Re: The Simpler SWOP Proof Question
Re: The Simpler SWOP Proof Question
- Subject: Re: The Simpler SWOP Proof Question
- From: Terry Wyse <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:23:21 -0400
On Jul 17, 2006, at 8:29 PM, Lee Blevins wrote:
Thank you all for the response.
It was a bit over my head.
Well, you probably got a sense of the rather "charged" nature when
somebody asks the seemingly benign question of "how do I make a SWOP
proof?" :-)
You first need to ask yourself "do I REALLY want to make a SWOP
proof?", right down to the "official" #5 stock simulation (visualize
dark and yellow-ish). IOW, are you going to go "all the way" with it
or do you want a more generic simulation of SWOP press conditions?
Even a sheet-fed printer will sometimes say "we print to SWOP" which
only demonstrates how little they know about SWOP (probably what they
MEAN is that they use SWOP inks, run close to SWOP densities and TVI
and nothing more but that's not strictly SWOP in my opinion).
But I digress, as usual....
To make it simpler, I have Onyx Production House, Monaco Proof, a
DTP41T
and an Epson 9800.
Sounds good to me.
What paper should I use and where do I get a CMYK profile that would
make the best "SWOP" proof? I'm using UltraChrome Inks.
Strictly speaking, you can use any paper you wish as long as you use
absolute colorimetric rendering and the inkjet paper in question is
lighter than the press stock you intend to simulate and that it's
reasonably neutral to begin with. But if what you mean to say is that
"what inkjet paper can I use to best simulate a publication press
stock without resorting to absolute colorimetric rendering" then I'm
not what paper EXACTLY to recommend. Generically, I would say to
choose a paper that has an L* value of between 90-93 and that is
reasonably neutral to perhaps slightly yellow (again, strictly
speaking, the paper should be between L* 88-90 with a b* of +2 - +4 -
dark and yellowish!). If you've got a spectro handy, take some
readings of typical magazine press stocks and see what they measure.
That will give you a feel for what's currently being used in the real
world of publishing. The catch is going to be that there are very few
really good inkjet papers that are also that dingy and yellow! Off
the top, Epson's Commercial Semimatte Proofing Paper wouldn't be a
bad choice. Despite it's name, it's much closer to current
publication stocks that it is to what's used in real commercial
offset printing. It performs reasonably well with Ultrachrome inks
and is reasonably inexpensive. It's only flaws perhaps are it's a bit
too lightweight (doesn't have the nice feel of a proof) and it is not
able to get down to the extremely low (single digit) L* values that
are needed for a good commercial offset simulation or when simulating
a dot proofer such as a FinalProof or Approval but it will do fine
for a SWOP simulation.
As far as a press profile, you could do worse than simply using
Photoshop's USWebCoated(SWOP)v2 profile. The only thing better
perhaps would be to get a copy of the TR001 (SWOP) characterization
data and make your own profile. Photoshop's profile is in fact based
on TR001 but was tweaked a bit from what I understand. The advantage
of having the actual TR001 measurement data is that, after you've
profiled you system, you can run out a testchart through your ICC
workflow, measure the chart and then compare the measurement of the
color-managed chart to that of the real measurement data. Get the
comparison to, say, under 2 dE average and you've got an excellent
SWOP proof in my opinion (tip: for the dE comparison, turn on
absolute colorimetric rendering but for actual production proofing,
assuming your paper is targeted correctly, go back to relative
colorimetric).
Hope this helps,
Terry Wyse
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