Okay, so I'm going to post a thread now about using Clip Studio Paint, about color settings, ICC color profiles, outputting to CMYK, getting 100% K in your blacks, etc. Technical shit. If you're struggling with this, read the thread. I'll reply to myself here, and it'll take a little time... 1/many
So, first off, from what I've tested and seen, as compared to outputting CMYK from Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint shifts colors a touch, even when using the same ICC profile. All software I tested also does this, many of them worse. For me, the best color output is from Photoshop, unfortunately.
I've now tested output from Clip Studio Paint, Affinity Photo, Krita, and PixelMator Pro. Krita was the worst and absolutely destroyed the color. I'm not saying I mastered any of these. I just converted to the same ICC profile and saved out as a tiff, and compared.
Now, from what I've seen, there's a potential workflow here without Adobe. Probably you want Photoshop early on to test and compare, then ditch it once you've nailed down your settings. I'd say you can do your painting in Clip Studio Paint, and do final CMYK output from Affinity Photo.
To nail down the color, you might want to do final color grading in Affinity before outputting. And, from Affinity, you can also trap your lineart if that's something you want to do, as it has CMYK. Even when not trapping, you can open in Affinity, adjust colors, and output.
If not trapping, you can output straight from CSP, but your colors may be off, so you might consider calibrating, comparing with PS, comparing with your own printed work that you have digital files for, etc. That's the ideal. Pull up a page in CSP, and open up the printed book and calibrate.
Now, I'll use the DC ICC profile to show you want to do, if that's your goal. You might see GCR mentioned, but I traded e-mails with DC's prepress folks yesterday, and UCR is still okay. So, if you don't have their actual ICC profile, follow these steps in PS to create one that you can export.
If you want to create that ICC profile yourself, follow these steps. Marvel should be the same, but with 300% total ink. In PS, go to edit/color settings. Match what I have in the attached images. Under "working spaces/CMYK" choose "custom CMYK". In that pop up, for ink colors choose SWOP (Coated)
Krita definitely took me a while to calibrate between screen and print (I do a wide range of different jobs), but then I paint from scratch in it, I only import the rough sketches.
I wonder why Krita’s is so bad. Like is their primary output predicated as simply online? Perhaps there is a githubbed plugin/build that better tackles colour management/output
Likely the issue is that Krita's default profile is more of a test profile. They couldn't include a preexisting CMYK profile that had a good license attached to it.
