I'm trying to make a workflow for Illustrator (CMYK) to Web (SVG with CMYK colors and RGB fallbacks) to Print (CMYK PDF) using SVG. However, it looks like Illustrator only exports RGB colors in SVG files. Illustrator would only be responsible for the saving as SVG, then I'd use other tools to do the rest.
Is there a way to get Illustrator to export device-cmyk() or icc-color() values in addition to RGB colors in an SVG file? Is there a way to export spot color names as well?
The hex values are RGB colors. I'm looking for a way to get CMYK colors exported in addition to the RGB colors so that I can get the print colors correct when converting my SVG back to PDF later in my workflow.
I suspect that Illustrator may not support either of these but I wanted to verify. If it doesn't, any ideas for other workarounds? The assumption is that Illustrator will not be involved after the file is exported to SVG which is why it's important to get the CMYK equivalents exported with the RGB colors during the initial export to SVG.
Alternate color models will be supported in SVG 2, but since it is an unfinished draft at the moment nobody really uses it and so does AI. You want something that doesn't exist, though I'm sure some preliminary implementations exist e.g. in some development branch of Inkscape. Eitehr way, at this point it's totally pointless to waste a second thought on this. Unless it becomes an official standard, Adobe won't support it in their apps. For now you can only create your own implementation with custom user data sections and referenced color profiles. Beyond that you have things backwards - nobody and really nobody on teh web cares for CMYK. Even if the spec were already final, anyone with brains would still convert the colors on the local calibrated system to a) ensure correct color rendering and b) keep file sizes as small as possible. Even if browsers may support it, they wil lonly use generic profiles to render CMYK or Lab. Yor idea is seriously flawed therefore. What you want would be like having a custom high-gammut profile in AI and then using a standard FOGRA profile for printing - the colros will simply be wrong.
Thanks for the feedback. You're right that unmanaged device colors, device-cmyk() doesn't appear until SVG2 (http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG2/color.html#device). Sorry if that was misleading. My other example however, icc-color(), is part of SVG 1.1 but the SVG 1.2 docs are a litte more detailed (http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGColor12/#icc-colors). I agree, that Adobe wouldn't necessarily support a draft specification, but there exist some ways to do this within SVG 1.1. Here's a quote about icc-colors from that last link:
As with SVG Full 1.1, SVG Color content may specify color using an ICC profile (see [ICC42]); an sRGB fallback must still be provided.
As for the intent, let me clairfy. I'd want to use an RGB fallback for display on the web since RGB is used by monitors of course. However, I will eventually convert the resulting SVG to a PDF for print and in that case I'll need the CMYK values since it's impossible convert from CMYK to RGB and back to CMYK. The reason I can't export straight to PDF in the first place is that I'll allow users to manipulate the SVG in their browser before printing.
Let's sssume I have all the other details worked out such as how to force the browser to ignore the icc-color so it always uses the fallback for consistency; I still need to figure out how to maintain the CMYK colors or get a mapping of RGB to CMYK colors for all colors in the document. I'm thinking that creating a mapping for each document might be the solution here, but I'm still brainstorming the best way to do that as well.
What we need is to be able to export a svg file from illustrator, modify it in our web application and then get it back to print with its original cmyk colors. If Illustrator stored the cmyk info in svg it would be great.. but maybe there is another workaround for this?
When converting between CMYK and RGB Illustrator uses ICC profiles so there won't be any converting back to anything that existed. It's always a new conversion.
Do you think there is any way to create a cmyk file (any format), then edit it in the web environment and convert it back to cmyk pdf for printing (the printer accepts only cmyk pdf files?
A real world scenario is as following: 1) make a design with some variable fields (let's say it's a t-shirt design) 2) show it in a web app, where user can edit previously defined text fields (but no colors, no fixed text, no images) 3) get the modified file back to a cmyk pdf to print.
Maybe I could get it to work in CMYK, but it it appears that the svg file exported by Illustrator doesn't contain the cmyk information. From what we tested it seems that we need to export it to svg in order to be able to edit in in a web environment effectively.
On the other hand, I have noticed that the svg file produced by Illustrator contains some encoded information, which Illustrator uses when the file is opened. Is there any info about how to decode that information? This could be useful, because it contains all the correct cmyk colors and Illustrator gives priority to this encoded data over the svg itself (so if you edit the svg file, and then reopen it for edition in Illustrator, the program ignores the svg data and uses its encoded info).
No that couldn't be useful. It only gets you in deeper trouble.
Illustrator saves two forks in a file: an SVG fork that is used if the file is opened or displaxed in some SVG editor and an AI fork that is used only in Illustrator. If you edit the SVG fork, you won't update the AI fork and you get a nightmare of a file, that contains two different versions of the contents. When you open it in Illustrator again and save it, the CVG edits are lost. Illustrator just doesn't take notice of them.
The SVG part of the file will always be RGB. Then AI part of the file might also be CMYK. Illustrator cannot save CMYK SVG (which would be possible with some trickery, but not inside Illustrator).
hmm, maybe eps is the answer, I will research this. thanks!
basically what I need is to create a cmyk template, edit it on the web and get it back to printing. I don't mind if colors are not exact when shown on the web (cmyk to rgb conversion) but the edited template must have the same cmyk colors as the original one.
Jon_wu, thanks, this is something I was thinking about, when I learned that Illustrator has support for external scripts...
would it be a problem for you to share the script you're using? this would be of a great help...
also, do you do the reverse svg -> pdf conversion? I think, that in our tests illustrator ignored cmyk profiles in svg on import. I think we ended up using scribus/inkscape for this, but sometimes the colors were not correct.
hi, ok, thanks, I will let you know if something new comes up. on the other hand we'll probably open source the code...
right now we have a working solution in production already, but it's far from perfect - requires quite a lot of manual labor - and I was just checking if something new came up to improve it. anyway - illustrator scripting might be a partial solution going pdf->svg; I will check the batik branch you mentioned, in case there is something new for the other (svg->pdf) direction.
there is some useful info about cmyk here: CMYK Notes
Hi Jon_wu, I have downloaded and batik from the svgcolor12 branch and compiled it with all-jar. But I am not sure how to execute it.. as they said in another thread - java -jar doens't work (It complains about missing class Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/xmlgraphics/java2d/color/NamedColorSpace)
would you please show me some working example of the command you're using
39
Replies
AdChoices