ISO

#69 IDEAlliance Proofing Summit in Review

by JimRaffel on March 18, 2008

Recently I attended the IDEAlliance Proofing Summit held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference and Expo at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. During the one day summit I managed to take three pages of notes focused on the meeting’s key topic of Virtual Proofing to the Numbers.

During the initial industry panel a question was raised about how to deal with virtual proofing systems from multiple vendors. Large publishers obviously deal with many printing companies and those companies make use of many of the different virtual proofing systems now available on the market. While it did not seem appropriate to make a comment during the meeting, I will remind my readers that ProofPass.com allows verification of ANY virtual proofing system with centralization of the results on a ProofPass.com internet server.

Bill Pope (of FTA) then spoke about the 2008 Virtual Proofing Systems Certification Program. Bill made a great point that sound color management is the key to successful virtual proofing. While ISO specs inks that most printers are now using, good color management is required to simulate those colorants on a monitor. Bill also made a great point about dealing with proofing disappointment up front. While I loved the comment, I think we all know that customers want what they expect x not necessarily what they see….

A fairly technical overview of the certification program was then provided. I found two items of particular interest during this portion; 1. A shift is being made to utilization of Delta E2000 for virtual proofing verification (already supported in ProofPass.com); 2. One of Bill’s key steps to verify that nothing has been “fudged” by the vendor is almost identical to the ProofPass.com verification procedure.

Some other comments I picked up throughout the day:

  • Pressroom monitors will need to be replaced approximately every 18 months.
  • Office/prepress monitors should last about three years
  • About 90% of the Pantone spot colors can be achieved with a high degree of accuracy on monitors costing about $5,000.
  • Grey balance uniformity corner to corner on a monitor is key
  • Color clipping on monitors might be overstated – it is localized to fully saturated colors and just results in a slightly duller rendition of the color.

All in all, it was a day well spent with the publishing and agency side of our business.

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Continue Reading 0 comments }blogging, calibration, color, conferences, delta E, GRACoL, guidelines, ISO

#40 Grey Balance & Printing like a Master

by JimRaffel on October 5, 2006

I have written before about the Printing across borders initiative and late last week made a post to the mail list which I feel generated a very good response. My post shown below was in response to a post questioning the GRACoL MasterPrinter‚Ñ¢ program:

It stands to reason that that a printer with tight control over TVI would in fact also be a “better” MasterPrinterT. With conventional 4/color process printing (both offset and flexo) large variation in dot size will cause large shifts in color.

Also, in some testing (unrelated to G7T method) we have found very large delta E shifts in grey balance do not necessarily translate to large or any shift in saturated colors at the outer reaches of the gamut. So, if part of ones work is reproduction of saturated corporate colors G7 process control techniques alone may not be sufficient.

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Joseph J. Pasky made the following comments in response to the first paragraph above:

Yes, that is exactly correct…a point that Felix Brunner has been trying to make for more than 30 years. Even small shifts in midtone gray balance are FAR more noticeable that very large changes in SID. He is the one who ‘invented’ controlling a press with midtone, not only SIDs. From my understanding, he’s even got patents on several aspects of this. (GRACoL didn’t come up with this ‘last week’ in a marketing focus group.) Brunner established the order of importance: 1. gray balance, 2. tone reproduction, 3. color. But, he also looks at every aspect of the reproduction curve, from highlights to solids.

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Others made some very valid comments also but I decided to pick the one that told me I was “exactly correct.” Seriously, the group has generated some good discussions about printing to standards and using new methodologies. I would suggest visiting the web-site and subscribing to the email list.

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Continue Reading 0 comments }calibration, color, curves, density, GRACoL, gray balance, ISO, measurement

On Standards, Dues, and Barriers to Entry

April 12, 2006

I have been getting a good deal of pressure to post my position on GRACoL G7, and have been holding off for one very simple reason. My comments will “go against the grain” as one fellow blogger put it. As one who was not involved in the process I feel that it would be somewhat [...]

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