CMYK support in Inkscape could be a game-changer for professional print designers
A note before we begin: This week, I'm overwhelmed by the stream of news about Meta, ProtonMail, and other tech giants going mad. Instead of creating a humorous caricature or a long blog-post about it as I usually do when tech news goes chaotic, I'm shifting my focus to highlighting positive impact. This article was born out of this reflection (and also maybe, my coping mechanism).
As a digital artist and long-time user of free and libre graphic software, I'm excited to share with you a significant development that's been missing from our ecosystem: user-friendly CMYK support in Inkscape (and its CMYK PDF output).
Martin Owens, a dedicated developer, has been working tirelessly to bring this feature to life, and I think it's essential that his work gets the support it needs.
For former Adobe Illustrator (or Corel Draw) users, you know how crucial CMYK support is for print design, especially in vector. It's a feature that has kept many creatives captive to proprietary software, despite the desire to switch to free and libre alternatives. I personally suffered from this when, around 2005, I took a client to a printer and they refused to print the logo I designed because it was an RGB SVG file. That was humiliating for me as a young freelancer. Martin's work aims to change this, and I couldn't be more enthusiastic about it.
