Re: [Gimp-user] Print shops & file formats

[Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre prokoudine gmail com>]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 6:32 AM, Steve Kinney wrote:

> Over five years I saw a steady trend among the stream of print
> vendors who crossed my path:  The "Photoshop or else" paradigm went
> from being fairly common to being very rare.  Maybe the imploding
> U.S. economy drove vendors who were unable to survive in an "adapt
> or die" market out of business. Maybe the shrinking market drove
> "graphics professionals" with certification but no experience or
> ability out of work, improving the average technical capability of
> print shops. Maybe the exponential growth of the GIMP user base
> flooded the market with non-Photoshop source files - each a purchase
> order waiting to happen. (IMO it was all three.)

I'd say the latter is unlikely. We still need to introduce quite a few
things to make GIMP produce files of the quality that is required for
professional printing. And even then it would be missing things like
GCR that seems to be absent from LIttleCMS and Argyll (that is, no low
hanging fruit available).

Printing is a very conservative industry (for a good reason, too).
It's going to take quite a while to even get the industry (en masse)
have another go at GIMP.

By the way, if anyone has GIMP success stories with pretty pictures,
please contact me.

Alexandre Prokoudine
http://libregraphicsworld.org