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.