XnView Software

It seems that there are not that many alternatives if you want to compress a cmyk image with modern methods for smaller archiving and transport.

here is current state that I've found:

8bit cmyk lossless: tif (OLD), pdf (only ZIP compression)
8bit cmyk lossy: jpg, pdf

16bit cmyk lossless: tif, pdf?
16bit cmyk lossy: tif, pdf?

AVIF, WEBP dont support it


BUT JPEG XL does now, it is relatively new feature of JPEG XL added to it in 01/2023

Although maybe not a very high priority feature as not that many people need to deal with CMYK but for those that do it would make life a bit easier.

I don't expect a "full cmyk suite features" but things like following:

- ability to view CMYK jxl

- ability to convert cmyk pdf, jpg, possibly also tif to jxl
- ability to confirm from image properties if it is cmyk jxl (8bit or 16bit).

CMYK color space is primarily of interest for printing images. For displaying CMYK images on a monitor they have to be converted to RGB color space for that purpose.

WinnieW wrote: Thu May 08, 2025 1:47 pm CMYK color space is primarily of interest for printing images. For displaying CMYK images on a monitor they have to be converted to RGB color space for that purpose.

I know.

I hadn't noticed before but apparently the color space conversion is bad (or does not exists) as I just opened CMYK JPG and it looks different than on other programs.

Anyway better to be able to open in a bit distorted color space than not open at all (better of course with a warning in status bar or somewhere that colors are rendered incorrectly). Then if you really need highest quality render you can open it in photoshop, etc...