays as print slowly dies.
As an old designer... i find that the majority of designs coming in as RGB so sad.
Agreed. I have long left my design days behind but even back at the time a lot of printing services were already willing to accept RGB files and would convert to CMYK themselves (letting the customer know of the caveats of doing such conversion "on the fly", of course). I've seen graphic designers that wouldn't even bother to calibrate their screens so they definitely wouldn't bother with their work printed colors looking slightly off. The minor exception I still see these days is when the designer is requested to follow very specific color guides (with PANTONE color schemes reference numbers and what not) by the customer but as I said, I haven't stepped into a graphic house in decades so I don't know how much relevant that sort of thing remains these days, specially nowadays with the demand for dead trees going the way of the dodo. His point still stands, though.
Explaining itis the hardest part. When I mentioned things like colour gamut you can see their eyes glaze over. I personally do my default design in CMYK even if it is from Screen and then export to RGB because I know that if the client decides to go to print I will be in trouble. I also recommend if you're going to use an RGB profile to use Adobe (1998) it has a much more narrow colour gamut than sRGB and may give you the closest thing to actual CMYK conversion
Wait... wait... wait...! People are that dump. How can you give a rgb file to print house for any kind of printing.
In jpg ideally witch have 256 deph of color for channel :( Fuck
@IJK I work for one of the biggest printing companies in the world, and I can tell you, we take what we are given, and make do. No salesperson these days pushes back on easily fixed files, and most clients expect a lot more from us than used to be the case.
Oh Gosh! That’s is why I’m always bugged with my printed results, you really helped sort that out Nick!
Thanks Nick, your tutorials are some of the best I've ever seen in any subject - so clear and straight to the point.
Thank you very much for this awesome video. I'm not a designer but I love Inkscape, and look forward to learning from your tutorials. Many thanks again.
There's also filters> color> nudge CMYK, simulate CMYK, color shift. Or extensions> color, and there's more adjustment options in there for shifting your color pallets closer to CMYK. Nudge CMYK and color shift both give you adjustment menus like the hue, saturation, and brightness menu
I swear, Nick is the best teacher when it comes to stuff like this! Thanks Nick!
For me, using only CMYK color while designing and exporting using the extension worked flawlessly. Thank you so much for this video!
Bro , this is so underrated !!!! Why nobody talks about this in the POD field.
All the youtube tutorials about POD ARE A WASTE if you don't fix this issue . Seems intentional almost , or maybe just too little know about it !!?
Anyways very thankful for your share of leads here .
Excellent! This video was completely necessary and widely expected. Thank you so much.
The RGB vs CMYK colour spaces very nicely explained and illustrated I might add.
Wow. Immensely impressed with your deep knowledge of CMYK and supporting work-around software! Subscribed ;)
Thanks you for doing this video. I asked a question about how Linux users got around the CMYK issue on your review of Affinity video. Up until that point I wasn't aware Inkscape didn't do CMYK. You are a great help to the community, thanks again.
Since inkscape is open source lets all email them with this request.
It has already been done 16 years ago gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/2489
I don't like any of these options as out of the box solution is better, so that is a good idea @Josue :)
Correction: "Since Inkscape is open source, «them» is you too. so if you know how to do it in a good way, just help code it and I'll merge it"
@@wincent84 out of the box solutions are only better if you dont want to take the time to tweak your software
Rather than passively waiting, why not sponsor a developer?
Back in the 1980’s, Adobe released a series of white papers on their then brand new technology, PostScript. In the White Book (the papers were published with colored covers), there is a lengthy discussion on converting RGB to CYMK. In an overly simplified terms, colors with the same shade of grey become that grey with the other colors (CYM) lighten by that amount. It’s complex I practice, the white paper describes the full process.
Can you share it?
Hi ! Inkscape dev here.
