Photoline (pl32.com) does CMYK out of the box - actually, you can use Lab, RGB, CMYK, Greyscale @ 8/16/32bpc PER layer in Photoline's layer stack (something Photoshop cannot achieve unless you convert to awkward smart objects). It comes with full colour management. (Costs less than Elements, btw) So you may have the original RGB version and a CMYK version of a photograph in the same layer stack - no longer do we need to convert the entire file. Or work on a different page, since Photoline support multi-page documents as well. It also supports true vector objects, rather than merely vector objects that are directly converted to bitmaps. Export to pdf and svg retains the vector shapes and text. Also interesting to note here: you can work in Lab curves no matter the colour mode your layer is in - no image mode switching is required, unlike Photoshop. It's all very liberating in terms of workflow. The only things missing are the 3d and video fluff. Those are pretty meagre and average anyway compared to the competition out there in those areas. (For example, for 3d painting apps like 3dCoat, BodyPaint, Mari, zBrush or Mudbox do far better and superior jobs.) Although Photoline does not have the Pantone libraries installed per default, those can be installed legally as well, if needed (see http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/How_to_legally_obtain_spot_colour_palettes_for_use_in_Scribus_1.3.3.x_and_later_versions). Btw, Canvas is nice, but severly hampered by its lack of >8bpc support, no Lab, no CMYK, and many other limitations. Same holds true for Pixelmator, Acorn, Seashore, etc. For 2d digital painting Krita is improving by heaps and bounds lately: the Windows version works really well, and is production ready. Again full Lab, RGB, CMYK support at 8/16/32bpc, and the brush engine arguably blows Photoshop out of the water. Both Krita and Photoline work with the same type of layer stack, and completement each other very well. The best thing: Krita is completely free and open source. It is quite amazing. I am sorry, but Canvas can just not compare at all with its painting capabilities. http://krita.org/ http://www.kogmbh.com/download.html Photoline includes an app-link that allows you to seamlessly move between Photoline and Krita - Photoline also picks up on file changes, and will automatically update the file it is working on. SOooooo... working professionally in CMYK is no problem at all outside Photoshop. wkjeiwoi wrote: The CMYK thing is a road block, I fully agree.. a couple of years back, a buddy of mine and I experimented with Apple ColorSync, there is a lot of information on how to use it; I found it pretty thick and confusing. our results were...on the good side...good-ish, compared to Photoshop's. Then there's Seashore, which can convert to CMYK, but again, in our non-scientific testing, I can't vouch for how accurately Seashore does it. And another point, does Adobe have a lock on CMYK algorithms in software? I can't think of any other software publisher's software, now available, which does. Does/Did Canvas? Freehand did.. Naturally, CMYK printing pre-dates all of this computer stuff by quite a few years... Anyone know about this aspect of the discussion? thanks!
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