RE: colour management at digital/quick print shops
RE: colour management at digital/quick print shops
- Subject: RE: colour management at digital/quick print shops
- From: Greg Nuckolls <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 16:24:23 -0500
In response to Larry Wilson:
I am the Color Analyst for a digital shop in Houston, TX, and we have been
slowly incorporating a Color Management workflow for about nine months. We
currently offer color-managed services for scanning (a Scitex EverSmart Pro,
two Contex, and a Color Trac), wide-format inkjet (an Epson 9000 with Onyx,
4 HP 5000s (two with Onyx, two direct) several other misc. HPs, and a Roland
CammJet), small-format laser (a Xerox Doc40/Splash, two Doc2060s/EX2000s),
and large-format photographic (a LightJet 430/Onyx). As far as I know, we're
the only mid-level printing shop in town that does this.
For the past year, we've used the EX2000 as the front ends for our 2060s,
but are now exploring the Scitex CSX 2000 in its place. The reason for this
is simple: as some members of this list know all too well, Fiery does not
support workstation-based color management. I do build custom profiles for
the Fiery on top of the EX2000 profile... but those profiles can only tune
output for our range of papers. They can't be used for accurate
soft-proofing, or for hard-copy proofing using other printers, because it
requires Fiery's profile to function properly. If a customer asks for the
profile for our 2060's, the closest we have to offer is the generic EX2000
profile. The Scitex RIP will fix that.
We typically get the same input files as you do; 90% do not use color
management. We'll typically assign these files to either US Sheetfed Coated
or AdobeRGB98, and run our workflow from there. If a profile is already
tagged, we leave it and go directly to output. Our CM is still piece-meal;
we're starting to incorporate ICC Autoflow to help us with Pantone and
vector files, and we still have other departments to expand to in the
future.
I ran a survey of our customers several months ago, and discovered that
slightly more than 35% had heard of color management. We have lots of
architects and engineers in that mix, though. Of our customers in the design
and retail industries, most everyone had heard about it, but many either did
not use it or relied on their pre-press house to do it for them. Only about
5% of our customers had what I'd call an acceptable working knowledge and
practice working with color management... a pretty dismal figure, IMO.
Hence, much of my job has become educational and evangelistic... going out
to our customers' sites, and talking up color management. We'd rather teach
the others and bring them up with us rather than give up and sink back down.
I, too, am interested in hearing other experiences at this level... please
share! Larry, if you'd like to talk more off-list, please feel free to
e-mail.
Greg Nuckolls
Color Analyst
email@hidden
A&E Products Co., LP
Reprographics With A CAN-DO Attitude!
2001 PIA/GAIN "Best of the Best" Workplace Award Winner
www.aeproducts.com
This month's special: Red, White, and Blue color-managed free-of-charge.