«(s)RGB is the only colorspace Inkscape supports» is not completely accurate. However it's true that it's a very convoluted and *very* error-prone process below. Also a bit buggy (especially in 1.0, iirc it has a major bug there)
To set the colorspace In Inkscape you can go to Document Properties -> Color first to add it to the document, then *all* your colors must be set *not* in the CMYK tab of fill&stroke (which uses sRGB but with C,M,Y,K sliders), or by using the palette (defined in #rrggbb colors), but *exclusively* in the "CMS" tab of Fill&Stroke. Then, when you save your file, you end up with a perfectly valid color-managed SVG file, which will not get you far (probably no one accepts this kind of file***). The libraries Inkscape uses for rendering and managing PDFs are unable to write a color-managed PDF, so your (FLOSS) options are :
- The python extension, as far as I understand it, runs "convert" (from imagemagick) to put the (sRGB) svg into whatever format you asks by doing an automatic conversion. It should actually be similar to online converters, but I haven't looked deeply into the code, so might be better. These automated conversions can work in two distinct ways : either it interprets the sRGB color in terms of an absolute color space (CIELAB for instance) and looks for the closest color in the required target colorspace, or just uses some formula (like github.com/jonata/Inkscape-OUTPUT-PRO/blob/master/outputpro/cmyk.py#L6 ) and hope for the best. In both cases, what happens if your original color is not doable in the target space is not clear, and conversely there are cmyk-doable colors that you can't reach with sRGB so you have no way to produce them.
- The Scribus way is the only one that can actually take advantage of the CMS information you give in Inkscape. It will import the colors you defined in a CMYK space, and can write them into a color-managed PDF file. It's true that not all SVG parts are supported, though. The fact that you can use a monitor calibration profile in Inkscape means that you should, with this, actually preview the file you'll produce with just minimal scribus involvement*.
- There are indeed no easy ways, as far as I know, to directly produce, from Inkscape, a tiff or jpeg color-managed file without any automated conversion which might screw things up (which might not be a big problem as we are trying to produce vector files in Inkscape, so if we can have a good pdf, it's usually ok - but admittedly not ideal). This /might/ be solved by switching the renderer library we use to e.g. Skia, but that's far from an easy task.
There are several ways by which we are seeking to improve color-managed workflow** in Inkscape, the main place where to discuss them would be gitlab.com/inkscape/vectors/general/-/issues/45 .
(sorry for the long and somewhat technical post)
*: An extension (much WIP) will be available in the next version to "save as PDF with Scribus" (if scribus is installed) to automate this without going with Inkscape internal libraries
**: (I much prefer the term "color-managed" than "CMYK" because CMYK, without the color profile information, is a mostly meaningless term. I can't tell you what a CMYK file is or should look like without the information that you're actually talking about a SWOP_TR005_coated_5 file)
*** : you can see those colors defined in the svg file will look like this: style="fill:#00566c icc-color(Artifex-CMYK-SWOP-Profile, 0.85949486, 0.14385736, 0.1358258, 0.60546374)" for instance (with a fallback RGB value so that browsers know what to display)
Nice to hear from the developer...it's good that Nick's video has created some attention (well I guess I never saw any dev answering question in forum)...the extension with scribus pdf sounds interesting!
However the color defined thing might not be the best workflow for many designers...as you have to manually assign each object with CMS color and there's no quick way to pick up color too...you could also missed few objects without the CMS so it will be PITA to fix....in my opinion it's better for Inkscape to rely on other project like Scribus or SK1 when it comes to CMYK output
@@timizero I completely agree it's not ideal not intuitive, and I don't plan on keeping that workflow, that part of my message was mostly describing the current state of things. Ideally I'd want the document to be tied to a specific profile, and once you have selected it, put all colors in that colorspace.
@@ChrisAguilar Nope, but mostly because I don't know of any good and intuitive UX that could achieve that. It could probably be done with an extension (not for tiff, but I don't think tiff can be useful before we have good color management). If you head to gitlab.com/inkscape/ux/-/issues and someone finds a good way to have this look, some devs will end up hearing about it ;)
There's an easy way to use CMYK colors inside Inkscape 1.0 with Scribus 1.5.5 and produce a vector PDF without manually replace each color :
0- Create new Inkscape file.
1- Link a CMYK profile in Document Properties> Color section.
2- Save the document as Inkscape SVG format then close it and reopen it again.
3- When you choose colors for fill/stroke select CMS tab in Fill and Stroke dialog and select your CMYK profile, then adjust the C, M, Y, and K attributes. Don't use RGB or HSL or HSV or CMYK or Wheel tabs to select your colors.
4- Save your finished SVG file.
