Painter and CMYK

[Pat Duke]

Painter only lets you edit images in RGB mode. It can handle a conversion to CMYK, but it does so when you save your file as a TIF. An export dialogue will pop up asking you which color space you want it in, RGB or CMYK. Reimporting the same file into Painter reconverts into an RGB file. I'm not terribly partial to this method, but in a theoretical sense the RGB colorspace fully encompasses the CMYK color space. However, the constant mode switching seems like it could lead to degredation of color. I've never put that to the test, though.

Painter CMYK images are pretty good, but you've got no control over the conversion process outside of selecting one of a few preset color managment presets. For advanced users doing pre-press, it's far better to convert to CMYK in Photoshop because of the additional control you get. For instance, in Painter there's no maximum ink density, dot gain compensation or UCR/GCR color controls. Nor does Painter offer any support of spot color/additional plate seperations.

-Pat

[Jedt-C4D]

Thank you, Pat
That's make me think about stay with photoshop and try painter for some work. Its natural painting brushes are very funny to work with. 8-)

[LittleFenris]

Painter not having CMYK seems to further my belief that noone ever has there awesome paintings printed onto real canvas or anything so they have something physical to look at. :shrug:

[Pat Duke]

VWTornado, no one said Painter didn't have CMYK.

Plenty of people make fine art prints of digital work. It's just that CMYK isn't the best mode for those. CMYK is used primarily in four color offset printing and has a narrow color space. This is fine for mass-printing, but completely unsuitable for art prints.

-Pat

[E.T]

Ive been using painter for lots of bookcovers, and there hasnt been any problems whatsoever with the output.
Oh, yes one. I tried to use a "neon" green, which wouldnt convert straight into CMYK. But thats the only hassle yet.

And i thought that RGB encompassed a BIGGER range than CMYK.
Ive never seen a cmyk colour that RGB couldnt handle, but lots the other way around.

---2cents
E.T

[tayete]

Just curiosity E.T.: Did the final printed result matched the colours you had in your screen? Did you imbedded any ICC file or such to make the printer match your colours?

[E.T]

Yep they matched pretty closely.
Theres always some difference between what you get on your monitor and whats on screen, but that has more to do with how you calibrate your monitor. (ive been to some printers who has an external calibration device and they match VERY closely)

And i also brought the file trough photoshop and illustrator for layout and some text touchups and i think i embedded some icc through photoshop.

I dont think theres any software thats a onestopshop really.
I always use whatever tools is most suited for the job and i think that painter is without competition art-wise.
Sure photoshopbrushes are nice but the effort spent on faking water (or whatever) makes it slower than painter.

p.s
Im really happy about this "group" i relly need to learn more about shortcuts and such in painter.

[E.T]

oh for those interested this is the pic:
http://www.thunfors.com/pix/london.jpg

The green guy was the one who was making trouble.

[tayete]

Wow, that was really nice! Was it for a kids book or something like that? I love the style and colours!

[E.T]

thx: yep its for a kids book (9-12 years or so)
"The great london adventure" by Neil Shaw-Larkman

In sweden its called "det stora londonäventyret"
Should be out in stores about now.

[LittleFenris]

Originally posted by Pat Duke
VWTornado, no one said Painter didn't have CMYK.

Plenty of people make fine art prints of digital work. It's just that CMYK isn't the best mode for those. CMYK is used primarily in four color offset printing and has a narrow color space. This is fine for mass-printing, but completely unsuitable for art prints.

-Pat

So when you make a digital painting, do you make it the right size in Painter or Photoshop? Like if its gonna be a 24x36" poster, would you make it 24x36"s digitally, or would you make it like half that size and half the printer print it double size? it seems a picture that big would be a pain to work with digitally and would be absolutely insanely huge? Correct me if I'm mistaken.

[sand dragon]

An artist named Tim Jessell created a 'CMYK compatible' colour set for Painter which is available here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.gell/Pages/Guest_Resources.html) from my guest resources section.

David

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