Hi all!
I’ve been dual-booting windows and linux mint for a while now. I’m mostly being held back by just a few things preventing me from switching to only linux, though. One thing in particular is I’m running a small new business for printing art and photos, and we use the proprietary Canon Professional Print & Layout software to set up all sorts of custom layouts.
It’s nice because it’s quite purpose-built for choosing different papers, has really nice control over margins, sizing, and placement, and integrates nicely with our printer. It also gives tools for professional colour management, as well as soft-proofing in client.
Do any of you have experience with native linux software that works similarly to this? Is this type of functionality one of the things that GIMP can cover? (I tried years ago to learn how to tackle GIMP but I simply did not click with it, though I’d be willing to give it another shot if there isn’t a better choice)
Also, I think CUPS can contact my printer on the network, but i am worried that i might lose some functionality without the proprietary drivers? Like HDR/high bit-depth colour or something.
If any of you have experience or tips on this, I’d really appreciate it!
I work in Print. I know what you are talking about. Not DTP software, you want prepress software.
Only well maintained FOSS for this in Linux that I’m aware of, is Ghostscript. One issue is that it doesn’t have a UI, it’s a CLI tool.
So you would have to script print flows and set up watchfolders, OR make a GUI.
Have you looked at scribus? I’ve used it for a couple things and it seems pretty straight forward. Then again, I am far from any type of professional.
I downloaded this the other day, actually! still have to play some more with the printing functionality, it just felt like it was much more purpose-built for typesetting and design. But will be giving it a closer look, thanks :3
scribus is a great DTP/layout package. I do some free (read amateur) ocassional layout and printing work for friends and family and gimp, scribus and inkscape are the primary tools.
regarding the printer, you are likely to lose some proprietary driver functionality if that functionality comes from the driver software and not the printer hardware. a little bit of playing around with settings (in gimp for example) will often compensate.
So! I tried to mess with Scribus a little bit today. I don’t like that margin and bleed management is only available from the Document Settings window, which can only be open its own window and not docked in the main window. It also isn’t really convenient to adjust the margin sizes and have the image fit to it, though it can definitely be done.
My biggest issue seems to be that there’s not a noticeable feature for ICC profile colour management? Unless that’s simply labelled something different than what i’m used to. I’m also not sure where to actually keep an ICC profile on linux, for what it’s worth. Looks like i might need something like Argyll Colour Management?
Edit: looks like at least on Mint with colourd, icc profiles get stored in: /usr/share/color/icc
Edit2: Looks like there is colour profile management, it just isn’t nearly as streamlined as i’m used to. i’ll have to do some test prints to see if quality is alright.
A new major version of Scribus has been released with some pretty big updates all around, including colour management. I have not had a chance to play with it, but you may find some salve for those papercuts in this release. good luck!
woah, thanks for letting me know! i’ll see if i can get it to do what i need it to now :3
I do think a lot of it comes from the printer hardware, and scribus does seem to be more useful than i initially got from its writeup! Ill be testing it out some more on both of my OSs, to see if i do lose anything and if i can compensate for it like you say. Thanks for your response :3