A printing industry blog focusing on color measurement, printing, ink, paper, spectrophotometers, and densitometers.
I believe virtual proofing is at the same cross roads ink jet proofing was around 2001. I am both hearing and observing information that provides growing support in my own mind for this position. First, I am not going to name any names in this post. Why? Because gut feelings and intuition are not fact.
Think back to 2001 and earlier as it relates to ink jet proofing. For a frame of reference think Print ‘01 in Chicago, just try not to remember that 9/11 fell right in the middle of the show 
We finally had a good stable pigment based printer. We had a few good RIPs emerging from the pack, but you still really needed 3rd party color management software to make the whole thing work. Of course there was the nightmare of the day which was trying to find a suitable media for Graphic Arts proofing purposes.
The reality was if you understood all the steps involved (or hired a good color management consultant) you could make decent ink jet proofs that rivaled the standard analog and digital proofs of the day.
Now think about virtual proofing today. While I believe there are at least two (and quite likely more) solid products capable of producing virtual proofs rivaling the ink jet proofs now carrying the standards flag; getting even those two systems to work in multiple locations can and does prove tricky at best. This is no knock on the virtual proofing software vendors, but instead really an issue of hardware.
Putting together a solid ink jet proofing system requires an end-user to source a printer, media, a RIP, a computer to run the RIP, and probably a good color management consultant as well. Putting together a solid virtual proofing system requires sourcing a display…let’s stop right there. There is more to it, but the display is proving (at least my gut tells me this) to be a huge thorn in the side of virtual proofing working in multiple locations.
I am hearing some crazy numbers like less than 1 in 10 “qualified” displays can be used in a 2 or more location virtual proofing set-up. If this is true (and I am starting to think it is), than it is no wonder virtual proofing is being used more and more for intermediate color (as I predicted in a previous post) and good old reliable ink jet proofs are still being produced as a final contract proof.
I still believe virtual proofing will continue to make gains over hard copy proofing. I just think it may be a little slower than we thought until this display issues gets worked out. Part of the problem is that measuring displays is not the easiest thing in the world to do….but that could be a whole post or even a complete white paper.
Pewaukee, WI - The Institute for Graphics and Imaging has chosen as its new director Ron Dahl. I am sure an official press release from the IGI is not far behind this post and will contain complete biographic information about Mr. Dahl. I sat down with Ron late yesterday afternoon (his first official day on the job), and got some insight into his plans for bringing the world class IGI facility to full utilization quickly.
He has some exciting plans that may include a resumption of the ColorMetrix User’s Group Meeting sometime in August after a three year hiatus. As for the rest of his plans I believe it would be prudent to let Ron and the IGI make those announcements.
Here in southeastern Wisconsin there is a whole lot of support directed at getting this vastly under utilized world class facility up to speed. It goes all the way to the top of state government as Governor Jim Doyle make provisions for a $250,000 state grant that will help companies reduce the cost of training their employees at IGI over the next two years.
I believe I can safely speak for the southeastern Wisconsin Graphic Arts community when I say Welcome, and we stand ready to assist you in our combined efforts to make IGI the great success it can be.
A while ago I ran across a cool Adobe Labs web application called kuler. I guess it is geared more to the design community, but if you love color (note C O L O R not k u l e r) like I do you will have fun playing around with it. (Oh, I suppose colour would be OK as well.) If you have never looked around at Adobe Labs, I would suggest you take a few minutes (or hours as I did) to look at the kind of projects they are working on.
Today I would also like to mention a web-site I ran across called Prepress Pilgrim authored by DJ Dunkerley. I did not so much run across DJ’s site as he did mine. One of the neat things about WordPress is I get an alert when someone else links to one of my posts. Thanks for the cross-link DJ.
So, what is with X-Rite spelling MONKEY munki and Adobe spelling COLOR kuler? Does that mean would should have named ProofPass.com PruufPass.com? Oh wait, I need to go register that domain before I publish this post….I’m kidding really I am!
…I’m back…so if X-Rite and Adobe merged would it become the kulermunki?
More than just a few of you have been asking for my thoughts and comments about the recently announced X-Rite colormunki. Because X-Rite has clearly positioned this device for the Photography and Design markets, for now we at ColorMetrix are taking a wait and see position. Rest assured I have plenty of thought and comments and they will be coming once I get the opportunity to personally test a colormunki out.
Until that time, I did find a good review over at Photographyblog.com. Jon Canfield posted this review on April 9th, and he seems to be impressed.
I am going to be trying to make more short posts like this as I find content on other web-sites that I think my readers will be interested in. I will then summarize them in a (hopefully) weekly e-mail that may or may not contain one of my now famous Golden Nuggets.
While I would like to say today is about me (since it is my birthday), it is really about my mother. 44 years ago today I remember nothing, but for her I am sure it was a very special day. I mean what more could a woman have wanted in 1964 than a 5th child? Her 4th son I might add (and quite probably her favorite child - I sure hope you are all getting the sarcasm here). Thanks Mom!