5- Open the SVG file directly inside Scribus, and you will find that Scribus recognize your CMYK colors because you used CMYK ICC profile inside Inkscape so the colors are stored with additional "icc-color" tags inside the SVG file.
6- Export to PDF and choose in Export dialog> Color > Output intended for Printer.
How do you Link a CMYK profile in Document Properties> Color section? My Linked Color Profiles box is blank. The Available Color Profiles drop down list only has Agfa and two RGB profiles. I have the latest version of Inkscape 1.1.
@@davidpaxton6402 Did you downloaded your profiles (.icc files) and installed them on you system ? on Linux you can put them either in "~/.local/share/icc/" or "/usr/share/color/icc/" then restart Inkscape, on Windows I think you right click on downloaded .icc file then select Install Profile and restart Inkscape.
The only problem using scribus is that it does not preserve the image. The graphics on page are shifted to the right, letter of text are not aligned, strokes of font that should be filled aren't. Those are thongs that I noticed in first five seconds. all this makes scribus useless.
Awesome as always!
Damn man!! This is awesome 👏👏
Hi from Brazil! Other simple methods with Inkscape RGB SVG import in Sk1 (for simple designs) use the CMYK native pallets and export for pdf.
Sk1 is a simple but powerfull vector design soft with native cmyk.
Hello, Anderson. Does it work with PNGs. I read that it can only be done with TIFF, JPG, PDF and AI formats.
@@almdrs Hi!
Yep, you are right!
Thanks.
Png works only in rgb.
Edited original answear and removed png.
Looks like I might have to purchase Affinity Designer sooner than I thought. Forever grateful to Inkscape though, for giving me the opportunity to learn vector design. I hope more people will toss a coin to the project. Maybe some funds could be used to hire a freelance dev to implement CMYK support.
Thanks, very professional tutorial!
Nice video Nick for explaining several methods to deal with CMYK in Inkscape!! I always watch your channel but usually don't write comment as I don't want to login to google....LoL
I personally have been using Inkscape for a while now. It's just that I'm not that skillful as far as the design goes, but good enough to do some logos for participating in online contest. In my case, Scribus is the easiest method for obtaining CMYK vector files in EPS and PDF formats
Regarding Inkscape, I have 2 points that I want to share:
1. Firstly it's very straightforward if an Inskcape user just want to produce a CMYK print file. If I'm not mistaken, most printer just need either PDF or 300dpi JPG. The vector doesn't matter if you have 300dpi of document size (please correct me if I'm wrong). In this case, it's easier to export 300dpi PNG and convert the color using any tools that you have mentioned in video. This could solve the blur and fancy gradient issues if you were to export as vector. One thing to be taken care of is that the RGB colors you use in artwork must be within the gamut of cmyk colorprofile of choice (that you want to embed in JPG), which could easily checked through "Color-Managed Display" tool in Inkscape.
2. Now for the real problem, not all designers who use open source programs will be the one who provide the final print file. This is more of how open source designers interact with Adobe dominated world. Let's say you're designing a business card for a company, you can't provide an Inkscape file to be used for future edits when they want to print card for new employee later. Other designers will simply refuse it because they know they would need to convert the colors even though SVG file could be opened in Adobe. As a result, original designer (Inscape user) will have a bad reputation.
In my opinion, Inkscape developers failed to see from this aspect. Technically, anyone can install Inkscape since it's free of charge and multi platform. Therefore, receiving an Inskcape file shouldn't be a problem unlike other paid programs file, but most "Ultra Designers" simply won't do it by blaming no CMYK support as the reason. Meanwhile, Ultra Designers would gladly accept Sketch file because it's a paid program and only available on Mac.
Another great video.
Very helpful man, thanks!
Hopefully I can buy Illustrator in the future.
Or hopefully inkscape adds support for CMYK color any time soon.
THanks in advance brother!
Thank you so much for all videos,you are the best=D
Scribus makes it possible to convert to the exact CMYK colorspace of the output device (printer). Online converting uses a generic cmyk profile. I make the design of the elements for an illustration nice and clean in Inkscape. Then I make a composition of these in Scribus where I have complete CYMK control over all the colors and filters in layers. From Scribus I can output the illustration (or logo) as eps, or the complete layout as pdf perfectly adjusted to my printers demands. Remember to allways have "color management system" checked in Scribus. The settings option "simulate printer on screen" is confusing and not correct, I never use it.
