[X4U] Adobe Creative Cloud

[catsoul]

On May 29, 2014, at 6:21 AM, Joe Sporleder <joe at wacondatrader.com> wrote:

> Are there any Photoshop alternatives that allow CMYK profiles to be embedded in artwork and photos? So far, Photoshop is the only app I'm aware of that handles CMYK for printing on a printing press. 

No doubt, you are absolutely correct. In fact, Photoshop is the only app in the universe that has any number of Photoshop-only features.  Having a print background, I resonate strongly with your point about CMYK/

However, for the many other workflows out there which are RGB-only, including some which have print as the destination, there are a handful of alternatives to Photoshop.

Pixelmator, IMO, by far and away is the #1 alternative for OS X. GIMP is another, and works on the 3 major platforms. Acorn has many fans, and there are probably a few more titles.

I would heartily encourage any Mac user to seriously investigate Pixelmator. It is an *extremely* capable raster editor, creative tool with many of the must-have features found in PS. The development team are aggressively updating and evolving the application, and even helping to re-define the lines between raster and vector. One of few developers who truly "get" the OS X power and experience. Plus, it's only $30. That's about a week's worth of lattes…you owe it to yourselves!!

I do not know why no other applications work in CMYK, unless it's that many of these alternatives are less than 10 years old, and whose developers have decided to pursue web/interactive as their target customers. After all, we are told, print is dead and the web is the future, despite all that stuff still being printed, perhaps off shore…who knows.

Freehand is the only other app I can even think of which was not Adobe (at one time) and which supported CMYK. I remember searching once for methods of taking RGB files to CMYK. There are some workflows involving colorsync, but I got the feeling that "CMYK" if not proprietary to Adobe, seems to be Adobe's game…

Weird, as CMYK existed before Adobe's founders were even born, but post-computer age, CMYK appears to be locked up by one company. Perhaps others can weigh in on this?

I'd certainly like to know more about this.

cat