Archive for September, 2005

Golden Nugget #11 Press Run Analysis / Print ’05 Information

Published
by
Jim Raffel
on September 22, 2005
in Print 05, uncategorized and viewing conditions
. 0 Comments

Golden Nugget #11 Viewing Booths

While at the show I decided it was time to begin acquiring tools and technology for our new inkjet proofing test site. We have reached a point where we need to be able to simulate customer proofing situations on our office. As time goes on the complete set-up will include; an Epson 4800, AbsoluteProof RIP, Gretagmacbeth ProfileMaker, GTI light booth, and various color viewing tools from Beta Industries.

While acquiring our new light booth from GTI, I learned why the newer (and might I add a great deal more expensive) generation of light booths have a light source which can be dimmed. When I had almost completed my purchase, a friend stopped to say hello, and said “oh great you are getting a new light booth, you did get the dimmable version right?” OK, to say the least this friend is not subtle in letting me know if I did not get the dimmable version I was basically and idiot.

Not wanting to remain an idiot on this subject I asked the classic dumb question (I know there is no such thing as a dumb question, except one which goes un-asked), why do I need a dimmable light booth? I am sure more than 50% of my readers know the answer to this question, but as person who has been focuses on the hard copy proofing market for the last several years I did not. The answer is that if you are doing any form of monitor proofing and want to compare the monitor results to hard copy, you must be able to dim the light booth to match the white point of your CALIBRATED monitor.

Then, Bob from GTI showed me an example of this using an ICS soft proof, and a press sheet. He started with the booth at full intensity. The two did not appear to visually match. He then dimmed the booth to match the white point of the monitor, and basically it was now a perfect match.

Matching the white point is pretty easy too, even on the lower end model we have with just a knob to do the dimming. Simply bring up a white background on your monitor, and then put a blank piece of the paper you are proofing or printing in the light booth. Put the two next too each other and dim until the whites match.

In short, spend the extra money if you ever even think you might want to compare virtual proofs to hard copy proofs or press sheets in a light booth.

Print ‘05 Pictures

Published
by
Jim Raffel
on September 22, 2005
in Print 05
. 0 Comments

Print ‘05 was very busy but I did get time to snap a few pictures….

Our home away from home for the seven day run of the show. Our little slice of the show was off in the right corner of the booth. For those of you who worked the show…was it not a bit like the movie Ground Hog Day?

This and the next are camera phone pictures in low light, so sorry for the low quality. This is Hugo from AbsoluteProof, coming all the way from New Zealand he was pretty excited to find HIS bar in Chicago.

All I am going to say is Artwork Systems party….Alexandra(Alex) in the middle.

Two Quick Comments

Published
by
Jim Raffel
on September 18, 2005
in gray balance
. 0 Comments

Grey balance came up twice today. First, I had an anonymous contributor mention that they have tried to do what I talked about in the previous Golden Nugget post with “varying degrees of failure.” This I will follow-up on. Then, Howard Nelson of ASU spent quite a bit of time on the phone with me this morning preparing for his exciting presentation which will now have a bit a grey balance focus. Funny the things that happen by accident.

Comment 2: I really hope the NWA mechanics don’t go on strike Sat as planned. It could make for a very difficult trip to Las Vegas, but we will make it one way or another!

Golden Nugget #11 Press Run Analysis / Print ’05 Information

Published
by
Jim Raffel
on September 6, 2005
in Print 05
. 0 Comments

*** Introduction ***

You will be able to see ProofPass®.com verification at Print ’05 in the AbsoluteProof booth (#8351). You will also want to look for our products in the booths of our dealers and distributors. http://colormetrix.com/dealers.php

*** Golden Nugget #11 Press Run Analysis ***

Strange as this may sound, we sometimes actually pay money for print jobs just like our customers do. Many of you have probably seen our tri-fold GcX brochure. This job has been run twice on a digital press here in the Milwaukee area. We ran into some problems getting the same color on the second run as we had on the first run. Our typically picky designer wanted the second run to look exactly the same as the first, and we got close enough, but it made me want to do some detailed analysis of the differences.

Since we have a pretty good tool for such analysis (ColorMetrix), I decided to measure the two sheets and see what the numbers and graphs would tell me. My first comment is that when evaluating a system that still puts dots on the sheet with a CMYK colorant set, density and dot gain (TVI) remain valuable tools for print analysis.

Here’s some numbers to consider

BLACK-SID
1st Run 1.63
2nd Run 1.53
DE 1vs2 2.42 CMC

CYAN-SID
1st Run 1.41
2nd Run 1.51
DE 1vs2 0.87 CMC

MAGENTA-SID
1st Run 1.50
2nd Run 1.52
DE 1vs2 0.82 CMC

YELLOW-SID
1st Run 0.95
2nd Run 0.99
DE 1vs2 0.65 CMC

Visual evaluation of the sheets have run 1 looking darker overall (higher black density I suspect), and run 2 looking cooler or more blue. I do not think the “more blue” can be attributed simply to the higher Cyan density, since that only made a slight change in Cyan Delta E.

You will want to look at the following two PDF’s before reading further.

http://www.colormetrix.com/jim/gn11-greybalance.pdf

http://www.colormetrix.com/jim/gn11-dotarea.pdf

As you look at the PDF L*a*b* plot, the circles represent Run 2, and the triangles represent Run 1. On the Dot Area plot it is the opposite. Sorry for the confusion…

You will see that our second run has lower Magenta Dot Gain (TVI) to go along with the lower Cyan density. It seems to me that these two factors combined to cause a shift in grey balance which is clearly seen on the following image:

The grey balance plot is showing the absolute positioning of Run 1 (Green circles and lines) and Run 2 (Orange circles and lines). The three plots for each run represent a balanced 3/color grey at 25%, 50% and 75%. While the Delta E of each of Solid inks is well within visually acceptable guidelines, the Delta E shifts of the 3 greys patches are not.

DE-CMC(2:1) RUN 1 VS RUN 2

GREY-75%
5.7GREY-50%
7.23
GREY-25%
4.45

My overall conclusion is that once again for the umpteenth time in the last several weeks grey balance has proven the overall winner in visual appearance consistency. For those of you who utilize our ColorMetrix software harvesting the print data for the above charts graphs and numbers is a snap.

I will be bringing the two press sheets to Print ’05, so if you visit me there you can take a look in a light booth and compare for yourself. I would love to add the opinions of a few color experts to this analysis.

Because of Print ’05 there will be no planned Golden Nugget next week, but I will try and post daily at JimRaffel.com along with pictures of exciting new technology I find at the show.

As always you can contact me at: raffelj@colormetrix.com