Re: Mini-rant on the surreal world of "prepress"
Re: Mini-rant on the surreal world of "prepress"
- Subject: Re: Mini-rant on the surreal world of "prepress"
- From: Marco Ugolini <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:17:01 -0700
- Thread-topic: Mini-rant on the surreal world of "prepress"
In a message dated 4/23/10 5:40 PM, Randy Zaucha wrote:
> Thanks for the great replies.
> Yes, it is frustrating that that the printing industry mainly leaves it up to
> the pressman to use a device not designed to be a color correction machine to
> make/repair poor color separations into works of art.
> Today, I mainly work with "office color" and have staff creating good RGB
> files from profiled monitors and color managed scans. If they can make an
> in-house color managed print that shows the color they want, they should be
> able to send that file and proof to an offset house and get a high quality
> reproduction.
> When shops tell their clients to use Generic CMYK then they put the pressure
> on the pressman to make garbage into the proverbial silk purse. Again, I'm not
> talking about bulk printing where there is no budget for achieving high
> quality.
> So my opinion is that clients can produce and proof (in-house) very good RGB
> files and they should be able to count on a competent offset printer to color
> separate their files to look great on their press. The client has zero skills
> at making high quality CMYK and they should not need to learn those skills.
Randy,
Please bear with me if I am misunderstanding what you mean to say.
If the design/production team creates a good-looking inkjet print from a
color-corrected RGB image file (without cross-rendering it to a known and
realistic 4-color process print specification), it seems to me that one runs
a high risk of being disappointed by the actual printed results, specially
if the colors in the inkjet print are particularly vivid and contain
important detail in highly saturated areas that lie outside the gamut of
what is achievable within the conditions determined by the press conditions.
(Side note: By "cross-rendering" I mean the procedure by which a profiled
inkjet or laser device is made to generate a print that closely reproduces
the look and feel of the print as it is produced by a known set of press
conditions, including the latter's white and black points.)
An "RGB print" as described in your message cannot truly be called a
"proof", since it does not closely mimic or try to match any known offset
print specifications.
The risk of disappointment is even higher if the design/production team
shows the inkjet print to those who commissioned the assignment, and the
latter love how it looks, only to feel dumbfounded when they are confronted
with dramatically different results on press.
I think that, if (a) the prepress house won't offer details on expected
press conditions, and (b) the client side can avail itself of knowledgeable
color specialists, it's far better to make a proof that mimics the results
of an acceptable compromise, like US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 or GRACoL's
SWOP2006_Coated5v2 (both of which are close enough to each other in what
they end up producing).
By making a proof that is carefully cross-rendered to one of those press
specifications -- a proof which shows the best results to be expected -- one
greatly cuts down the risk of disappointing one's own client, not to mention
the ensuing embarrassment and possible damage to one's reputation.
Managing expectations is often as important as doing the best one can to
make the work look its best -- but always within realistic parameters.
Marco Ugolini
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