4:30 Very interesting! I had no idea there was such a thing as a jpeg in cmyk format. Are the files still only 8 bit?
This seems like a pretty unlikely combination considering how many alternatives there are, but would be interested to hear if any/many use it.
Great video, as always! Congratulations. One doubt: It's possible to export bitmap with separetad layers to use in Photoshop or GIMP.
Unfortunately, the Linux extension is not available anymore, the link seems to be down. Nevertheless, you can use Scribus which is a free software PDF editor that can export files in CMYK.
Is it possible to use a swatch library of colors in Inkscape that are in the cmyk space and thus translate well on conversion?
Thanks !!!
also the same problem in GIMP: CMYK
there is an extension called cyan for it.
Install plugin-registry in your GIMP, then Image/Separate/Separate and chose your CMYK type to separate, then when you export it's in CMYK
Oh yes. And tell that to Gimp dev's. For them it's not a problem. Just a minor limitation. To their benefit, they will sooner or later implement proper and native color management. And they want it reliable and robust. They're not far from it. But it's just very strange it's not in-there since day one. And the way they answer about this topic is very strange too, it's like they've got a list of ready-made answers to tell you how CMYK is bad and useless.
They're right, kind of.
But there are use-cases for CMYK in the real world. And therefore this part of the real world can't use Gimp or Inkscape. And now that professional printing tends to convert RGB to CMYK on the fly, native CMYK support in Gimp seems a bit late. Yet it will be a great achievement and relief for those in need.
The Scribus solution is pretty nice, however it doesn't seem support some of the more specific features of Inkscape like blurred layers. When I tried to use it all of the blurring I was used was just transformed to a solid fill.
I found that exporting as jpg or PDF and then adjusting the contrast and saturation usually helps.
Hi! When I do this I have problems with the blurred parts of my illustration. In illustrator I cannot see the figures blurred. What can I do?
Vectornator has the option to switch vector projects between RGB and CMYK colors by default.
Thanks for the info! Previously, when I needed to convert to CMYK for GIMP, I used ImageMagick, which works under Linux, Windows, and I assume Mac OSX. The downside is that it's commandline and pretty complicated, plus you still have the problem of tweaking colors easily afterwards. The upside is it handles many image formats, including SVG.
Still, using something with a GUI like Scribus would be much better.
I remember that solution from back in the day. I was never able to figure it out unfortunately.
So I have recently started creating shirt designs for fun in inkscape, and the feedback I've gotten it that people want to have them. So my question would be if this also applies to shirt prints as well.
Btw I learned everything about inkscape from you Nick and it's actually blowing my mind that there are people who would wear my shirt designs. Thank you!
If you mean do you have to convert the artwork to cmyk, yes you do. If you have simple artwork and are just doing spot color printing, this should be fairly straight forward and not too complicated. Keep in mind brights don't always convert well though. Good Luck!
Hi nick, thanks for the amazing content. I have a question about this problem. If I am doing my design for print on t-shirts, this problem exists too? Or should I convert to CMYK?
hey nick using the Artifex-CMYK-SWOP profile on "Document properties > color" doesn help?
I've never been able to get that to work, regardless of the version or OS I'm using.
THIS SOLUTION IS FOR PEOPLE PRINTING THEIR DESIGNS THEMSELVES HAVING A PRINTER AT HOME OR USING A PRINTSHOP.
This might appear a little convoluted but it works perfectly for me. Here goes:
So our computer display uses RGB but printers render our designs in CMYK, yeah? Meaning if I make a design in RGB and take it to print the printer will try to approximate my colours to the nearest CMYK and render them. This is the reason why the colours printed look very different from the ones on the design on our display.
So what I do is I download Color pallettes and attach row/column numbers to the colours, then take to my printer for printing. This gives me an idea of how the colours on my screen will be actually rendered by the printer. Now, when designing I open the colour palette with row/column numbers in Inkscape (or even Gimp), keeping the printed colour pallette beside me. To choose colours for my design I look at the printed pallette and (say I want to choose a red colour) look for the shade of red I want my design to have when printed and use the colour picker to select that colour (by the row/column numbers) from the pallet on my screen.
