Therefore the original (usually a digital RGB image, or a printed photograph) needs to be separated into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black components. When printing an image on a commercial press, it needs to be printed one primary (or Black) at a time. It adds the necessary density to the image and makes black a black. The use of additional Black ink in printing ( K in CMYK stands for Key, or blacK) is due to this fact. However, this is usually not true in the real world because the inks are semi-transparent and the white paper below reflects some of the light. Ideally, subtraction of all light, that is when Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are mixed together at their full density, we should get black (i.e., no light reflected, fully absorbed by ink). Different inks absorb different parts of the light's spectrum, and the combination of C-M-Y inks yields the greatest range of different colors. The rest is reflected and reaches our eyes. Subtraction of light occurs when an ink absorbs part of the light that falls on it. The choice of primary colors is based on belief that the combination of Red, Green, and Blue (for RGB) or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow (for CMYK) produce the greatest range visible colors. Words additive and subtractive suggest that light, which is essential for perception of color, is either added or subtracted before it reaches the eye. The color model is also called a subtractive color model, as opposed to additive (that is RGB) color model. It is called a color model, because it represents a standard way of describing colors. If you are not interested in the theory, you may skip straight to the heading on CMYK color support in GIMP.įirst off, the proper name for CMYK mode, as it is commonly known, is CMYK color model. You will need Gimp (of course), either Separate or Separate+ plugins, and ICC profiles. While undercolor removal is supported by Scribus, grey component replacement is not supported by any graphical tool on Linux as of this writing. Also, Separate plugin (not Separate+) has no support for clipping path, and there is no support for opening CMYK files in either Separate or Separate+. Namely, Separate+ and its predecessors have no support for GCR (Grey Component Replacement) and UCR (Undercolor Removal). Using the methods below has some limitations in comparison to proprietary tools. In fact, most of them actually accept only RGB images or convert CMYK images to RGB internally. For an average home user or even professional photographers, support for separating images using CMYK color is not necessary.Įven when you see Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black cartridges in your ink-jet or color laser printer, it does not mean that you need to feed it a CMYK file. However, you have to understand that the topic is more important to DTP professionals than other users (photographers, web artists, home users).ĬMYK color model (or CMYK mode) is used mostly by DTP professionals that need to output images intended for commercial printing. Most of the heated discussions revolve around the fact that Gimp does not support CMYK mode. There has been much debate about the merits of using Gimp. It will also cover more general topics on CMYK colors and desktop publishing (DTP).īefore you install the Separate or Separate+ plug-in for Gimp, you need to know if you really need it. This article will show how to enable rudimentary CMYK support in Gimp using the Separate and Separate+ plug-ins, and explain how to use color proof filter to soft-proof your images.
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