[lug] Re: GIMP: is CMYK imprtant for monochrome work (fwd)

[Michael J. Hammel]

Thus spoke Wayde Allen
> Anyway, I am curious about the lack of CMYK features in the GIMP.  I know
> that some of the capabilities of Photoshop are not easily reproducible
> due to licensing issues, but that doesn't seem likely as far as processing
> images in CMYK color space rather than RGB goes.  Anyone have an
> explanation?  Perhaps the capability is there, and people are just having
> trouble finding it? 

It's mostly due to the issues related to color matching with respect to
video card and monitor settings *and* the conversion to CMYK.  This was
recently mentioned on the Gimp Developer mailing list.  When people work
with CMYK they are looking at print output specifics, so they expect the
display to show exactly what they're getting in print, but that requires
proprietary color matching (pantone, for example) that can be adjusted
visually for monitor and printer differences.

The algorithm for converting from RGB to CMYK is not difficult, but thats
only a small part of the real problem.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel           |  "I don't like people.  They can't be easily
The Graphics Muse           |   categorized, referenced or explained."
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org  |         Michael "Spooky" Hammel
http://www.graphics-muse.com