How To Save CMYK Images In Gimp
Designers Can Save Color Separated Files in the Free Image Editor
Apr 7, 2009
Gimp has become an ever more powerful image editing tool and it can now offer a viable alternative to Adobe Photoshop for Graphic Designers who are operating on a budget. While lacking the raw power of Photoshop, for most jobbing Graphic Designers, it can offer enough of the necessary features for it to be of daily use, perhaps alongside Scribus and Inkscape.
There is an introduction to Gimp in this Suite101 Overview of the Free Image Editor Gimp.
In native form, Gimp's biggest weakness for many Graphic Designers is its lack of support for the production of CMYK images, which are required for commercial press production of printed materials. By default Gimp functions in the RGB color space, which is fine for the production of online graphics or producing materials for printing on a desk top printer.
Adding CMYK Capability to Gimp
The Separate+ plug-in for Gimp can bring the ability to save images as Tiff files with CMYK separations included. The plug-in is offered for free download by Yoshinori Yamakawa from the Yellowmagic website and is a development of another plug-in initially produced by Alastair M. Robinson.
The Separate+ plug-in doesn't bring true CMYK color space editing to Gimp in the way that Adobe Photoshop users will be familiar with and actually works by converting an RGB image into a file that contains 4 layers to represent the 4 ink colors. This image can then be saved as a TIFF for use in a DTP application.
Installing the Separate+ Plug-in for Gimp
After downloading the latest version from the Yellowmagic website, which is linked to above, the files should be extracted from the Zip file. Included among those files is a README file which contains information on how to install the plug-in.
The plug-in has a dependency on another file called liblcms-1.dll and if a user's version of Gimp doesn't include this file, it can also be downloaded from the Yellowmagic site.
Using the Separate+ Plug-in for Gimp
When successfully installed, the Separate+ plug-in adds a new entry to the Image menu labelled simply Separate that offers four sub-options. The two most important options are Separate and Save. The former opens the dialogue that offers several options before converting an RGB image to CMYK and the resulting image then can be saved as a TIFF using the latter option.
While the plug-in offers color profile management options and soft proofing, most Graphic Designers will use the default settings unless advised otherwise by the end printer.
The Separate+ plug-in for Gimp extends the capabilities of the application for users who need to produce materials for press reproduction, though it doesn't have the full ease of use and flexibility that Adobe Photoshop users will be used to.