Anyway, it is my day so the post is just for fun.
First, I share the day with Thomas Jefferson. While he like all human beings was far from perfect he is one of the people I strive to be more like each day of my life. I have been fortunate enough to visit his home Monticello on several occasions. Most recently we visited during the very hot summer of 2005:
Second, do me a favor for my Birthday and go vote for my friend Shellie Hall as she tries to win a chance to host a daily internet news show. Her quest is called Mahalo Idol, and if she wins you could say “I helped her get that job!” Mahalo.com looks like a potentially cool web-site concept, but I will let you all make your own decision on that matter.
All I really want for my birthday is a Brewers win this afternoon against the Mets. It is 2-1 Brewers in the top of the 2nd as I type this. I would also like the Brewers to win the division title this year and not drop it to the cubs in the last month of the season.
Late yesterday afternoon UPS showed up with our box of 20 books from blurb.com. Put simply we are impressed. First, the packaging was professional with each book individually shrink wrapped and then all 20 books neatly stacked in an appropriately sized box with packing material to fill the extra space at the top. Second, my visual assessment of the print quality (I knew I should have worked a color bar into the design somewhere!) is quite favorable. They even made the scans of old pictures look pretty darn good. Third, it’s cool having a coffee table quality book that we produced sitting on our coffee table :-).
I made a comment in my previous post about the BookSmart templates being somewhat limiting. Earlier this morning I read with great interest a post about the success of a promotional postcard web-to-print company by Adam Dewitz over at PrintCEOBlog.com. Following is a huge quote from that post (Adam I hope I didn’t quote too much):
… In the monograph I present the concept of deterministic print production workflows. These “workflows rely on catalogs of predefined attributes and rules or logic to dictate the design and production of a print product. The limits placed on the design parameters such as paper stock, color versus monochrome printing, bind-ing and finishing methods, and product dimensions allow for highly automated print production systems to be engineered. These turnkey print production systems are highly efficient and require little human intervention. In fact, they might be the ‘Holy Grail’ of computer-integrated manufacturing the print industry is attempting to achieve.”
It appears that this is precisely what PostcardBuilder has done. …
Two comments to finish this post; 1. It appears that is precisely what blurb.com has done as well; 2. It is time to download Adam’s monograph about web-enabled print architectures.
Rumor has it that between 100-120 people have been trimmed from the X-Rite workforce since late last week. I want to stress that JimRaffel.com is not a news site, and as of now I have only obtained this information from one source….developing…In addition to the comment you can read on your own I received confirmation that 108 people (lot’s of good people my source added) have been let go….
If you have been reading the Golden Nuggets or JimRaffel.com for any length of time you know I have covered the “New Media” topic a few times. While considering self-publishing a book of Golden Nuggets to use for marketing activities, I came across blurb.com. Now, if you expect the rest of the post to be about my new Golden Nuggets book being published…Stay tuned-I plan to have that done by GraphExpo (where the ColorMetrix booth will have some kind of drawing each day to give away copies of the Golden Nuggets book).
This post is about the preparation of a 40-page book of photos and memories that my wife and I, along with other extended family, put together for my Father’s 84th birthday later this month. Blurb.com makes it quite easy to self-publish a book of this type. Being an RIT graduate with book production, layout and design, typography classes, etc. makes the process even easier.
The most difficult part of any publishing endeavor (including creating a basic web-site) is the collection of relevant content. Beginning in late December and early January we emailed my large immediate family (I am the youngest of 5 children) and other extended family requesting a digital photograph and a caption to go along with that photograph. We included a few deadlines in order to make sure we would have time to review all the material, organize it, and have it proofread by my wife and mother (yes, at least one of them proofed this post before it was published – I have learned that lesson).
I am pretty sure a whole lot of you are already laughing and thinking to yourself…I wonder how many deadlines got missed and how many people called or emailed to ask if they could send an old picture and can you scan it for me? Well, every deadline got missed and almost half the book is composed of scanned photos (we ended up scanning about half of those). Had I not spent 20+ years in this crazy printing industry those things would have upset us, but we really did go into the project expecting that.
In order to produce a book with blurb.com, you must use the BookSmart software which can be downloaded for free from the blurb web-site. BookSmart is available in either PC or MAC flavors. Since my primary computer is still a PC I opted for that version. We found the software easy to use and although it crashed a few times throughout the process we never seemed to lose any content because of the nifty built in auto-save features. While we sometimes found the mandatory BookSmart page layouts limiting, by and large we were able to do just about everything we wanted to do.
We submitted the book for printing on March 24th, and just found out our 20 copies will arrive on or about April 10th. So, keep your eyes posted here and we will let you know how the book turned out.
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:
All in all, it was a day well spent with the publishing and agency side of our business.
