hi , i am new to inkscape and the graphics world.
i have been working on some drawings and made some good ones , the problem is that when i print my drawings i get completely different colors.
i made some research and found out that inkscape does not support cmyk and that i can convert the colors to cmyk via scribus , but scribus did not change anything and i still cant get the same colors(or close to them) that appears on the screen.
these are the steps i followed to convert to cmyk in scribus:
- import svg
- go to edit<colors
- convert each color to cmyk
- export as svg ( then i open inkscape and export as bitmap (pnj) )

when i try to print the pnj image i neither get the new colors nor the old ones ( before scribus).
please tell me what is wrong?

thanks a lot

Hi lemony,
I'm not terribly familiar with printing and colors. I did once try to print something I drew and the colors were quite noticabley "off". Since that was a one-time thing, I just adjusted the colors of my original so that they would print as I wanted. But I never have researched as to why the printer does not respect the original (because for example, copying with the same machine, does respect the original color). I also don't know if that''s just something with my printer.

The other thought I have is that when you open it in Inkscape the 2nd time, after adjusting the colors in Scribus, it might be readjusting the colors again (since Inkscape doesn't support CMYK, it might be displaying the closest estimation)? That's just a guess though. Would you be able to convert to PNG from Scribus?

I'm sorry, I wish I could be more helpful. Weekends can be kind of slow on the forum, so I thought I'd give you my best guess. There are plenty of other members who know much more about printing colors than I do, but may not be around today.

Generally speaking, I've never really printed much from Inkscape. I've had difficulty with that in Linux in the past and eventually gave up on the idea when I found I could import to PNG files.

PNGs could be printed from many bitmap software editors like the older MS Paint or GIMP or any number of Windows bitmap editors. And that's the method I adopted for printing for quite some time. Only recently have I noticed that Inkscape seems to print without complaints. I've printed photos and shapes without difficulty.

I'd like to ask how you've got Inkscape set up. Follow with me if you will:

From the menus: File > Inkscape Preferences
From the keyboard: Ctrl Shift P

click "Color Management" on the left and tell us the selections that appear on the right. These choices might affect your printing negatively.

=)

lemony wrote:these are the steps i followed to convert to cmyk in scribus:
- import svg
- go to edit<colors
- convert each color to cmyk
- export as svg ( then i open inkscape and export as bitmap (pnj) )

The last step undoes your efforts in Scribus: Inkscape does not export as CMYK (not even after you edited the SVG file in Scribus), the exported bitmap is RGB. Stay with Scribus for export - not Inkscape - if you need CMYK / color-managed export.

[Added later] … maybe I misunderstood your intentions, and you don't need a bitmap file (PNG) with an assigned (CMYK) ICC profile (color-managed). If RGB is fine for the file, soft proofing on-screen in Inkscape might be an alternative to converting the colors to CMYK in Scribus and exporting to SVG (in the SVG file exported from Scribus, the colors are again RGB as far as I can tell)[/Added later]

BobSongs wrote:click "Color Management" on the left and tell us the selections that appear on the right. These choices might affect your printing negatively.

AFAIU those settings do not affect output (or printing) - they configure the color-managed view option (menu 'View > Color-managed View') to simulate different output/device color profiles on-canvas and do not modify the color values stored in the SVG file.

AFAIU those settings do not affect output (or printing) - they configure the color-managed view option (menu 'View > Color-managed View') to simulate different output/device color profiles on-canvas and do not modify the color values stored in the SVG file.

Ah-ha!
This answers another topic for me

thanks all for your replies

~suv wrote:

lemony wrote:these are the steps i followed to convert to cmyk in scribus:
- import svg
- go to edit<colors
- convert each color to cmyk
- export as svg ( then i open inkscape and export as bitmap (pnj) )

The last step undoes your efforts in Scribus: Inkscape does not export as CMYK (not even after you edited the SVG file in Scribus), the exported bitmap is RGB. Stay with Scribus for export - not Inkscape - if you need CMYK / color-managed export.

[Added later] … maybe I misunderstood your intentions, and you don't need a bitmap file (PNG) with an assigned (CMYK) ICC profile (color-managed). If RGB is fine for the file, soft proofing on-screen in Inkscape might be an alternative to converting the colors to CMYK in Scribus and exporting to SVG (in the SVG file exported from Scribus, the colors are again RGB as far as I can tell)[/Added later]

~suv

what i understood from your explanation is that i should export the drawing from scribus as png . but when i do this i get the drawing with white background although it is png so how can i get rid of the white background ?.
thanks