Gamut warning/conversion from RGB to CMYK

[Quarian]

Wondering about something...

 

Yesterday, I was running some tests using Blender, Pixelmator and Affinity Designer (I hope it's all right that I mentioned a competitor's product here) to try to generate a PDF/X-3 file. Here was my process:

• Generated an image of a 3D scene out of Blender
• Saved as an 2400 x 3000 pixel PNG file (so it would be 8 x 10 @ 300 dpi/ppi)
• Opened it in Pixelmator to try the "soft proofing" feature and adjust the saturation of the RGB image for use in a PDF/X-3 workflow.
• Saved the PNG file as a 300 dpi TIFF.
• Created a blank 8.5" x 11" CMYK document in AD; imported the TIFF file.
• Realized that there were no PDF controls for exporting X-1a or X-3 files in AD at this time.
• Cheated; the apple print dialog box does allow for the exporting of AD documents as PostScript files.
• I own a copy of Acrobat 8 Professional so I reinstalled it on my Mac (2007 Macbook, OS X 10.7.5, 2 GB RAM, 2.1 GHz, 64 MB VRAM/Intel GMA 950) and for the interest of this experiment, Acrobat 8 DOES WORK on Lion.
• Distilled PS from AD on the PDF/X-3 settings.
• Worked like a dream. CMYK PDF/X-3 on my desktop.

Now, let me comment on what was missing:

1) Pixelmator's soft proofing feature lacks a "gamut warning" feature so that when one pulls back on the saturation, there is no gauge (such as the appearance of gray pixels on screen as in Photoshop) to know how far to reduce the saturation. I made a ballpark guess--having generated images from Blender for use in my designs for a while--of anywhere from -20% to -33%--so it is not TRULY known if all the colors in the TIFF file were "in gamut" or not.

2) By using Acrobat Distiller, the goal was simply to be able to use AD in my design workflow to generate a press-ready PDF file. Not always do my jobs require InDesign or Quark. The majority of my Display and Exhibit work is done in Illustrator and Photoshop, but in many cases the final files are still delivered as Hi-res, CMYK PDFs which requires that the colors be brought into gamut. Incidentally, for this experiment the gamut used was "U.S. Web Coated SWOP 2.0".

 

Having said all that, I have 3 questions.

1) Will there be a feature similar to Photoshop's "Proof Colors/Gamut Warning" combo put into either Designer, Publisher or Photo at a later date? If you troll through the 'net--particularly on Pixelmator and GIMP forums--a lot of designers state that this is the one feature that keeps them tied to Photoshop.

2) Will there soon be controls in Designer accompanying the export of PDFs so that we don't have to use Distiller (Distiller was just the easiest way, this can be done in GhostScript as well by invoking the "ps2pdf" API but it can currently only be done in the command line/unix shell on Macs)?

3) Is the feature set in Photo planeed to be more geared toward Photographers/Photo Retouching with more of the illustrative features in bitmap editing remaining in Designer? Either way works for me as I am also a Photographer but also think that others may have unrealistic expectations if Photo is not as fully featured as Photoshop and fail to see that between Photo AND Designer, that feature set IS realized.

 

I hope I'm not coming of as a royal pain, but we've (the design collective who refuses to be treated like Adobe's ATMs) have been searching ever since this cloud/subscription nonsense started for a serious alternative to the software from the big red "A". I was already a believer in the gospel according to PagePlus and DrawPlus and feel very fortunate that, at this particular time, you guys are releasing the Affinity line for the Mac.

 

Can't wait to try out Photo and Publisher.

 

Quarian

[Andy Somerfield]

Hi Quarian,

 

I think that you could have achieved this a simpler way - because AD supports *native* CMYK. My workflow here would have been:

 

1.) Export RGB bitmap from Blender.

2.) Open RGB bitmap in AD.

3.) Document Setup -> CMYK.

 

Done!

 

Manually lowering saturation in RGB until a soft proof indicates no gamut clipping is a workaround in Pixelmator because they do not support native CMYK. Step 3.) above would perform a (by default) relative-colorimetric profiled conversion with black-point compensation - which would make a more correct / pleasing result.

 

Also, PDF-X support is on our roadmap and should be with everyone in the near future. Affinity Photo will have a heavy photography bias - it contains all the creative raster tools from Designer, along with a massive set of extra tools / filters to facilitate manipulating digital photographs.

 

Thanks,

 

AndyS

[Quarian]

Hi Andy,

 

So--just for my own clarification--If I import a RGB image into an AD document set for RGB, I can change the document color space to CMYK and the image's color space will automatically change to CMYK (and do the "within-gamut" saturation correction) with it based on the gamut that's chosen at the time the overall document's creation?

 

That ROCKS! As you can see, my experiences with other packages has been that--when having to use the above workflow in a software package that does not inherently support CMYK--everything, especially embedded/linked images has to prepped a certain way wherein the image would have to have some correction (a la Photoshop to InDesign) BEFORE placing it into the document. Honestly, I wasn't sure about the limitations (or lack thereof) in AD for this intermittent workflow until PDF/X support is ready. SO glad to see that AD is a different vehicle.

 

 

Thank you very much. Now excuse me while I shout the praises of Affinity Designer for the nearest mountaintop...or at least my Facebook page.

[Andy Somerfield]

Hi Andy,

 

So--just for my own clarification--If I import a RGB image into an AD document set for RGB, I can change the document color space to CMYK and the image's color space will automatically change to CMYK (and do the "within-gamut" saturation correction) with it based on the gamut that's chosen at the time the overall document's creation?

 

Yes, that's exactly what it does :)

 

AndyS