[Scribus] 2 questions

[Timothy Boyden]

Knowing now what you were trying to set, the trouble you are having with
Lulu doesn't surprise me.

It's a common issue in the print world. Most images set in a layout
document are of RGB colorspace, printers however print in CMYK
colorspace. In order for the images to be printed properly, a conversion
has to be done to convert them to the CMYK colorspace. The catch is that
RGB color values don't necessarily correspond to the color values of the
intended colors in CMYK, so some tweaking may be required to get the
colors you want on the printed document. There is a lot of debate on
where this color conversion should happen. For designers it would be
ideal for the conversion to happen in the application so they can see
the results on the screen and have a "what you see is what will print"
approach. Printers however generally want the control of the color
conversion on their end because every machine prints differently and
precise control is required to convert the color you intended to the
actual printed color on paper. ICC profiles were created to make this
process easier, but it's still a work in progress to get full "what you
see is what will print" from on screen design to on paper print.

The fact that your images printed better when you chose Screen/Web as
the color mode (which is counter-intuitive for a printed document) leads
me to believe Lulu is skewing their color profiles in favor of RGB
colors rather than CMYK in order to better match what customers are
sending them. This is why it is imperative that printer instructions
that are supplied to their clients are followed in order to get the
intended output. Printers are making assumptions to smooth over their
workflow, and submitted ad copy that are outside their specs will most
certainly not print correctly.

-Tim


-----Original Message-----
From: scribus-bounces at kirsche.altmuehlnet.de
[mailto:scribus-bounces at kirsche.altmuehlnet.de] On Behalf Of D. R. Evans
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:27 AM
To: scribus at kirsche.altmuehlnet.de
Cc: scribus at kirsche.altmuehlnet.de
Subject: Re: [Scribus] 2 questions

Timothy Boyden said the following at 03/19/2008 08:21 AM :

> setting. In most of the other graphics applications I've worked with, 
> the drop-down is labeled "Color Mode:" and the drop-down values are:
> "RGB, CMYK, LAB, and Grayscale" which is more descriptive of what is 
> being set.

That would be a good idea.

I have discovered by painful experience, for example, that lulu (which
of course is a printer of PDFs) is more likely to get it right if one
uses the "Screen/Web" selection.

  Doc

PS Somewhat OT, I have no idea about other print shops, but lulu is a
royal pain when it comes to using Scribus files and getting them to look
right. I don't know precisely where the fault lies (although I'm about
90% sure it's lulu), but it's definitely non-trivial to get complex book
covers to print exactly the way one wants. (It's easy to get them to
display right, which is why I am fairly sure that the problem is with
lulu's printing set-up.)

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