If your application needs to provide printing and pre-print processing operations, Graphics Mill Pro is a perfect solution. Below you will find highlighted benefits for these kinds of applications.
CMYK Images Support
CMYK is a native color space for printing. Graphics Mill Pro allows you to:
- Load CMYK images from TIFF, JPEG, PSD, etc;
- Process them without converting to RGB or any other color spaces;
- Convert RGB images into CMYK using ICC profiles (and therefore get precise color conversion);
- Split CMYK image into separate channels.
- ...and perform other operations with CMYK images.
CMYK images may contain alpha channel. This allows two CMYK images to blend without extra conversions to RGB. Graphics Mill Pro also handles 16 bits per channel CMYK files.
Advanced Color Management
To be sure the hardcopy image will have the same colors as the image file, you need to apply color management. Graphics Mill Pro makes it easy. Here is a brief color management features highlight:
- If the image file contains embedded color profile, Graphics Mill Pro loads it along with pixels;
- You can change this profile or convert pixels to fit another profile;
- You can specify output color profiles for all color spaces supported by Graphics Mill Pro: RGB, CMYK, and grayscale;
- During conversion you can specify necessary rendering intent - relative colorimetric, absolute colorimetric, perceptual, and saturation;
- When using relative colormetric, you can use the so-called "black point compensation" mode which increases the contrast of the output image;
- You can preview the result of printing on the screen by specifying two profiles for conversion: for the printer and for the monitor. This helps user to see and proof the image without long and often costly printing;
Here is an example of conversion with color management disabled and enabled:
Industry Standard File Formats
Graphics Mill Pro can load images of various file formats, including widely used for printing JPEG, TIFF, PSD.
If you need to save the file to print it using other software, you can save it in such industry standard formats as TIFF and PDF. Of course, you can save it in other file formats as well.
Composite Print
Graphics Mill Pro provides a number of printing features such as:
- Printing multipage TIFF files;
- Printing a collection of images:
- Single image on each page;
- Multiple images on each page;
- Optimization of multiple images layout on a page;
- Possibility to handle printed image physical size property:
- Auto resizing;
- Auto cropping;
- Auto centering;
- Proper handling of portrait/landscape orientation of the image;
- Footer and header captions;
- Memory-friendly implementation;
- Integration with standard .NET print dialog;
- Demo application with source code is included.
Templates for Personalized Graphics
Whenever you create an application intended to print personalized graphics (such as business cards, ID cards, flyers, mass paper mail, etc), you encounter with a problem of creating and storing templates for the graphics. Advanced PSD Add-on for Graphics Mill will help you solve this issue.
This add-on enables you to process PSD files, i.e. extract separate layers and then merge them. You can extract two kind of layers - raster (common images) and text (a text string + its font and paragraph settings). When merging layers from a PSD file, you can insert your own data instead of some layers.
This way, designers of templates can use familiar software like Adobe® Photoshop®. They just give some specific name to the layer that should be interpreted as a placeholder. You can write simple application (code example is enclosed) which will analyze PSD template and generate a personalized image.
Examples of Usage
Graphics Mill Pro is a highly versatile component and can be used in wide range of applications. Here are a few examples:
- Batch file processor for images;
- Image editing application;
- Web-site for ordering business cards and other print production;
- Photo printing application;