CMYK issues (was: Re: [Scribus] Questions from a newbie)

[Tino Schwarze]

Hi there,

On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 02:48:35AM -0600, Frank Cox wrote:

> > Reading the online handbook's target usage list, I find newsletters listed
> > but not small newspapers, and wonder whether it is designed to handle,
> > say, a 12 to 24-page tabloid?
> 
> Friends (and clients) of mine create a 40--page newspaper, a 28-page
> newspaper, and a 2-page "coffee chat paper".  Every week, on Monday,
> Wednesday, and Friday.  Using Scribus.  The 40-page paper is printed
> on a Heidelberg web press.  The other papers are printed on 4
> Risographs.

I just came from a print shop and we struggled almost an hour to get
something usable from my Scribus exported files. Just in case that the
situation has changed - I'm still using 1.2cvs. Color management is
enabled.

My project is a folder with several photos in it which will be offset
printed. The main issue are colors:
- Is there a way to get CMYK images into scribus? (I can only choose
  from RGB profiles even though I converted the images to CMYK via
  convert)
- Is there a way to get real CMYK PDFs out of Scribus?
- Why does Scribus use hex representation for CMYK while you always
  enter percent values? I enter 2% Cyan, but get .01960784 in output.
  These should either be real percent values or floating point values
  (0..1).

To sum it up: We tried a lot of tools (import into InDesign / Photoshop
etc.) but colors always looked wrong. The preflight on the PDF from
Scribus complained about RGB colors. Converting these messed things up
(black font was distributed across all channels, colors did not match).

I finally remembered that the EPS files could be distilled, so we used
Distiller to create a PDF from the EPS files, it looked alright and
preflight did not complain. Now I'm waiting whether the proof comes out
as expected.

Am I doing anything wrong? I'm a bit disappointed by all these problems
since a lot of people seem to use Scribus for serious press work. I also
like it a lot and would like to avoid buying some commercial DTP app
(which usually doesn't support Linux btw).

Bye, Tino.