Designers and color management
Designers and color management
- Subject: Designers and color management
- From: Marco Ugolini <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:05:44 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Peter Hammarling wrote:
>Designers are famous for being fussy pains-in-the-neck (ask any
>printer) and if they can't face entering the CM labyrinth it's
>because of the daunting levels of geekage and incomprehensible
>complication involved.
No, Peter. It's also an issue of trust and each of us knowing the limits to one's competences. If designers could leave it to the production people to produce the best results possible within the boundaries of the design intent, and stop second-guessing what, admittedly, they themselves can't be bothered to comprehend, we would all be better off, wouldn't we? The designers would be doing what they do best (create attractive design concepts) and production would translate them into the best achievable real-world results.
But instead, CM-savvy production people are being subjected to a barrage of lame questions and grilling of their intentions and ROI charts and the like, all of which is a way to doubt their competence and imply the existence of some hidden agenda beyond the stated one.
It grinds away at you and makes one very bitter, believe me. Specially because design people are given more power than us lowly production "geeks" in the pecking order of things. As is so often the case, people without advanced production knowledge end up telling those with advanced production knowledge what to do. Sounds perverse, but it happens every single day. Everyone wants "excellence", but few put their money where their mouths are. They enunciate formulaic statements, then point their fingers at you when the predicted disaster eventually takes place.
Sounds familiar?
>And anyway, beyond having a good calibrated screen to make reliable
>design decisions, I don't think it's practical for designer's to
>produce contract type proofs in-house, if that's what this debate is
>about. Isn't it the job of the pre-press house and the printer to
>produce accurate colour?
No. In-house proofs reduce the costs (which are far higher when a prepress house is involved), expedite the production cycle (no more waiting around for the proof from prepress), and increase the quality of the results, because they allow for more-precise fine-tuning of both color and detail. What are the objections to that, exactly? Penny-wise and pound-foolish comes to mind.
>Maybe the ColorMunki will make in-house proofing more accessible,
>which will shift technical responsibilities around yet again, and
>might be a good thing, though from what Andrew Rodney says about the
>software, maybe not.
Look, you are designers and are good at what you do. We are production people, and we are good at what *we* do. As Rodney King once famously put it, why can't we just get along? :-)
Marco Ugolini
_______________________________________________
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