Re: Who does the seperations? (Re: Profile Names and othersuggestions)
Re: Who does the seperations? (Re: Profile Names and othersuggestions)
- Subject: Re: Who does the seperations? (Re: Profile Names and othersuggestions)
- From: Graeme Gill <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:28:43 +1100
Robert L Krawitz wrote:
From: "john castronovo" <email@hidden>
>
I hear photographers say all the time that all they want from the photo
lab is a dumb machine that will reproduce their files the same way every
time. We think that's insane, but that's what the world wants from
printers as well - a dumb press, without attitude, that maintains its
own calibration and is smart enough to analyze and adjust for the images
it's printing.
Why is that insane? That sounds like a perfectly rational goal to me!
Maybe the technology isn't quite there yet, but that doesn't make that
desire insane -- it just makes it a great goal to shoot for.
I think it would help to distinguish between two aspects here. One is
the aspect of changing the presses role from a per job "crafted" printing
process, where the press was used as last minute "touch-up" to get
the right looking result after the photographer and scanner operator
had done their best with it, into a reliable reproduction process,
where the printers role is not to optimize each job, but to keep
the press running in a fixed optimal and reproducible state, the
"touch-up" per job optimization now being done much more capably (in
a technical sense) in the digital world. If it all works right,
this makes things more efficient for everybody. The printer has
lower costs due to shorter make ready, and the ability to mix different
jobs on the same run. Those up stream have a fixed target that they can
proof and separate to, and that probably has a better gamut than previously.
The other aspect, is that a press (like every output device) has certain
characteristics that you can't remove from it. The nature of it is
that ink thickness tend to be uneven and hard to control, because
the job itself affects where the ink is going, amongst other things.
The screening process has it's foibles. Within the best that the press
and operator can do, there will still be some variation. So for a really
good job of separation, the inherent characteristics of printing should be
taken into account, those upstream can't just assume that a press
being run properly will turn into the perfect printing device, they have
to know about the printing process, and allow for it. Having a fixed
target helps a lot with this.
I'd imagine the pain for the printer here, is that whereas once the final
result was was largely under their control (when they had the scanner
operator in house), and any problem with the photography can be
passed on by simply looking at the transparencies, it's moving to a
situation whey are still being judged on how the print looks, while
they are aiming to actually have no control over it, by running a consistent
press! Figuring out who is responsible when things go wrong becomes
much more of a technical exercise than simply looking at the output.
Graeme Gill.
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Colorsync-users mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden