Re: UCR, GCR & UCA...
Re: UCR, GCR & UCA...
- Subject: Re: UCR, GCR & UCA...
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 11:27:53 EDT
James, we are also coming from a photography space. This is what we understand of GCR, UCR, and UCA:
If you do everything properly, you probably should see very little difference on your monitor or in your proofing, between GCR and UCR. The difference will come when it goes to press.
GCR is more stable on press because it builds shadows and dark colors out of black as opposed to UCR which builds them out of color. This way if the press is off slightly and you're printing an image with neutrals, for example, they are more apt to stay neutral and not swing in one color direction. However, if you're printing a beauty image-lots of skin-you might want to use UCR because looks smoother in the skin transitions. It builds the shadows and midtones out of color which will produce a more desireable skin.
The only real disadvantage to using GCR is its tendency to make the screen rosettes more visible in tertiary colors (darks, less than pure colors...). If you need further explanation of this let me know.
As for UCA-the only software we've seen this in is Photoshop. From what we understand, although this isn't definite, PS gives us that option in the CMYK custom setup because the software used to have a problem when choosing GCR, with the colors washing out and they wanted to give you the option of adding color back in. We have never needed this.
If you're using a good profiling software, (we're using Heidelberg's Printopen), it should be little effort and time to make a set of UCR and GCR profiles. We have three of each, with different black generations. These pretty much cover any type of photograph.
Hope this helps,
Kellie Kulton
Raymond Meier Studio, Inc.
532 Broadway, 8th floor
New York, NY 10012