Update 23.10.2017: Some people in Twitter suspected that since this is an article written in 2015, things in CSP might have changed, that some improvements has been made. Fear not! 😉 Tested it today and the program handles things as well or rather badly as before.

Clip Studio Paint aka Manga Studio 5 does not natively support color management and if you intend to make professional print jobs that require CMYK as color space, it’s good to be aware of this limitation. I’m no expert in this field; this article looks at how I deal with Manga Studio, and I’d love to get comments on how others tackle the problem. Are there better solutions?

Note to Finnish readers/Huom suomalainen lukija: Tämä artikkeli on käännös, voit lukea jutun suomeksi tästä.

You can make some tests yourself, if you own also for example Photoshop. Start by setting up both programs color options the same way. These are also good general settings if you want to make print jobs with your programs. (-> here in Europe. But always ask your printer- they might want you to use a different/their own profile)

In Manga Studio go to File/Preferences/Color conversion

And in Photoshop Edit/Color settings

The  Rendering intent is by default Perceptual in MS. I tend to use Relative colometrics in PS because it maintains more of the original colors in the image than Perceptual. But there is no possibility to set black point compensation in MS that Relative colometrics needs, so I’ll ”settle” for Perceptual in both programs. (And the difference is usually not that big which ever intent of the two you use.)

If you open up an image in MS and don’t make sure that the profile attached to it is in preview use, the colors will appear wrong. Take a look at the two images below. The first one is opened in PS (image has AdobeRGB profile) and colors are as they should. The image beneath it is opened in MS without activating the preview profile. Colors appear clearly muddy and too dark.

You have to activate the color profile preview every time from  View/Color profile/Preview. From the  Preview settings above it, you can set which profile you need. You’ll know the profile is in use with your image if you can see its name in the head of your image.

And here’s our example image with profile preview in MS. Looking better:

If your intention is to color in MS using precise CMYK values, be aware that color values change in images made in & exported from MS. They change even if you use CMYK-values to coloring, use a certain CMYK color profile preview and export with that certain CMYK profile. For example a pure Cyan (100, 0, 0, 0) gets other values with it as well when exported.

MS just can’t handle CMYK colors. If you open a CMYK-image made in Photoshop in MS, it will always be converted to RGB at import. (You get a warning window from MS). If you want to convert it back to CMYK, you have to do so by exporting the image. This is never good for the colors in your picture.

Mixing of color values never happens in PS, color values are preserved as they were when made, if you work consistently with a certain CMYK profile. I personally like coloring illustrations directly in CMYK-space using my Pantone color reference cards. And by doing so I have to be able to trust that a program does not change those values by it self randomly.

I nearly recommended using the free Krita for coloring, but noticed that it has the problem that you can’t set up CMYK-values by percentage (as color reference books do) but on a scale from 0-255, where pure cyan is 255 and other values 0. Converting every color from these values to % is a too big and slow job. Which is a pity, because images exported from Krita maintain their color values. The cyan mentioned is still pure cyan when opened in PS.

The alternatives in Manga Studio

If I absolutely wanted to do my coloring in MS in CMYK, I would not even try to mix any colors by any predefined values. (You can try it yourself: make a simple Magenta 0/100/0/0 or Cyan 100/0/0/0 and export it. Then check those values in Photoshop, and you’ll notice that for example the cyan is now a mix of cyan and magenta… So, no. I’d paint by ”eye” (ie just mix colors that please me on the screen) and then try to get my hands on PS or some other reliable program with color management and check the results for at least  couple of the first jobs.

A good, even better solution is to do the coloring in MS in RGB-space and then export the image as CMYK. By using this method, there is no difference in doing this in Photoshop or doing this in Manga Studio. It would be good though to have a calibrated monitor and remember that it is not possible to print all RGB colors with the CMYK process. Avoid for example very saturated colors as they will propably get muted.

Here’s a RGB image made in Photoshop

And here are the CMYK versions made of it. On the right is Manga Studios version and on the left Photoshops version (a CMYK screen proof of each) :

Exactly the same when measured with the color picker.

I will post a real world example of coloring an illustration in Manga Studio in RGB and how to export it to CMYK in my next article.