Hi everyone! I am new to this forum and I decided to give Inkscape another try.

I have a new logo design business and I was going to use a copy of Illustrator given to me but I think this is too risky (and wrong). So I decided to use Inkscape to design logos for people who need them. The problem I found already is that Inkscape doesn't have pantone colors to choose from. I thought of a few workarounds, though:

1. Provide logos in only CMYK (for full color printing only) and just provide tiff, eps, svg, png, gif, jpeg file formats. No ai file formats can be provided.
2. Or provide a file with the CMYK values of pantone colors so that if a client needs to have the exact pantone color matches they can submit them to their print shop. I have a swatch book for CMYK and Pantone.

Do any of these ideas sound feasible to any of you? If they don't then I may have to turn down some jobs. If some of you have feedback or ideas I would be very glad to hear them. You can be as honest as you'd like.

Best Regards!

misstheresa2009

Hi misstheresa2009,
Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Unfortunately, the CMYK color settings in Inkscape are strictly for coloring objects. They are not related to the CMYK color model used in printing, and will not approximate Pantone color.

If this is a business with which you intend to earn a living, I would suggest buying Adobe Illustrator. It will pay for itself eventually.

However, I don't understand much about printing, so I'm not sure what a swatchbook is. If it provides the proper color codes for CMYK and Pantone, then I'd say you have what you need, and your plan should work.

But you should wait to hear from others who are more knowledgeable than me, about printing. Because I'm just guessing about the swatchbook.

You can use Inkscape for serious / semi-serious logo design work, just make sure your display is properly profiled and Inkscape is using that profile. And you can import Pantone colors from other documents etc to get proper values.

I want to thank Loadus and Brynn for their helpful feedback. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to respond to my post.

I think I'm going to take Brynn's advice and purchase a copy of Illustrator. I've been searching the internet and I think I can find it for a few hundred dollars.

Regards,

misstheresa2009