Even if, on my screen, that shade of red I have chosen looks off, it wouldn't matter because I know how the printer is going to render it.
So there you have it. It has worked for me every time.
This is a really great channel
Thank you
Thanks for all you do I've learned alot from your Videos I may have missed it but do you have a tutorial on how to make Rhinestone transfer designs in Inkscape. I've seen some others and they are confusing.
Hi Nick. First I want to thank you for all videos you've had posted. I have a small problem. I learned how to crop a picture I need for Etsy, but it is too large. I watch one of your videos where you teach us how to reduce the size of images. The Inkscape program I downloaded doesn't have what you are showing on video filmed June, 2019. I just need to know how to reduce the size of my photo to file smaller than 10MB and at least 400px by 400px. So, would you please be so kind as to let me know what size should be? Thank you so much.
Ana
Ironic a program called Inkscape doesn't support CMYK
@@SO-dl2pv It seems to be that a lot of Inkscape's shortcomings are due to SVG limitaions
Thanks for the video. Is it possible to export inkscape document as separate png layers and then adjust each layer's colour manually in Krita? I mean especially the blurry and filtered parts. I didn't see color adjustments menu like the one in GIMP.
I hope Inkscape will be able to feature CMYK in their next update.
This should be implemented in all software if they want to be taken serious by industry ... i kinda with that Blender would take over these projects like Gimp, Inkscape and so on since they have quite a strong funding (and fast development) from industry and fans.
When I import my Inkscape .SVG file (or any other type, .PDF etc.) into Adobe Illustrator it is no longer a crisped line vector but is now pixelated.
The diagonal lines on text are now jagged/pixelated.
My designs are pretty basic, mostly just text for shirts although I have added texture to them by using clipping/masking on some.
I've tried everything I could possibly find/think of. It has admittedly made me shed tears over it.
Any advice you're able to share, I would very much appreciate! Thanks for your time and for sharing your skills to the world.
Has this changed? Because I see an option in Inkscape Extensions> Color> Replace color> CMYK. Then if I click on stroke and fill it shows the CMYK color specifics. When it adjusted the changes were so minimal that I am not even sure if it worked. But the website option was, extremely poor. I wish my printers would have just done the needful and imported my file and clicked a few buttons in Illustrator but oh well, at least I am learning new stuff. I am NOT a graphic designer AT ALL!
I purchased Affinity Designer recently but returned it because it did not have my favourite tools (Envelope Deformation, Contour and Object Blending). So, I have gone back to using its predecessor DrawPlus, which for my purpose is far superior. It too has the ability to export in CMYK. I have used rgb2cmyk.org at times in the past and I am quite happy with it.
The Envelope Deformation tool in Inkscape 1.0 also seems to be malfunctioning, so I just might have to revert to the previous version of Inkscape.
@@ChrisAguilar Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely give it a go.
@@behramcooper3691 what tips? His comment just gone
Bro ,so I have this one question :
Does the CYMK format make due for fixing the color difference between monitor and fabric in regards to luminosity , Or still you need to put these two parameters on high .. .to the extent where you don't see contrast on monitor design ? I know very big one question .
amazing, is there any tutorial on how to change the color profile in gimp?
Hello Nick, I am new to Inkscape and when I go to fill and stroke, I see different color standards like RGB, HSL, HSV and CMYK. So if I select colors from CMYK you are saying that the files won't be CMYK when they are exported and ready for printing on products? If yes, why bother to include CMYK in the color standard?
very informative
Does working with wide Gamut's RGB color profiles like sRGB, Adobe color profile or ProPhoto helps the conversion to CMYK when printing ?
I recently calibrated my screen from several pictures converted to ProPhoto then printed at best quality (on photo paper of course) by relying on printer's integrated color conversion scheme and manufacturer's ink quality.
This way I am now quite confident about the expected print results.
Most laser printers comes with their color profiles matching their color reproduction accuracy.
Tip gold or silver is a good battle test for printers, especially laser ones :-)
how ro remove the box thing and its only save on that spot?
If you are on linux you can also export as a tiff and use image magick to convert it.
convert input.tiff -colorspace cmyk output.tiff
Probably also available on wsl.
Imagemagick is also available on mac (Mac OS X, iOS) and Windows. I have used it on Windows many years ago.
