Using a CMYK PSD without Photoshop

Question

I have run into a common, yet difficult problem. I do not use Photoshop for image manipulation. Since all my work is web-based, GIMP does what I need in 99% of the situations. The problem is that I occasionally receive PSD files with CMYK encoding rather than RGB encoding. These files will not open in GIMP, nor will they convert in ImageMagick.

Has anyone found a good solution for converting CMYK files to RGB files (either PSD format or a flat format like PNG) that does not involve the use of Photoshop? Say a plug-in for GIMP or a standalone utility?

Mishear

I think CMYK is more widely used name for the color model. – Peabody

I'm replying here for future reference, that who is experiencing similar situation about cmyk profile photoshop .psd. krita.org krita is the answer if you don't have neither can't have adobe family on your operating system. krita is supporting cmyk, open your cmyk psd in krita then go to menu like : image -> convert image color space -> select your prefered profile (probably default rgb) -> press ok file -> export so you can export as .psd which is rgb profile, then you can open in gimp either continue with krita etc... Thanks to GOD i have found this program. my os : fedora20 – Sobriety

Answer 1

Assuming you have access to a Windows computer, freewares like IrfanView or XnView can open it and resave in whatever format you need too. XnView knows more formats, and has a NConvert command line version for this task, but IrfanView can do command line operations as well - I usually install both, preferring IrfanView's interface.

Sivia

IrfanView was what I finally figured out as well. Thanks for the tip! – Mishear

XnView doesn't allow manipulation of layers. You can view them one at a time, and cycle through each layer like an image viewer, but you can't see a tree structure of layers, and turn individual layers off/on. – Cly

Do you have step by step instructions on how to convert a PSD cmyk to rgb in IrfanView? – Quarto

Answer 2

I just had luck with Imagemagick:

convert input.psd -colorspace rgb output.png

It created a bunch of files named output-[0-9].png one for each layer. Good enough to start working with it on Gimp. When I tried to open those PSDs in Gimp 2.6 the message I got was:

Error loading PSD file: Unsupported color mode: CMYK

I'm using Ubuntu Lucid's Imagemagick:

Version: ImageMagick 6.5.7-8 2009-11-26 Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2009 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features: OpenMP

Yardstick

Just be careful: In my experience, IM screws up CMYK images horribly, presumably because it's not able to deal with the embedded colour profiles. My experience is 5-6 years old though – Slopwork

Nice solution - do you have any way to re-align the layers afterwards? All my output pngs are different sizes so re-alignment is a nightmare :( – Holliholliday

Answer 3

There is a very similar question on Superuser.com where one answer lead me the Program Krita. I've opened a CMYK .psd file of about 26 Mb in Size (6761 x 2423 pixels) in Krita version 2.8.1 with KDE version 4.13.3 in Ubuntu Linux 14.04. After converting the color space from CMYK to RGB using the dialogue Image-->Properties in Krita this program is able to store the image as a RGB PNG file. Update: Nicolas pointed out in a comment below: if your .psd file contains several layers it might be necessary, to go into Image-->Convert Image Color Space before saving.

Afterwards I was able to open the resulting RGB PNG with gimp and all colours were converted in a reasonable way as far as I can tell.

Krita was already mentioned in a comment (by Heiken) above. But since Krita is in my opinion one of the best suitable answers to the original question I decided to post this answer to report about my experience here.

Centrepiece

Great solution! One more tip though: I had a PSD file with several layers. When I changed the color mode in Image>Properties, I could not save the file as PSD again because there were several color profiles in the file. But the option Image>Convert Image Color Space did work perfectly. – Tiedeman

Brilliant, thanks for this - have just converted a CMYK PSD to RGB (to use in Gimp) via Krita - it was a big file (1.2GB) and seems to have converted just fine! – Comp

I am unable to convert a multilayer 6.3MB file. After I Imag > Convert Image Space > RBG the cursor swirls for a few seconds, and then the program closes. Do you have any pointers for me? – Acid

@IberoMedia: your description "the program closes" could mean that Krita encounters an internal programming error during the conversion. To diagnose this further it would be helpful to find out whether this is really the case. Are you able to run Krita from within a debugger like gdb? – Centrepiece

@petu I don't know how to use gdb, but reading from journalctl from the time of last crash, I get: Mar 25 20:04:03 MYCOMPUTER org.kde.krita.desktop[15042]: krita.core: WARNING: Calling synchronous fullRefresh under a scheduler lock held Mar 25 20:04:03 MYCOMPUTER org.kde.krita.desktop[15042]: krita.core: We will not assert for now, but please port caller's to strokes Mar 25 20:04:03 MYCOMPUTER org.kde.krita.desktop[15042]: krita.core: to avoid this warning – Acid

@IberoMedia: Than I recommend to visit the page krita.org/en/get-involved/report-a-bug May be there is also a Linux user group in your region where you could obtain local help? – Centrepiece

Answer 4

Open Office can actually import CMYK PSD files. Just right click on a PSD file and choose "Open With Other Application" and choose OpenOffice.org Drawing. (Assuming you are using GNOME.)

It doesn't support layers though, so you can't do anything really fancy.

Unchain

Answer 5

Also you can import it to Scribus, if use 1.3.5 or higher in Scribus you can change the layer visibility and blend mode, the image can be saved in tif, jpg, png, pdf, ps/eps; after, any of this can be edited with Gimp.

Accomplishment

Answer 6

Seems like a plugin exists here http://cue.yellowmagic.info/softwares/separate-plus/index.html which includes:

separate RGB to CMYK conversion / Softproofing plug-in (improved version of Alastair M. Robinson's "Separate" plug-in

Mozellamozelle

OP was looking for a CMYK --> RGB converter, not the other way around. – Respirable

Answer 7

I found your question as I was searching for answers to the same problem, having just encourntered it myself on my Ubuntu machine.

More in hope than anything else, I transferred the PSD file to my Windows XP machine where I found that I could open it using paint.net. I then saved it again which took ages - not a surprise when I looked at the unbelievable size of the file. The original was 3.7Mb and the re-saved version was 197Mb ! Fortunately, it zipped to about 940K.

Anway, the point is that when I tried the re-saved file on the GIMP on Linux, it seemed to work fine. It even gave me layers.

BTW, paint.net is a fine little program, though it works a little differently than The Gimp. It is also free :-)

Hope that this helps.

R.

Package

There is a PSD plugin for paint.net here However, if the PSD has tons of layers, you might freeze your system, since paint.net doesn't support partial layers and turns every layer into an image sized layer. – Southwick

Answer 8

Gimp has a plugin called Ghostscript, which seems to work for me.

late answer to the question and probably not around when you posed the question, but there you go. I do not know how well it works as I just started using it.

Bumgarner