System for choosing RGB or CMYK elements

Jan Ulrich Hasecke via ntg-context <[email protected]> Tue, 26 May 2026 18:24:39 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.comp.tex.context
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Dear all,

my print shop just rejected my last context created pdf job because some 
objects where rgb and some cmyk. For many good (or bad) reasons for too 
long I delayed my plan to establish a system for choosing the right 
elements according to the selected mode.

In short I want that context chooses cmyk elements when I use the 
mode=isocoated for example, and when I use no mode or mode=web it shall 
use rgb elements.

We have a lot of SVG graphics which are of course in rgb.
I learned that I can convert these svg files via Scribus to cmyk pdf 
files. This is just tedious work, but I guess unavoidable.

So I will end up with lots of files named filename.svg (RGB) for web 
pdfs and filename.pdf (CMYK) for print pdfs.

I think  of using \setupexternalfigures inside startstopmode[isocoated] 
to restrict method to pdf or something like this.

Is this feasible?

Or is it better to create files with a naming scheme that hints to the 
color space like cow-rgb.pdf and cow-cmyk.pdf and use the right file 
explicitly in the context file? I don't like this idea.

I know that I also must have a good solution for raster images.

What do you think? How do you solve this challenge?

TIA and Ciao!
juh
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