good afternoon,
i have a question regarding color management. I have been working in prepress for a long time, so i have a working knowledge of color and color spaces, and dot gain and so forth. I have never actually been very involved in the implementation of color management over an entire process, and we are currently at a crossroads at our facility in determining how to go about this. We are a medium-sized web printer (we have 8 webs) with a pair of sister companies of similar size. we have work that we share among ourselves, so it is important that we all get on board with each other, and have solid management in place. several of us have one idea about how color management can be approached, while the majority seem to have an opposite point of view. i ask this question from a neutral point-of-view, i am just interested to hear both sides of the equation from some others who have tackled this problem and conquered it.
what we desire, naturally, is the ability to have the proofing devices calibrated amongst the 3 plants, so that a proof can be pulled confidently at each or any plant and know that it will match within tolerance to a similar proof made at the other plants. at that point, each plant is responsible for fingerprinting the presses and creating dot gain curves to be applied at output on the plates, to match the rendering on the proof. here is my question:
would it be wiser to look at this problem from the printers point-of-view, where a proof is output with dot gain applied, and the plates are output linear, or does it make more sense to output linear proofs, and create press-specific dot gain calibration curves? i agree with the latter, but it seems that is a minority viewpoint. my thought is that if a file is created with a 50% dot, the proof should indicate a 50% dot. as a customer, if i design a piece that shows a screen tone of 50% magenta, i want to see a proof that accurately represents what i have created. then, as a print provider, it is YOUR job to compensate, through dot gain curves applied to the plate, and create a 50% magenta on the printed sheet. the other point-of-view seems, in my opinion, to tell the customer "we cant match what you want due to dot gain, so this is what it will look like instead".
right now we are facing a world of curves and icc profiles and different color proofing devices between plants that seems to be very difficult. would it not be an effective, and much simpler, strategy to output linear proofs at all plants, and then place the responsibility of press curves to each individual plant to match the proof?
thank you for reading, i am interested to hear different takes on this. i certainly won't be offended if you have strong opinions that are against mine, i just want to get the feel for where my thinking is wrong on this topic!
cr
i have a question regarding color management. I have been working in prepress for a long time, so i have a working knowledge of color and color spaces, and dot gain and so forth. I have never actually been very involved in the implementation of color management over an entire process, and we are currently at a crossroads at our facility in determining how to go about this. We are a medium-sized web printer (we have 8 webs) with a pair of sister companies of similar size. we have work that we share among ourselves, so it is important that we all get on board with each other, and have solid management in place. several of us have one idea about how color management can be approached, while the majority seem to have an opposite point of view. i ask this question from a neutral point-of-view, i am just interested to hear both sides of the equation from some others who have tackled this problem and conquered it.
what we desire, naturally, is the ability to have the proofing devices calibrated amongst the 3 plants, so that a proof can be pulled confidently at each or any plant and know that it will match within tolerance to a similar proof made at the other plants. at that point, each plant is responsible for fingerprinting the presses and creating dot gain curves to be applied at output on the plates, to match the rendering on the proof. here is my question:
would it be wiser to look at this problem from the printers point-of-view, where a proof is output with dot gain applied, and the plates are output linear, or does it make more sense to output linear proofs, and create press-specific dot gain calibration curves? i agree with the latter, but it seems that is a minority viewpoint. my thought is that if a file is created with a 50% dot, the proof should indicate a 50% dot. as a customer, if i design a piece that shows a screen tone of 50% magenta, i want to see a proof that accurately represents what i have created. then, as a print provider, it is YOUR job to compensate, through dot gain curves applied to the plate, and create a 50% magenta on the printed sheet. the other point-of-view seems, in my opinion, to tell the customer "we cant match what you want due to dot gain, so this is what it will look like instead".
right now we are facing a world of curves and icc profiles and different color proofing devices between plants that seems to be very difficult. would it not be an effective, and much simpler, strategy to output linear proofs at all plants, and then place the responsibility of press curves to each individual plant to match the proof?
thank you for reading, i am interested to hear different takes on this. i certainly won't be offended if you have strong opinions that are against mine, i just want to get the feel for where my thinking is wrong on this topic!
cr