CMYK conversion from RGB

colorsconversionrgb

I have several RGB images that I have to convert to CMYK for a paper submission. I have a Photoshop Elements 9 license but it doesn't support CMYK.

I remember having tried with ImageMagick on Linux but never managed to generate a result with the same colors. Last time I sent the files to a friend with a Photoshop license to convert.

Is there a free or cheap tool on Mac OS X, Linux or Windows that will allow me to do the job?

Best Answer

It seems you can use ImageMagick to convert from RGB to CMYK if you use the appropriate color profiles

For example if the source image contains a color profile

convert rgb_image.jpg -profile USCoat.icm cmyk_image.jpg

otherwise

convert rgb_image.jpg +profile icm \
                      -profile sRGB.icc  -profile USCoat.icm cmyk_image.jpg

But you must use appropriate color profiles, sRGB and USCoat are just examples.

Related Solutions

Macos – convert an image from CMYK to RGB in Mac OS X

I found three ways to do it.

Open the image with ColorSync.
Use the Apply ColorSync Profile to Images action in Automator.
Use sips (thanks NSD) and supply the --matchTo argument. I wrote a shell script to convert an image using the Generic RGB Profile.

#!/bin/sh

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
    cat >&2 <<EOF
usage:
    $0 filename
    $0 source-file destination-file

    Converts an image to RGB color space. The first form manipulates
    the file in-place.
EOF
    exit 1
fi           

SOURCE_FILE=$1

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
    DESTINATION_FILE=$SOURCE_FILE
else
    DESTINATION_FILE=$2
fi

sips \
    --matchTo '/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Generic RGB Profile.icc' \
    "$SOURCE_FILE" \
    --out "$DESTINATION_FILE"

Converting RGB to CMYK color profile in GIMP

GIMP doesn't really support CMYK yet, though it's in development. There's a plugin called Separate+ that can do CMYK separations — looks like it exports the CMYK data directly to a file, since it can't be stored in a GIMP image buffer.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Macos – convert an image from CMYK to RGB in Mac OS X

Converting RGB to CMYK color profile in GIMP

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