Color Management setup
| Installation • Usage • PDF issues • Other |
These are practical notes to issue a PDF for printer, using RGB images, and having to issue a CMYK PDF.
You are supposed to have at least a very basic knowledge of : - what is CMYK, what is RGB - what is a color profile
Preambule
Color Management deals with how the color are managed both in the PDF output files AND in the input image files.
Setup is spread in 3 places :
- Scribus preferences and document setup
- Color pane in the export to PDF dialog
- little "color management" button in status bar
Scribus and Document Setup
These are the preferences for the PDF output file.
Beware ! When a document is created, it features the Scribus defaults ICC profiles. If later changing the default Scribus ICC profile, the document's own ICC profile dont change and the profile previously set through default scribus setup.
Color pane in the export to PDF dialog
First option is to specify the output type : either RGB (web) or CMYK (printer)
Then the "united colors" and "images" title options are to specify how to read images : input setup.
Color management button down in the statusbar
This controls all !
Whenever it is not pushed, no CM will occur.
PDF output
PDF exists in many flavors : 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, X-3 (and X-1 available in scribus 1.5 svn).
Some PDF versions only accept CMYK image files like X1, some other versions accept mixes of RGB and CMYK, like X3.
- PDF/X-1a: Blind exchange in CMYK + Spot Colors, based on PDF 1.3
- PDF/X-3: Allows CMYK, Spot, Calibrated (managed) RGB, CIELAB, with ICC Profile, based on PDF 1.3.
When creating a pdf that only accepts CMYK, like PDFX1a, Scribus converts all RGB images into CMYK, using the provided color profile.
So as to create a CMYK-only PDF1.4 or PDF1.5 file, one has to
- setup the correct ICC profiles in the document setup
- enable the CM through CM button in statusbar
- in Color pane of PDF setup dialog, select "printer" as output, and leave everything unckecked in that panes, particularly DONT embed profile for images.
PDF Readers
In Ubuntu, both scribus (on screen) and Acrobat reader displays badly the CMYK images. Evince displays CMYK colors right.