Re: Who does the seperations?
Re: Who does the seperations?
- Subject: Re: Who does the seperations?
- From: Bob Marchant <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 10:40:37 +0000
On 30 Dec 2006, at 15:18, Ray Maxwell wrote:
All of this discussion of naming CMYK separation profiles brings up
a underling problem in our industry.
Hi Ray .
Let's go back to "the good ole days"...
A photographer shot a transparency.
But now a photographer is more than likely going to be shooting
digitally.
A prepress house made separations (film and proof) knowing the
press and paper that was going to be used.
But then they started to rely automated scanners and just used the
presets . And they got completely confused when photographers started
to supply digital images.
The printer printed the job and matched the proof.
Often a proof that didn't really match the printing conditions, so it
was often a struggle .
The Ideallience has set a standard for shipping photographic
files. It is RGB not CMYK.
But that's just the Idea alliance. They don't speak for all
photographers , or their clients.
The only person who can do a good separation is the person who
knows the characteristics of the press, paper, and ink.
The question is , just who is that person ? You may have guessed by
now , but I'm speaking from the photographers side of the fence. If I
had a dollar / euro / pound for every time I've been given the press
spec from one of our enlightened repro houses that goes "CMYK JPEG at
300 dpi " I'd have made enough to give up photography by now. If I 'd
got another dollar/euro/pound for every time that had been followed
by the comment "we just use the default cmyk conversion in PhotoShop
for conversion " , I'd have bought the boat and gone cruising.
So I ask...Should the photographer make a separation?
Why not ? Given the correct profile ( or building his / her own
profiles using the relevant data) this is perfectly feasible , and in
reality it is often a task carried out with much more loving care and
attention than it might receive from a third party.. In my sector of
the business ( colour critical advertising photography ) , it's
something that we do as a matter of course on a day to day basis.
When did it become the photographer's job to do separations?
Three answers :
a) ever since our clients asked us to supply digital files in CMYK ,
refusing RGB 'cos "it never printed properly"
or
b)ever since the digital photographer couldn't trust prepress to get
it right because they didn't know how to handle RGB files properly ,
usually either ignoring or stripping out the embedded profiles and
using PhotoShop Version 4 for their separations.
or
c) ever since our clients saw the huge advantage in being able to
sign off a photographic job on the day of the shoot , having made
their critical colour / saturation decisions and walked away with an
ISO certifiable proof of the images.
Who has all the information to do a top notch separation? Is it
the photorgrapher or the printer?
Knowledge is the key , not the profession.
What happened to the prepress house and their highly skilled
scanner operators and separators?
Now there's a good question. When we started supplying digital images
back in the mid nineties , we had no end of trouble finding anybody
that we could have a meaningful talk with concerning just how we
could all work together in this new completely digital workflow.
What are your thoughts?
At the time our thoughts were to attempt to rationalise a fragmented
supply chain. So we started the learning curve as to just what was
happening to our precious images when they left us , and to try and
fix it.
As a result , back in the year 2000, the Digital Imaging Group of
the Association of Photographers produced a simple set of best
practice guidelines for the supply of digital images . It recommended
the implementation of robust and transparent non proprietary colour
management using ICC profiles , and provided information about file
formats, compression , "read me"s etc. We produced this in
consultation with the Advertising Pre Press Association and the
Institute of Practitioners in Advertising here in the UK. Since then
there have been other initiatives from photographers including the
UpDig guidelines and the IQA guidelines . These were all produced by
volunteers and are made freely available on the web. We worked with
other bodies such as the PPA on other projects (BTW for those
familiar with pass4press and pic4press , you'll probably have noted
the move to ISO standards ) .
During the course of this , many of us bought CM hardware and
software in order to attempt to fully understand all of the issues.
The Association of Photographers bit the bulllet , and let our
company build separation profiles for photographers to use when
supplying images for their promotional yearbook. We were privileged
to work with Butler and Tanner on this and the efforts were well
worthwhile. After some initial grumbling by some of the
photographers at having to supply press ready images , this turned
out to be a huge success when they realised that now given the right
tools ,they could have positive control over the repro of their images .
So , when it comes to who does the separations , it comes down to who
is best suited at the time . Given the right information , it's not a
job specific task . We all know that knowledge is power , and
because of this there has been a tendency for a bit of "smoke and
mirrors" to encroach on reasoned thinking in the past . But now the
cat is out of the bag , and we've got to all work together to get the
best results irrespective of traditional job description.
And to put that into perspective , let me leave you all with the
comforting thought that there are many highly respected colour
management consultants out there who originally come from an
entirely photographic background ( in Europe , Neil Barstow and
Thomas Holm to name but two ) and who regularly advise press and pre
press houses on how to get the consistent and accurate results. Could
this be anything to do with their lifelong passion for the quality of
the photography from its very inception right through to press ?
Regards,
Bob Marchant.
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