How to convert tiff images from RGB color to CMYK color on Linux?

Posted on In QA

I have a poster to be submitted to the publisher which requires image files in CMYK color. The file I already have is in RGB color. How to convert it on Linux?

The convert tool from ImageMagick with option -colorspace to alternate image colorspace of images.

The plain output with colorspace is quite large. So we’d better use a compression like LZW when writing the image:

$ convert from.tif -colorspace cmyk -compress LZW to.tif

To find more supported colorspace and compress options, you can use the -list option of convert:

$ convert -list colorspace
CIELab
CMY
CMYK
Gray
HCL
HCLp
HSB
HSI
HSL
HSV
HWB
Lab
LCH
LCHab
LCHuv
LMS
Log
Luv
OHTA
Rec601Luma
Rec601YCbCr
Rec709Luma
Rec709YCbCr
RGB
scRGB
sRGB
Transparent
XYZ
YCbCr
YDbDr
YCC
YIQ
YPbPr
YUV

and

$ convert -list compress
B44
B44A
BZip
DXT1
DXT3
DXT5
Fax
Group4
JBIG1
JBIG2
JPEG
JPEG2000
Lossless
LosslessJPEG
LZMA
LZW
None
Piz
Pxr24
RLE
Zip
RunlengthEncoded
ZipS

Eric Ma

Eric is a systems guy. Eric is interested in building high-performance and scalable distributed systems and related technologies. The views or opinions expressed here are solely Eric's own and do not necessarily represent those of any third parties.

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