Using a CMYK PSD without Photoshop

image photoshop gimp cmyk psd
64BitBob picture 64BitBob · Oct 21, 2008 · Viewed 44.9k times · Source

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?

Answer

Jj. picture Jj. · Nov 8, 2010

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

Related questions

A way to convert PSD format to something Gimp can read

I have a bunch of PSD files (and more to come) and I want to get them into a format I can work with. I have had (some) success reading PSDs with Gimp before but these files won't read properly. …

Read More
How to replicate PS multiply layer mode

Does anybody know of a good way to replicate Photoshop's multiply layer mode using either an image or CSS? I'm working on a project that has thumbnails that get a color overlay when you hover over them, but the designer …

Read More
Easy tool to decompose sprite image?

I have a lot of sprite images that contain dozens of icons. Is there an easy way to unravel the sprites into separate image files either automatically or feeding it coordinates, widths and heights?

Read More