An Observation
An Observation
- Subject: An Observation
- From: "John" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 19:22:00 -0500
- Organization: Tathwell Printing
On 02/07 Bruce Wrote in his post:
>
A large part of the business of being an expert is disagreeing with
>
other experts. At some point, we find that we were ALL wrong, and
>
thus is knowledge advanced....
As a "bystander" and rarely a participant in the group... I must add my 2
cents to this very true statement. We are a commerical printer with what I
consider to be state of the art front end and print capabilities. Scitex
Eversmarts, Screen Drum Scanner, Betterlight Scan back digital studio, Epson
10000, HP Spinjet, Fuji Pictro, Kokak Approval and Gretag CTP platesetters.
All driven with a Rampage front end. We profile NONE of our scanners or
digital scan back devices. We calibrate NONE of our 8 color workstation
monitors. The only thing we profile are the digital proofers, to simulate as
close as possible to our presses.
All of our input devices are calibrated with their own internal hardware
and/ or software settings to themselves, based on known (wanted) highlight,
shadow, midtone, and greybalance settings. The operators themselves plug in
input data based on the type of copy, subject matter, customer prefferences,
and type of paper the job is printing on. This also includes setting USM,
UCR and or/ GCR again based on the subject matter and client.
When viewed on the monitor, we really don't care what the subject looks
like. as long as the values read in balance, and the proper HL, Mids and
Shadow dot values are where they belong size-wise, and where they belong on
the actual image itself. Just a couple minute review process that all of our
scans go through, and to check for any trash.
Our platesetter is calibrated within itself to produce whatever the dot
value reads in photoshop. So my photoshop file dot values are what the same
that
print on the press sheet... plus a small gain. And with ctp plates its a
very small gain.
We put ink on paper very well. Unfortunately, the way things come in these
days,
most of the supplied files leave something to be desired. In fact, a good
percentage of
what comes in is just plain junk. And a lot of it came off of "profiled"
monitors
with all their embedded color profiles, from people that think they know
everything there
is to know about color. They don't.
Doing it by the numbers is an art and a science. Accurate profiling is an
art and a science.
Either done badly turns out junk color. And buying all the software you can
find, and quoting
all the theory you know won't help the end result.
Just an observation.
John
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