Re: Remote Proofing
Re: Remote Proofing
- Subject: Re: Remote Proofing
- From: Henrik Holmegaard <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 01:09:05 +0100
Steve Upton <email@hidden> wrote:
>PDF/X-1a has a number of significant benefits that could certainly
benefit
>you the most important might be that the entire file will have been
separated
>to CMYK and if it was correctly made, the SAME CMYK.
I can't see how this is specified within the PDF/X-1a approach.
The approach does not have a concept that the objects in the page
geometry need to share one and the same ink limit and black replacement.
The underlying problem is legacy thinking. I don't know about the U.S.
but here in Europe there are many who think of themselves as
lithographers.
Lithography is a tradition that stretches back to the 1850s when it was
first popularized for small runs of posters and advertisements.
Just as in the then contemporary Japanese nishiki-e tradition, which
interacted with the early lithographic scene, the idea is to do a
visual color separation.
The number of planes in the separation are not given. Some nishiki-e
prints have as much as fifty, and some London Transport
autholithographies are quite high, too.
(London Transport continued the tradition of autolithography into the
1950s, and in Denmark there were still commercial autolithographers in
the 1960s. The craft is now taught by Finn Naur Petersen at the Royal
Academy of Fine Art, the last of the trade apprentices. Bye the bye
Denmark is the only country that still uses copperplate engraving for
stamp production.)
When the offset lithographic press was introduced in San Francisco in
1904 (2004 is the centennial), the photographic raster had already
emerged. Now the age of the repro camera began, and it lasted until the
late 1980s. I used to work for the company that translated the Eskofot
repro camera manuals. The criterion of professional color separation
for the camera operator is that each image is given its own screening
and its own tonal compensation.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s high resolution laser composing
systems emerged. PostScript Level 1 was nothing more than a replacement
for these systems. PSL1 only had a concept of RGB, HSB and Gray, but
none of CMYK (that came in a later revision). The initial Adobe and
Apple approach was to render the type plane and paste the color
separation planes.
When the EPS workflow emerged, it mirrored 1:1 the criterion of
professional color separation as the camera operator saw it. It was
_and still is_ possible to encode a custom screeing and a custom
transfer curve on a per image basis. This is technical non-sense, but
it meets the user expectation. For a specific type of user, that is,
for a user trained in the tradition of visual color separation.
So you get Erwin Widmer, then of UGRA, explaining to a user on the
PrintPlanet list that per object screening is no longer done (: it is
not necessary with current screening technology). And you get Chris
Murphy campaigning for per object color separations (my understanding
is that the goal is per object black replacement rather than per object
ink limits), and the question there too is if this makes technological
sense with improved black replacement algorithms. Out of curiosity I
checked the EPSF Specification for mention of legal inclusion of a per
object CRD, and with Adobe for a ruling on whether this made sense or
not.
The whole issue is one of craft thinking versus technology thinking.
IMHO it is not possible to junk the craft thinking. The best approach
is ethnographic, that is, to show where the thinking came from combined
with technological, that is, to show why the thinking is no longer
relevant. And in any case it is the centennial of offset lithographic
printing, so the timelime approach is appropriate in and of itself.
>PDF/X-3 is really able to carry the device independent workflow farther
>along a standardized path than what is typically being done today. If
I want
>to include RGB (or CIE) colors in my compound documents then PDF/X-3
>will allow it.
Right, but RIP developers are not so hot on logical interface design.
So forget UI controls for CIEL*a*b* which incidentally means there are
typically no UI controls for spot to process conversion.
>I prefer a hybrid approach. One of separating and printing to
standards when
>possible and proofing with actual device profile for the true reality
check.
Right, use a custom profile when possible. Use a standards-based
profile when a custom profile is available, and use the FOGRA
tolerances to make sure that the printer prints to the specification.
Or don't pay for the printing, which is the approach IFRA has been
pitching by the way.
Thanks,
Henrik
----------------------------------------------------
Henrik Holmegaard, Technical Writer
Tel +45 3880 0721 / +45 3881 0721
Tollosevej 69, DK-2700 Bronshoj
----------------------------------------------------
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