Billed for Color on B&W Printing

[che.c]

*cough-operator-error-cough*

 

[GregNac19]

*cough-operator-error-cough*

Sounds right to me, but I know I am not the only sales rep. on this site who had a customer ask for thousands of dollars in credits!

 

[che.c]

So? I can ask for thousands of dollars in credits if I do something stupid as well. Anyone can. Doesn't mean it wasn't my fault and I should get my money back.

Mistakes cost money. Try not to make them. Tell your customer to wise up, or extend the olive branch of more training or something. Not understanding how the RIP interprets colours, or why Publisher is a POS doesn't get you off the hook. It just means you're a bad operator.

What was that 'ol phrase about a bad craftsman and his tools?

 

[UberTech]

Here is the example; please try this and tell me what you get. Scan a B&W document in color. Add this to a publisher file with the first page color and the 2nd page is your color scan. The scan looks B&W. You get billed for the Color cost all both pages though.
This is a real life example of a customer sending you an old photo with a publisher file and ASSUMING it to be B&W and billing the customer accordingly. Most people that do not have a technology background and with a $100 scanner do not know the difference in how to scan B&W only.
The fiery will not be able to know the difference between color and B&W. You must go into the actual file and change the properties of the scan to be B&W. If this is a large job or a job of over 20 pages it can take a lot of extra time.

So Ubertech, try this out and don't lie. Can it do it?

Sure if I find someone that actually uses publisher I will try it, then set the page to greyscale and wonder what the big deal is.

 

[GregNac19]

Sure if I find someone that actually uses publisher I will try it, then set the page to greyscale and wonder what the big deal is.

You are so bitter. Why not relax and enjoy the life God has given you?

With that said, all people sending files to printers are not using Photoshop, InDesign, or Quark. You still have to have Publisher because most people that are not graphic designers and don't have these capabilities. Publisher is the cheapest and most used program for designing that the average person would use.
I would not ask the original question if was not a problem for people in the forum and I wanted feedback to validate the original statement.
Xerox has the CREO like you spoke about earlier and it won't print the way you think.

 

[thebluesdude]

Can I add my bit, I have used Xerox / Fiery and Konica / Fiery for 5 years now and you can never rely on it totally unless you send as greyscale etc but where it realy screws up is in brochures. We print complete paginated brochures an feed through the booklet maker, if you get a booklet that has say cover and inside cover as full colour with 12pages of b/w and then colour centrespread then it counts everything as colour. We have had Xerox analyists trying to get around it but using Acrobat pro or any pagination software doesnt seem to work.

 

[mattbeals]

Dollars to doughnuts it's an engine problem. If there's only black "ink" being drawn then only black should be billed for whether or not it is device gray or black. Device gray is the only sure way unfortunately. And as thebluesdude said, it's out the window when sending jobs like mentioned. It's hard to imagine that the engine manufactures haven't been able to figure this out. Personally, I think they have figured it out and like the way it works...

 

[X33]

Dollars to doughnuts it's an engine problem. If there's only black "ink" being drawn then only black should be billed for whether or not it is device gray or black.

it's not an engine problem, it's software, either downstream (RIP) or upstream (application). the data the engine is receiving has some color in it, it could be one tiny dot of red, so it would use CMYK to print.

I think all RIPs today have a way to manage this correctly; the problem like someone mentioned earlier, is "operator error". Some people just click print and expect everything to come out perfect. then why do you think there are over 100 features in the RIPs for color management, workflow, etc.

 

[k_graham]

Applicable to Fiery.

I used to check the meters of the copier. eventually I realized in CommandWorkStation on a Fiery you can add columns to the log by clicking on or to right of the headings (or is it right clicking) Add, Color and Black columns and check the 1st set out of course. Then change quantity to desired run, this eliminate word & publisher files from downloading the job 50 times to the printer as well

For Xerox add output profile like 100 GCR v2F or
On Doc 12 was HiGCR and MaxPPMK, this can increase numbers of black vs color. Find it in the profiles download on Xerox site.

These output profiles were to try and catch RGB black and ouput as black - they don't always work so you still need to run a test and check thelog.
Alternative - convert in Pitstop Professional

Crop marks count as color even if off page, unless entire job is greyscale, thus turn them off if using actual size paper.

After the above edit the file or run as is & charge appropriately

Ken Graham
CommunityPrinters.com

 

[prajna]

Greg - tough position you are in with your client. But I do have to say from the owner's side that I would feel that was our position to catch, not the client's. I would be extremely disappointed in my staff if they hadn't checked the clicks prior to running the job. Contrary to Che.c's attitude of "screw the customer - they set it up wrong", which will drive your business to extinction, the customer thought it was black, and they shouldn't have to investigate and learn all the in's and out's of our business to get a print job run. I see professinal designers with years of experience making these same mistakes. It is simply ignorance and a misunderstanding.

We use a Fiery, and struggle with this from time to time. If the file is set properly, the Fiery will recognize the monochrome pages and click accordingly. Sometimes, we'll rip over a few select pages seperately at grayscale to the mailbox, and then re-combine the document on the machine itself. Or we'll use PitStop, which doesn't always work as people claim. Whether the global change, or selective editing, it can still sometimes vex us. Even doing a 'select all' on the page and converting, it can sometimes still click color and we bang our heads trying to correct. As Ken said, sometimes a little thing like a crop will hang you up, or an unseen variable off the page. It's a bitch and can be a time vacuum trying to correct (which should be billable time), but it can be done and should be caught BEFORE the job is run, not after.

If I can diverge a bit, Ken, what is your process in PitStop? And how has it worked for you (always/sometimes/depends, etc.)?

 

[che.c]

Contrary to Che.c's attitude of "screw the customer - they set it up wrong", which will drive your business to extinction, the customer thought it was black, and they shouldn't have to investigate and learn all the in's and out's of our business to get a print job run.

I was referring to the monkey that clicked PRINT without checking the clicks. The operator. Notice the comment about 'bad operator'. Everyone knows customers are clueless - that's what keeps our prepress jobs safe

You don't need Pitstop to make sure you get black clicks. Just get the job to a PDF that's print-ready and use the Convert Colours in Acrobat to change the page(s) to Gray Gamma 1.8.

If you price a job as black clicks you damn well make sure they run as black. Customers are not expected to know the workflow and equipment but the operators sure as hell should. I recently printed a 456 page book - that had parts of it needing to be grayscaled manually. It takes a while but not as long as you might think.

 

[prajna]

Thanks for the clarification Che. And I agree, that's an oversight by the press operator that is unforgivable. At the very least, it should only happen once and then a painful lesson is learned.

I wasn't aware of the the Acrobat process. Another notch in the knowledgeboard. Thanks for the info!