Open Source Free Software for Prepress Work of Printing Industries - A Study

Abstract

The study aims to find out the results of art paper products using recycled paper with strain engineering and adhesives PVOpen source free software exists for different work, and some of them may useful for prepress work of printing industries. Objective of this paper is to investigate the usefulness of four open source free software for prepress work of printing industries in India. For this study four free software chosen, which are Scribus (Version 1.4.5), Inkscape (Version 0.91), GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Programme - Version - 2.8.18) and Krita (Version - 2.9.11) as substitutes of four proprietary software those are not free and generally used for prepress work of printing industries in India. Scribus used as the substitute of Adobe PageMaker and Adobe InDesign, Inkscape used as the substitute of CorelDraw, GIMP and Krita used as the substitute of Adobe Photoshop. For this study author has followed different steps, first one was study the opinions, article about the mentioned free software published in Internet, second step was, done some jobs using the free and proprietary software and generated PDF and JPG output by three operators, third was got the operators and author's opinions cum observations and fourth was done the printing by conventional offset lithography and digital printing process and last was asses the print quality by ten general observers. Results showed that free software may be used for printing industries with some limitations.
Keywords: Open source free software, Proprietary software Prepress, Scribus, Inkscape, GIMP, Krita, Printing industries.