Imagemagick can parse pdf file directly, no need to export as tiff from Inkscape.
Circa 2009, a fellow Brazilian implemented the profile for CMYK into Inkscape. But they removed it 'momentarily' because he did so in specification with SVG 1.2 and a profile for SVG hat didn't target what most users needs (there is a bug report on Launchpad). Meaning in europe and US/CAN. I kinda understand about SVG 1.2 not being OK but not so much about the profile - that would eventually be supported to include everything.
He was in talks with a print shop that uses open tools so... I'm guessing it wasn't your 'normal' printers.
I also remember pestering him a few years back on why it wasn't supported. If I remember well, he said that they (project high-ups) aren't interested in CMYK. Well, at least at that point in time. Surely looks like so now as well.
I'm wondering why Inkscape has "CMYK" color tab on "Fills and Stroke" menu but can't reproduce CMYK color output :/ can anyone point me out?
@@bokunochannel84207 Is that an Inkscape fork?
I might try it and see how good I can use it as an Inkscape user, depending on if it's in my Linux Repository or Not.
Inkscape aims to save native files as svg. The svg standard (at this moment) does not support cmyk colors. Technicaly it is possible to create an xml file with color definitions in cymk and save it as svg. Maybe in the future this can be included in the standard?
There's a difference between using a particular method of choosing colors and representing colors as such internally. As others have said, Inkscape is a pure SVG program, and there is no CMYK support in SVG (the format was designed for the web and not print, so that's understandable), leaving Inkscape with a format limitation becoming a software limitation.
Now krita can export svg layer and krita also has some vector editing tools, I think it solves the problem. I hope it helps.
Thank you for an update information, we are really appreciate it.
Most print shops run PDF workflows, so converting final art work to PDF is probably your best option, also flattening your artwork to a raster format makes trapping interesting ...
Working closely with a digital print company I will give this sk1 2.0 a try but I'm guessing it does the same as Scribus.
;-) Hopefully soon Inkscape gets CMYK support / conversion and allows us to work with custom color profiles such as FOGRA39 ,
then we can choose without the risk of our printed designs looking bland.
Hi Nick, thank you so much for all. Can you help me? My problem is not for printing, I created a post for Instagram and I exported as "png" but somethig get wrong... the colors changed. What I did wrong?
I can't use affinity as they won't run on my mac with my user account (its an admin account) but I am not swapping users account each time I want to use AD or AP.
illustrator is way too expensive - it's why I have gimp & AP (if it worked) along with inkscape
if you convert via scribus can these be used for screen printing. presuming you can get them to print each layer of course
Hello Nick , When i'm saving vector in eps format in inkscape its getting rasterised , no blur,filter or transperency used only gradients and mesh . Is there any way to save to eps without rasterising?
From what I read before EPS standard doesn't support "mesh"...I mean the "real" EPS but not sure about the hybrid AI EPS...
@@timizero Thank you for the info . I tried removing the mesh and it worked 😁
@@chrisjoseph5516 No prob. I'm happy it worked for you!
Hi Nick. I'm a very big fan of your tutorials. They help me a lot. But I have a problem with the interpolate function. When I tried to use the function with two different color circles as in one of your tutorial (they are both converted to object to path - separately) I get these lines:
interp.py:115: SyntaxWarning: "is" with a literal. Did you mean "=="?
if strokestyle is 'color':
interp.py:125: SyntaxWarning: "is" with a literal. Did you mean "=="?
if fillstyle is 'color':
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "interp.py", line 283, in
Interp().run()
File "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\inkscape\extensions\inkex\base.py", line 140, in run
self.save_raw(self.effect())
File "interp.py", line 101, in effect
if isgradient(sst['stroke']) and isgradient(est['stroke']):
File "interp.py", line 99, in
isgradient = lambda x: x.startswith('url(#')
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'startswith'
Please make Affinity tutorials in future as well
Have you tried to save as PDF (on Scribus or Krita) then manually change the file to .ai (by renaming the file)?
That could remove Illustrator out of the equation.
I have been tasked with providing print ready documents for a job I'm applying for. Now I could bite the bullet and purchase adobe, but the expense is so high and I cannot fit that in my budget. The krita option may be the best, but obviously adobe is ideal. Hopefully either Inkscape itself or a plugin is created to properly address this problem.
