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I'm more comfortable with resizing/cropping images in Paint.NET. My wife needs to submit a portrait for something and the requirements are a 3x5 300 DPI JPG or TIFF in CMYK. I can handle the size and resolution, but I have no clue how to save an image as CMYK. I'm clueless enough that I don't even know if "save image as CMYK" is the wrong thing to ask.

I found a Paint .NET plugin that seems like it does separation, but it doesn't mention if it saves the image so it is a CMYK image. I found an article about similar GIMP plugins but I'm still not sure if it's right.

I've got a 300 DPI bitmap appropriately sized and I'm assuming it's in RGB since I haven't fiddled with anything. Is there a free, easy process by which I can turn this into a JPG/TIFF with the CMYK color space?

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2 Answers 2

I'm not at all familiar with Paint .NET. However RGB and CMYK are both color models. A lot of programs have a setting that allows you to change which color mode you are using. But after I Googled around a bit I found out that Paint .NET doesn't support CMYK (or at least not on its own).

GIMP, another free image-editing software also doesn't support CMYK directly but it does offer plug-ins. On their wiki about CMYK support they mention:



Alternatively there are some online tools that can convert images for you. A google search on the matter may return additional resources.

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You can't. Paint.net is RGB only.

GIMP is an RGB editor as well...no native CMYK support.

PhotoShop is your best best bet for CMYK support.

All that said, I bet you it doesn't matter. They can likely handle an RGB JPG just fine and they likely just didn't have someone all that knowledgeable write up the spec.

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