Re: To convert or not to convert?
Re: To convert or not to convert?
- Subject: Re: To convert or not to convert?
- From: colorcanuck <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 14:07:04 +0700
Title: Re: To convert or not to
convert?
Roger Breton wrote:
I'm about to send a big packaging job to
China. All laid out in Illustrator
AiCS with all placed images in sRGB. I
don't have a profile for the chinese
press this job will be printed on. All I
know is it will be ran at 150 line
screen and that's about it. I've been
showing all along proofs to my client
simulating US WebCoatedSWOP v2, the only
sensible choice under the
circumstances.
Now, at the eleventh hour, when I'm about
to commit the whole thing to CD
for my client to Fedex over to China with
my color proofs, I feel like
chickening out -- convert all my placed
sRGB images to CMYK -- just in case
something happens... Something WILL
happen for sure. But am I hedging my
bets better by converting or should I
send the whole thing as is?
I toured two medium-sized press plants and six or so large format
printshops (large and small) running Epsons. They tend to have two to
three times the staffing on their presses and, of course, their
pressman tend to be the saviors of most jobs I watched run. Presses
can be anywhere from reasonably new to ancient.
No better nor worse than anything I experienced in Canada.
Ask the same questions. Written (email) is better than a phone
call because most of the techs (and others) read English better than
they speak it. Also, if you specify specs (hardcopy and email) it is
quite likely you might get an email in reply. I also noticed at one
largeformat shop that jobs coming in from Hong Kong also contained
copies of the profiles used saved in the same folder as the jobfiles.
All the jobfiles I did see were CMYK PDF. Though I know that's not
the be-all-end-all of their output processes.
The film units I saw were running calibrated inside specs
provided by the manufacturers charts on the walls above the units and
film processing checked with densitometers to ensure plates came about
within usable limits by the pressman.
I had some great, albeit broken and too short, conversations with
some of the graphic artists and a couple of prepress folk. But the
clock was working against us to really discover set standards. What I
did see (I'm not quite up to snuff on Chinese OS's) is sRGB and US
WebCoatedSWOP v2 as defaults for those not managing outside the box.
QuarkXpress is used quite a bit for printing PDFs in several small
shops.
And yes, the chinese are not stupid. While a lot of film still
comes from overseas and/or Hong Kong prepress, large outfits like
Guangzhou Post do implement color management, though I didn't get to
tour them. I wish I'd had more time and opportunity to see more.
The only outstanding criticism I might have is there is a
tendency on many of the smaller local presses to punch up the presses
to render bright rich greens at the expense of other colors.
I was supposed to tour a packaging shop with inhouse press but I
left the country. I'll be back in April. If I get a chance I'll take
that one in too.
Apple Taiwan has people inside mainland China managing some
industry packaging stuff. Maybe contact their HR department and see if
they can give you a better lead.
;0)
--
joel johnstone
Color Canuck
(A lesser-known of the Bangkok
joels)
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