Re: Who does the seperations?
Re: Who does the seperations?
- Subject: Re: Who does the seperations?
- From: email@hidden (Lee Blevins)
- Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 02:02:19 -0500
> My point was not about "improving upon the work experienced prepress
> operators," but about the ability of photographers to become their own
> separators and do a more-than-decent job of it.
I see no reason why a photographer cannot become a good separator.
To let you in on my own little secret, I started out as a photographer.
It was my photographic trainig that brought me into the trade as a
process camerman. I did it because I could make more money at the time
doing process camera work than I could as a photographer.
My unfortunate experience in photography had me doing weddings and
school kids portraits and I was falling short of my goal as the next W.
Eugene Smith. Process camera work provided good pay and weekends off and
I didn't have to put up with dueling wedding guests or snotty nosed
kids.
Point to understand is that color separations are mostly the tools of
offset lithography.
Offset lithography is best described as a photo-mechanical process.
For a photographer to become a good separator it's about getting your
head around the mechanical aspects of this process. It's about dots,
printing plates, cyclinders, pressures and paper and inks to name a few
of the mechanical considerations.
If there is a key point in understanding color printing vs. color
photography it's the use of the Black. How the black printer impacts an
image and how to adjust it to get a good response is critical to making
a good separation. It's no mystery why it's been called the "Key" color.
Another critical issue in making a separation is the highlight values.
Because making dots doesn't provide a perfectly smooth transition from
tone to white paper it's necessary to understand something called the
"JNP" or Just Not Printable dot value. How small a dot can you make and
know it will print reliably.
Knowing this for a print process lets us separators know how to set
"Zone 9" to use a photographic term. It's not only needed to understand
how to set the neutral white highlight in an image but it's critical to
understanding how to get light pastel colors to reproduce. Those colors
that rely heavily on 2 or 3 percent dot values.
To illustrate that with an image, imagine a picture of a sunnyside up
egg on a white plate.
To get that egg yolk to reproduce I'd be fighting a losing battle.
First, you can't make that color out of process. Second I'd have to do
the best I could with what I have. This means the color will most likely
have only yellow and magenta in it. Even a small amount of cyan will be
problem so I'll have to remove all of it. Then I have to be very careful
to watch where the magenta printer transitions fron JNP to no dot.
If I let that transition happen in the wrong place, I'll have a harsh
break across the yoke where it drops off. It won't look like a smooth
round sphere like it should. The original separation might not have what
I need at all in it. As a result of the color managment, the magenta
printer might have that harsh break that I don't want.
The solution becomes the mechanical part of color separating. I might
have to use the yellow printer as a mask, grayscale the image and paste
it though the mask onto the magenta plate and gradate it to achive the
drawing in the object. It could end up being a trade-off between color
and avoiding a posterized effect.
I can stare at a monitor all day and not know that if I don't control
the printing dots to that degree I'll have an undesirable effect in the
final print.
This isn't rocket science or the work of temple priests, it's just the
result of experience.
There is no reason a photographer cannot achieve this experience it's
just a matter of exposure to the craft. If you do it enough and look at
the results, you'll catch on.
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