Right Mike. Because (if they know the term color management) color management may mean something different to each one. GRACoL looks at the press. But there are also things that need to be done by those upstream to get the job ready for press. Thing is, most customers, and even those in the building, I deal with in Commercial Printing, are ignorant of color management. If it wasn't for SWOP profile being used as default in Adobe and Quark programs (and I set sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as default to use, since I receive the files but don't make them, and most files are sRGB that come to me untagged RGB), I would have had many more color problems. With the SWOP separation, anyone should be able to use this separation in prepress (no matter what substrate) and get to their printing condition (which should be defined by ISO most likely).
The problem is education in honoring profiles (simple: always honor RGB profiles, if you don't need to convert incoming CMYK because of Ink Limit, don't), soft-proofing (use the output profile and Relative Coolorimetric Intent), and separation (Relative Colorimetric Intent with same profile soft-proofed with, simple settings that shouldn't be that different from printer to printer), and hardcopy proofng (only place where we can use Absolute Colorimetric Intent, because doing so on files before this screws up whites that should be 0,0,0,0 CMYK plated), so that customers' expectations can be set realistically from the design stage. At least X-Rite is trying to communicate with customers, but most people like to make excuses and not change, since it's easier to do that than change (or at least they think, but it's not so in this case).
So all we can do as prepress is to make is easy as possible knowing what should be (ISO standards) and what most likely has been done (people for the most part don't ever change the defaults when making separations, which is good, since it gives us the "what has happened most likely" ICC profiles to use as source if one is not embedded, then use ISO ICC profile for the specific paper type if you must convert incoming CMYK because of Total Ink being too high). This helps us to get it right as close as possible even when dealing with those that are not or don't want to be educated in color management. Because frankly, people don't want to be educated, they just want it to work and look close for the most part. If someone has color critical customers, then color management will satisfy them as long as they are willing to get and implement a small amount of education an spending on the tools that make the easy possible.
See, where I come from, colors had to be picked by a color professional, and rounds of proofs done to get to the right color. For me to see it going from that to being able to use a spectro, plug in captured Lab values, try a couple different rendering intents on a couple color swatches to get to closest possible match, and we now have targets for each paper type internationally, then I'd say we have come a long way, and we can make it work unless the customer's expectation is to have a bright vibrant color print on an uncoated paper, which is not possible and people could be shown this by PANTONE's guides - coated vs uncoated, same PMS color.
If a prepress person will learn and implement color management correctly, even if everybody else in the process chooses to remain ignorant of color management (and I speak from experience), their work life would be smoothed out and simplified to a point where color problems are few and far between. Only when a color needs matched (easy, as talked about in this post), or a customer expectation is unrealistic (also talked about in this post, and a couple proofs of the same "best" CMYK numbers - one proof simulating coated, one proof simulating uncoated - usually stops that wrong expectation in it's tracks) in fact.
Regards,
Don
I agree to some extent. The art is knowing just which parts to teach each person. In general, each person needs specific skills and just enough extra information to give them a sense of where their task fits into the system so they see its importance. What you don't want to do is burden them with information they don't need and can't use. The object, after all, is to make everybody's work easier. But now we're having a useful discussion: We're thinking about how what things we must know. What should we teach to the designer, the prepress manager, the pressman? It's different in each case. But you're already ahead of the game; most shops don't give this issue any thought at all, and without this first step color management will never be fully and consistently implemented.
Feel free to contact me for further assistance.
Mike Strickler
MSP Graphic Services
IDEAliance G7 Expert
707.664.1628
MSP Graphic Services: Prepress and Color Management
