[Scribus] Inkscape and Gimp

[pixelnate]

Craig Bradney wrote:
> On Thursday 01 June 2006 22:08, Louis Desjardins wrote:
>   
>> momo a ?crit :
>>     
>>>>> Another great feature would be cmyk support in both programs, also like
>>>>> in the Adobe Creative Suite. I would much rather see that happen than to
>>>>> get a 'smart objects' feature in each.
>>>>>
>>>>> ~Nate
>>>>>           
> And on top of that.. Inkscape and Gimp *are* very good products. That is 
> undoubtable, and whether they reach prepress capability one day is not even 
> in the same realm of them "being ashamed". They are VERY good tools for their 
> *current* tasks. They have a big future, perhaps they will both grow, as it 
> looks like, into handling the needs of press too.
>
> Craig
>   
There is no debating that they are _good_ apps that can be used for 
professional work in a number of areas. Commercial printing is just not 
one of them, yet. When we had this discussion before I made it a point 
to explain that there are certain features that I just love about 
Inkscape, ie. the ability to manipulate the rounded corners on a box (do 
not underestimate the importance of this seamingly trivial feature), and 
the fact that you can have colors with transparency in gradient blends 
(Illustrator just won't do this). I personally don't like Gimp (for many 
various reasons), but I am willing to give it a serious shot when they 
finally get around to adding cmyk support.

On a recent project I was working on, I wanted to go fully open source 
with my toolset, but I just couldn't. I needed to work in cmyk, and 
neither app would facilitate that. I had to go out and purchase the CS2 
suite to get my work done. Let me just say that if I had even a 3 year 
old version of Photoshop and Illustrator I could have accomplished this 
project. If either the dev team working on Gimp or Inkscape want to gain 
marketshare from Adobe, then they must add cmyk support.

If they don't want to compete with Adobe, then they can just stay the 
course. The tools are great for programmers that want to add icons to 
their apps, or for making interface themes or even for web work. They 
just aren't currently suited to do the majority of work necessary in 
commercial printing environment.

~Nate