There is no some function in inkscape, which disallow using colors out of CMYK range?
BTW: I have the Affinity Suite (about $150 USD). Of the three apps, I like Designer least, but at least it does fill in the gaps with Inkscape (Usually, it's the other way around!)
The other way round Inkscape can help Affinity Designer users by providing features which AD - as of now - does not have (e.g. like envelope distortion). As SVG is a suitable exchange format it might be good practice to combine theses programs/applications for a wide range of professional results. Given the quite moderate price of AD I'd think this might well be worth the expenses.
Buying into an Illustrator subscription is another thing, though. If you do anyway, you possibly won't exactly need neither AD nor Inkscape. But this way you'll primarily feed the near-monopolist, which may not be what makes you feel good in an overall sense...
And just when I've started really getting into this great piece of software. Oh well, here's hoping. How does this affect you doing your job? Or have you always had to convert your files to CMYK?
You only need to worry about it if you plan to print your designs and even then some print shops might get you decent results doing the RGB > CMYK conversion themselves. Otherwise, you should be fine with RGB. That said, I'd avoid using Inkscape at all if getting designs to paper on a professional setting was my main goal. The headache that comes with it is just not worth it.
Leaving printers to handle RGB to CMYK conversions is professional suicide. They couldn't care less about accurate conversions. You're going to have a lot of irate clients who want accurate colours for their logos - unless they have very low standards. This shortcoming renders Inkscape useless, sadly. Worse yet, it's onscreen colour matching is terrible. Compare what it thinks C100 Y0 M0 K0 looks like to how Illustrator renders it. It's embarrassing.
I agree, this program has many great features and could be a contender if only its developers got off their backsides and fixed it. When other open source software can do a reasonable job of representing CMYK gamut onscreen, I don't see an excuse other than hidebound developer stubbornness and fanboys who cover for them.
Look at the awesome pace and feature set of Blender. It's getting serious attention in professional circles. That's how you do open source, and it happened because they changed their stubborn ways and made a modern standardised interface. It's now getting major sponsors funding it.
I want a open-source alternative to Illustrator, which is expensive, bloated and buggy as hell and memory hungry for even fairly simple tasks. I miss Freehand, but the scumbags at Adobe killed it. Many would love to leave Adobe's disgustingly greedy rental model in the dust, it's a strain on freelancers and small studios, especially now the global economy is wrecked by the pandemic.
Document properties me youTube thamnail ke liye size kya rakhe?
How did you make the mandala?
pls nick can u do more esport toturial for the latest inkscape update cuz it doesn't work for me
Another great video! Thank you Nick!
I'm very unexperienced with this, but can someone tell me if the colors after the conversion in Krita will be the colors I'll see when printed? Thanks in advance
Yes, that's the idea behind CMYK. It gives you an accurate representation of how your document should look once printed.
I am using Inkscape 1.01 and can't find document color mode. I'm trying to sublimate and have the profiles installed and selected, but Inkscape is still not using them. I also have in the print menu no color correction selected. The colors are way off...too much red usually.
Thank you.
The document color mode feature has never worked in the 10+ years that I've been using Inkscape. Every time I've tried uploading my own ICC profiles it didn't work, so I'm afraid I can't help with this. Seems to be a broken feature.
I've spent some time making vibrant gradients and it turned out that Inkscape fooled my eyes, because rendering in the editor is different from the result. The weirdest thing is when I screenshot it, I see entirely different color space. This is the worst thing in Inkscape so far - while quite a lot things are excusable, this one is not :(
Is affinity designer is best for logo design and other types of printing design.
Terbaik👍👍
NIIIIICK YOU'RE THE BEEEEEEST
the download links for the extension are broken :(
I’m curious, does this mean that most bright blues that are printed come out dull or darker?
Petition for Nick to open an Affinity Designer channel
hold up so scribus can do cmyk for vector designs while krita can do cmyk for raster designs and both are open source?
welp looks like we got work to do
@NICK , can you please make a Full Tutorial for showing that way with Illustator, please ! i try it out hours now =( Thank you.
I am here in 2023. Is this different now because I can use the CMYK color scheme in the fill and stroke menu? Inkscape 1.2 doesn't have document color mode. Thank you for all your videos!
