Re: Who does the seperations? (Re: Profile Names and other suggestions)
Re: Who does the seperations? (Re: Profile Names and other suggestions)
- Subject: Re: Who does the seperations? (Re: Profile Names and other suggestions)
- From: Martin Orpen <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 18:03:45 +0000
On 6 Jan 2007, at 21:56, Andrew Rodney wrote:
On 1/6/07 2:22 PM, "Martin Orpen" wrote:
That's about the *falsest* dichotomy I've seen!
OK...
We're talking about real pre-press skills and jobs being lost and you
try and make out that it's simply the case that one party isn't up to
doing the job swap?
Being lost why? I think we know the answers.
I'm not saying anyone with a DSLR that calls themselves a
photographer can
automatically walk into a print shop and land a job or even tell those
employees how to run their shops. I'm saying given a bit of
education, a
good profile and stable process, they can produce excellent files for
reproduction. Maybe a day of training. It's going to take a heck of
a lot
longer to teach a pressman how to setup strobes and actually light
something
then shoot a professional level image in that time.
You clearly don't know the answer.
The reason why we don't have pre-press is because the client can get
it done at little or no additional cost by other people in the
production chain - and why pay for stuff that people will bundle in
for free?
The photographer will separate the images to ensure quality or because
it'll earn them an extra buck or two. The printer will do it to ensure
they get the job.
The client doesn't give a toss whether the pre-press work is done
correctly or not because they can always withhold payment if the job
looks crap or get it corrected at the photographer's/designer's/
printer's cost.
Pre-press was once a profession in its own right.
So were blacksmith's and typesetters.
Where are all these pre-press people? There's hardly anybody on this
list who has earned a living creating separations, film and contract
proofs. Just a bunch of photographers, consultants and software
salesmen - all with a lot to say about pre-press despite having no
experience of the industry whatsoever.
You mean a group who's successfully produced excellent files for
output to a
press? That's my take. There's no amount of technology that will
allow me to
practice brain surgery without some serious time in medical school.
Not the
case making files for reproduction to press and elsewhere.
The group you point out is saying they have, by and large, been able
to
produce the necessary files for repro on press in such a way that
they have
repeated the process over and over again. They are either lying,
delusional
or they are indeed able to accomplish what you are saying is beyond
their
skill level.
I'm not trying to knock the knowledge and skill set a good prepress
operator
possesses. I'm saying knowledgeable photographers don't need them to
do an
RGB to CMYK conversion and provide post conversion editing to output
acceptable, even suburb files for the press. And I'm saying based on
the
fact this is done all the time, the person who created the image knows
better about how the image should reproduce. They have a far higher
vested
interest in the success of the output and the look of the images.
The creator might know how they want the image to be reproduced - they
don't know how to ensure that it reproduces that way in print though.
And that is what the client is exploiting.
Again I'll submit that I cannot understand you can gain the necessary
skills without either experience in the industry (as it was) or
without a huge investment in proofing kit and control equipment.
If the process is all over the map, we can't. But I don't wish to
deal with
such providers for obvious reasons. If the process is relatively
stable, we
can. This is happening every day, all over the world. I don't know
of many
people who read a book on brain surgery or go to a seminar on the
subject
and then walk into an operating room without killing the patient. I
do know
photographers who take a class and can produce files that don't make
the
press explode! We're talking about making a set of numbers optimized
for a
process. If I had to do this in an analog fashion, I'd bow out in a
second
and leave it to you guys. But that's not the case. It's a digital
process
that when stable and profiled isn't brain surgery. There are probably
thousands of photographers that do this every day! Note that I'd be
totally
ineffectual as an old time, analog typesetter too. But using desktop
tools,
it isn't that difficult. Now that doesn't mean I have any kind of
artistic
abilities, style or esthetics to layout a nice looking page just as
handing
a pressman a point and shoot camera makes him Annie Leibovitz!
The print process isn't stable and your perfect ICC profile isn't
going to stop another ad on a press sheet sucking away the ink that
you need for the perfect reproduction of your image.
A pre-press person doesn't need to shoot like a pro make a good
separation of an image.
A photographer does need to separate like pro however when they make
CMYK - which is why I don't see any relevance to your argument.
--
Martin Orpen
Idea Digital Imaging Ltd
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