[cairo] Spot colors (and CMYK)

[Bill Spitzak]

Kai-Uwe Behrmann wrote:
> Am 13.02.10, 05:29 +0100 schrieb ecir hana:
>> Hello,
>> just a quick one: what do you think should happen when you have one
>> surface in duotone (or CMYK or any other non-3D space, as Bill Spitzak
>> calls them) and you want to paint it over (copy, multiply) 3D color
>> space? In other words, what do you think, who should do the conversion
>> - Cairo or the application? But perhaps you, or someone else, see
>> another possibility?
> 
> 
> I guess the input would be all sRGB. But for integer output the colour 
> space should be selectable. Otherwise the sRGB input API would remain a 
> bottleneck for saturated colours.

It is true that a lot of Cairo implementations are going to clamp 
saturated colors to 0-1 *before* compositing rather than clamp the final 
result. This will produce a different result.

However I feel this problem can be safely ignored, in particular because 
partially transparent compositing of the negative values do not produce 
useful results anyway (fixing this would require linear math for the 
compositing, which is unacceptable as it will change the appearance of 
normal overlays such as partial transparency and defeat the useful gamma 
artifacts of sRGB that make negatives look correct to human vision).

I do not think there is going to be any interest in anything other than 
two outputs from any Cairo device:

1. Produce the sRGB result as accurately as possible on the output 
device using whatever information is available about it such as color 
profiles.

2. "raw", use the sRGB results to directly drive 3 color primaries that 
the device can do, such that clamped numbers cover the gamut of the device.

For an awful lot of Cairo back ends these two modes are identical. When 
they are not identical, the second version is needed so that output can 
be matched with other software. I am not sure which mode should be the 
default, it may vary depending on the device.

Any other mode would involve simulating one device on another and I do 
not think should be Cairo's responsibility. The application can choose 
the correct sRGB values to match the other device and use the first 
mode, or it can learn the necessary information about both devices and 
use the second mode.