[scribus] Colour Profiles

[Hal V. Engel]

On Thursday 03 September 2009 09:32:06 am John Beardmore wrote:
> Gregory Pittman wrote:
> > On 09/02/2009 04:35 PM, davecs wrote:
> >
> > One mistake some make with local printers (ie, one attached to your
> > computer) is to use the "Printer" setting for the Color tab in PDF
> > Export. You really should use the Screen/Web setting most of the time.
> > You might also check your printer settings in your OS.
> > Setting Printer is for when you take your work to a commercial printer.
>
> So could the print controls say
>
>      "Screen / Web / Local Printer"
>
> and
>
>      "CYMK process printer"
>
> or some such form of words ?
>
> Clearer terminology might reduce the number of times this question gets
> asked, and it's presumably a relatively simple fix ?
>
>
> Cheers, J/.

I don't think this works.  What about the case where the "local" printer (this 
means the printing work flow) is color managed?  In many cases (Windows and 
OS/X and some *nix printing work flows) the local printer will be (logically) 
an RGB device but in other cases it will be a CMYK device (IE. in the 
GutenPrint drivers I can use either an RGB or a CMYK work flow with my 
printer).   In either case the printing work flow can be color managed. There 
are too many use cases to handle this with menu options that support each use 
case and even if it were possible users would still have to understand color 
management as least enough to know that they didn't understand it in order to 
figure out which work flow to use.

What this boils down to is that unless you understand color management then 
use an sRGB only work flow.  This will not get you the same level of color 
correctness and device to device matching as a well done color managed work 
flow but for some users it will be good enough.  If it is not good enough then 
you need to spend the time it takes to really understand color management so 
that you can effectively use it's very powerful features.

This has been said before here.  The color management learning curve is fairly 
steep and most users who are new to color management feel like they have been 
pushed into the deep end of the pool.   But once you understand how it works 
and make the effort (and yes spend the money) to get good profiles you will find 
that your results are MUCH more consistent and that you are spending less time 
dealing with color/tonality issues. 

Hal