Hi Mark, ³Certification² is awarded by IDEAlliance to either people (G7 experts), or systems (G7 certified proofing systems, as you mentioned). Just because a system is certified does not mean it¹s proofs are certified it just means that the system is capable of producing a proof that is within the tolerances of SWOP or GRACoL. SWOP and GRACoL are CMYK-based specifications, so there is really no such thing as SWOP and GRACoL certified (or anything¹d) RGB. If you are preparing your images to be reproduced in a SWOP/GRACoL print condition, you should create a proof of those images, converted into SWOP/GRACoL and include a control wedge that can be measured to confirm that your proof is within specification. It is the measurements of the proof control wedge that will dictate whether or not the proof is within specification of SWOP or GRACoL (not anything else).
From an RGB retouching perspective, not something you should need to worry about. You might consider retouching in the colorspace you are creating the images for. In this case, if you are prepping for either GRACoL or SWOP, you would transform the image into the appropriate colorspace and retouch from there. Of course, that would put you into CMYK. There¹s plusses and minus either way.
Hope this helps. Marc
Hello all -
I am a retoucher helping a commercial photographer bid on a job. One of the questions was "are you GraCol / SWOP certified?".
To my understanding, that is a way of proving that your proofing system is capable of printing within specified tolerances.
The photographer will not be doing any proofing, and will just be providing RGB images to be used for e-commerce.
I am just looking for some clarity on the specifics of being "certified", and what it would take to get "certified".
Thanks for your help.
Mark Franzen