This might appear a little convoluted but it works perfectly for me. Here goes:
So our computer display uses RGB but printers render our designs in CMYK, yeah? Meaning if I make a design in RGB and take it to print the printer will try to approximate my colours to the nearest CMYK and render them. This is the reason why the colours printed look very different from the ones on the design on our display.
So what I do is I download Color pallettes and attach row/column numbers to the colours, then take to my printer for printing. This gives me an idea of how the colours on my screen will be actually rendered by the printer. Now, when designing I open the colour palette with row/column numbers in Inkscape (or even Gimp), keeping the printed colour pallette beside me. To choose colours for my design I look at the printed pallette and (say I want to choose a red colour) look for the shade of red I want my design to have when printed and use the colour picker to select that colour (by the row/column numbers) from the pallet on my screen.
Even if, on my screen, that shade of red I have chosen looks off, it wouldn't matter because I know how the printer is going to render it.
So there you have it. It has worked for me every time.
I've done color correcting in Krita. It's not too difficult.
Hey, I have a quick question.
So I have just downloaded krita and am ready to export my file. In the export tab there is a check mark at "Force to convert to sRGB" even though I have selected the CMYK color space like Nick has shown. Do I just leave it checked or do I uncheck this?
You must be a colour scientist then 😳
What do you think about using SK1 software to export as CMYK svg, Nick?
I haven't tried it but I'll look into it!
@@LogosByNick Recently, I've been heard about "Inkporter", a new plugin who aims to export several files in CMYK. I'm going to try both methods. Some Brazilian tutorials from printing professionals teach another method by installing color profiles and setting up Inkscape and drawing properties, but I don't know if it really works.
If I have to use Illustrator to make Inkscape CMYK, then I use directly Illustrator from A to Z. Really I still don't understand why programs like Inkscape and GIMP are neglecting the CMYK
What is up with the mic audio in these recent videos, very hard to watch
Great video Nick. Hope this CMYK issue with Inkscape is sorted soon. But there's a workaround I recently discovered and so far the results have been great. Here's what I do:
1) I download color charts (they're usually in jpg) and get them printed at my favourite print shop (the shop I usually print my jobs at). Since printers render output in CMYK, I will already have an accurate idea of how the colors I see on my screen (calibrated or not) will look when printed. I have charts for multiple colors - red colors, the blues, greens, yellows, etc...you get the idea
2) Then, when designing, say I want to use red for some of my design elements, I import the chart with red colors into Inkscape. I'm now going to use the dropper/color picker tool to pick the color I want from the chart, using the corresponding printed chart as reference. The idea here is that I look at the printed chart and choose the particular red color I want, then use the dropper tool to pick that same color in the chart on my screen. It won't matter whether on my screen the color looks different than it appears on the printed chart because my screen might not be correctly calibrated, but when the job is printed it's going to look exactly like the colors on the printed chart.
There have been instances where a color looking really red on my printed chart looks like some kind of pink or purple on the computer screen (if the screen is not well calibrated). In such instances I just do not care how my screen renders the colors since I know what the printed output will be. Sounds like magic but it has worked so far.
NOTE:
1) If you're going to use a different print shop than you have been using before, get your color charts printed by them first so you know exactly how their printers will render your charts
2) Sometimes, at least I have had such an experience, your local print shop will get ink or toner supplies from a different manufacturer from the last time you printed something there, and this might result in slightly different printed color output. It will be wise for you to reprint your color charts before each job
EDIT: If you're going to change or use another computer or display (screen/monitor), you should also view your color charts on that new monitor and reprint, so you know the relationship between how your monitor displays colors and the print output
This is actually a great workaround! Provided that you know who the printer is...might not work for file to be print in future by some other people (your client) on an unknown printing shop
@@timizero yes you're right, it works when you're responsible for the printing yourself
On Linux we can simply run this on terminal to convert the RGB pdf file to CMYK:
gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOCACHE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dAutoRotatePages=/None -sColorConversionStrategy=CMYK -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceCMYK -sOutputFile=document_cmyk.pdf document_rgb.pdf
simply?
SIMPLY???
I have used the terminal to convert RGB jpg files to CMYK with succes. But converting pdf files gave unexpected results.
@@Foxtrotbravo0331 yeash simply copy and paste it