Color Consistency

[David Milisock]

@Erik,

Have missed your posts... and yes you are right in saying quality doesn't NEED to cost more but can in fact be a way to keep costs down. Quality and cost need not compete, but they often do... as an example there is a company producing serious hardware machines that puts trainees on doing their technical drawings because they have a lower cost per hour. This is the kind of poor management decisions I am referring to when I say that cost often goes before quality.

I am all for quality, and printing wise it doesn't cost more to print, and definitely not to distribute quality design as opposed to designs looking like they been done by a fifth grader (sorry didn't mean to insult any fifth graders).

Hello I'm still catching up from being in the hospital which is where I was when my wife found this forum so I've been working my butt off. Bronchial pneumonia sucks!! I have to try and find some of the older threads and catch up.

To answer the question + or- 5 is a great easy spec for a 2,500 run on wet offset but for a 1,000 or 500 run you'll have 5 times more waste then you'll have good press sheets. So to answer the question I have to ask the question how large a run?

 

[David Milisock]

@prepressguru U probably won't be surprised that it's not unusual to find SWOP files even in europe

Why should it matter? Tag the files and send them along is all anyone should have to do, best if they use CMYK profiles with a TIC that is close to the destination space.

As far as I know I've never seen a default Adobe installation that was ICC compliant, the last time I checked BPS with relative colormetric was not supported. I just repaired a system and upgraded the user to PS CS5 and installed their Gracol standard that was relative colormetric with BPC. So standards are what people want to make of them.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

@David Hope you have a good road to recovery. I gave up trying to backlog discussions long ago…*but over time one gets to know what posters passions are (see the thread about training the trainers, or something like that). I am sorry if I confuse things by tangenting the posts, and at times use my ironic keyboard.

I do understand what you are saying about the standards, but standards need to be enforced to be effective. Defaults are not the same as standards! CMYK is device dependant but there is a generation of trainers that are teaching what they do not themselves understand (at least in my country) which results in much graduated students hitting the market with anti-standards aka defaults.
Accepting that things are the way the are will not give a positive development and that is what Erik was implying, adopting standards and workflows that give us better consistency will in fact be an investment that will bring down costs.

This is what was my point, if we do not invest in the know how and just take things out of the box it is a cheaper short term solution , at the expense of quality, and it will result in lost knowledge.
Erik's point is that with knowhow (and updated implementation of standards irrespective of defaults, like TAC 350% ;P ) in the long run quality is more economical, and should therefore be seen as investment and not a cost. (correct me if I am wrong Erik)

Did not understand how you get so much waste on a 1000 to 500 (and even less) run, with good ICC profiles that limit ink to reasonable amounts, and a stable workflow including automatic configuration of ink keys and sheetfed offset will quite happily print a run without ridiculous amounts of waste.

 

[David Milisock]

@David Hope you have a good road to recovery. I gave up trying to backlog discussions long ago…*but over time one gets to know what posters passions are (see the thread about training the trainers, or something like that). I am sorry if I confuse things by tangenting the posts, and at times use my ironic keyboard.

I do understand what you are saying about the standards, but standards need to be enforced to be effective. Defaults are not the same as standards! CMYK is device dependant but there is a generation of trainers that are teaching what they do not themselves understand (at least in my country) which results in much graduated students hitting the market with anti-standards aka defaults.
Accepting that things are the way the are will not give a positive development and that is what Erik was implying, adopting standards and workflows that give us better consistency will in fact be an investment that will bring down costs.

This is what was my point, if we do not invest in the know how and just take things out of the box it is a cheaper short term solution , at the expense of quality, and it will result in lost knowledge.
Erik's point is that with knowhow (and updated implementation of standards irrespective of defaults, like TAC 350% ;P ) in the long run quality is more economical, and should therefore be seen as investment and not a cost. (correct me if I am wrong Erik)

Did not understand how you get so much waste on a 1000 to 500 (and even less) run, with good ICC profiles that limit ink to reasonable amounts, and a stable workflow including automatic configuration of ink keys and sheetfed offset will quite happily print a run without ridiculous amounts of waste.

I agree about standards, however when Adobe right out of the box ignores the ICC we're screwed. People believe Adobe does it right and nothing could be farther from the truth.

The problem I have with how I read the implementation of standards of this site is that IMO we're putting the cart before the horse, our job as output technicians is to as closely as possible output the color the client provides. Not tell them this is the color you get. Now we all understand that this concept is within reason and bound by the gamut of the output device and in the case of a press should not be limited by some arbitrary standard.

In my opinion training is the key however that training only needs to be such that the user can implement the core technology, not necessarily write a book on it . Example for CMYK work all the user needs to know is that they need to work in the CMYK color model only in the application using a CMYK profile of their choice that has a TIC of (XX) then embed that CMYK profile.

In the case of native color output the user needs to know that their work will be best output if they use an RGB profile of (XX) and a CMYK profile with a TIC of (XX) then embed the profiles in their file. That's all the user needs to know, true it's best if they understand controlling ambient working conditions and proper display calibration. They don't need to know about SWOP, Gracol, I give client a list of CMYK profiles, for coated and uncoated sheet fed and coated and uncoated web press to use and suggest that they use Adobe RGB, ECI RGB or (reluctantly) sRGB for their RGB elements. In my experience digital devices don't do as well converting wide gamut RGB color spaces to their media profile so I suggest Adobe and ECI as they at least are wide enough to encompass most if not all CMYK colors.

To address your waste factor on a wet offset press that waste factor is Dependant on your density quality standard, in Cyan for example if you target is 1.35 and your standard is 1.33 to 1.37 the amount of waste sheets required will be greater than if your quality standard is say 1.30 to 1.40. I prefer the + of - 2 point standard, you have to get the water out of the ink.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

@David
The problem is the customer isn't normally aware what colour he/she provides. So we have to be brave enough to tell them the ambiguity of their demand, or assume we know what they mean and ignore what they ask.

Putting the cart before the horse is not necessarily a bad thing... when navigating a potential mine field

 

[David Milisock]

@David
The problem is the customer isn't normally aware what colour he/she provides. So we have to be brave enough to tell them the ambiguity of their demand, or assume we know what they mean and ignore what they ask.

Putting the cart before the horse is not necessarily a bad thing... when navigating a potential mine field

I don't disagree the method I use is to introduce training, by doing so I am able to increase my profit margins because the jobs are much cleaner. I also have the revenue stream from (as it has evolved) selling the training and building computer systems.

With that said I now have clients that do a better job with MS Publisher than some who are Adobe CS professionals.