Down and dirty color (management)

[FileJockey]

Just got a proposal from our prepress supplier (a certain large Japanese company) to rebuild and upgrade our Oris proofer RIP. Their G7 expert would also profile two print conditions and set us up with ColorPath Sync for one year. Cost: $15,000. Upon reading that I thought that instead, maybe I should use the money to buy a small car and drive far, far away from this business.
Granted the science and technology of color management is very sophisticated. Should it really cost that much to get my proofs reasonably close to the press output? (even with these same G7 experts, we previously did not get spot-on results).
Am I torturing myself by imagining that there is a secret, down and dirty method of color management?
Please keep sarcastic responses to one sentence or less (although I am always interested in hearing a good joke about this stuff).

 

[arossetti]

I would read Ron Ellis' Book "Printing in the Dark". It's $.99 on Kindle and will give you a good overview of what a color consultant does and all the details involved. You may decide that $15,000 is well worth the price or you may decide that with a lot of research you can solve your own problems for cheaper. Either way I think what the book does is teaches you that you "don't even know what you don't know" and gives you a good overview.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

We are an ORIS Color Tuner Web reseller, I handle installation/training/support and also provide colour management services. I currently don’t do G7 or any other certification based press related setup.

It is hard to comment without knowing all of the specifics. I presume that your supplier has done a full audit of your system and requirements and is quoting a system to handle work today and into the future, with hardware upgrade, software upgrade, support maintenance contract, training, colour services etc. There may also be travel and accommodation required. It also sounds that they are doing press setup (G7 and perhaps also getting you to print to a specification such as Fogra 39), not just proofing setup? How many days onsite are they quoting? Is this an itemised quote, or just a single line item quote?

You also have a SaaS 1 year subscription to workflow integrated colour tools.

Is it really just “getting my proofs close to my press output”?

Generally it is “getting my press output close to my proofs”?

This is not as easy as simply swapping the sentence order around. :]

General points are covered in this white paper from Kodak:

http://download2.kodak.com/8/3802/1/Color_accurate_proofs.pdf

Some questions:

• What is your current ORIS Color Tuner version and license (basic or pro license)

• How many proofers do you have and their respective width sizes?

• Do you use Epson or ORIS inkjet media? What types? Or do you use third party media?

• Does the printer have an inline spectro? Do you have offline spectro (i1 pro etc)?

• What are the two print conditions that will be used to create a proofing target? Are they regular industry specifications or are they custom conditions for your shop?


Stephen Marsh

 

[chevalier]

Half of the amount you stated is the going rate for a calibration service (2 days) by that large Japanese company. I'm guessing that the rest is software and hardware and related contracts. I do not really advocate/support their ColorPath product and if I were you I'd go with Oris Certified Web instead since you are utilizing Oris ColorTuner already.

The "secret" to color management is education, active management and controlled environments. If you want to have a true G7 certificate you have to have a licensed third-party perform or at least observe and verify your measurements and calibrations.

Given the scant details about the state of your current system I don't feel that I can advocate whether or not you should pull the trigger.

 

[gordo]

Jumping in with a few thoughts:

1 - You can't do anything color management-wise unless you already have a stable, reliable, predictable press condition.
2- Process control from prepress to pressroom is the foundation for any successful change.
3- As Stephen noted: unless you typically print to your own print standard, the goal is to get your proofs close to the appropriate industry standard then bring your presswork to align with the proof.
4- BTW G7 is a methodology for putting an output device into grey balance - it is not color management.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

I linked the wrong white paper in my OP.

Attached is the “Strategies for Aligning Presswork and Proof” white paper that I was really thinking of.


Stephen Marsh

 

[DCurry]

...the goal is to get your proofs close to the appropriate industry standard then bring your presswork to align with the proof.

On a side note, Gordo, my shop recently had a rep from a major vendor (large red K) and he swore up and down that we should be trying to align the proof with the presswork. He and I had a rather heated discussion on the topic. I was surprised that he held that opinion, as it seems backwards to me to try to align to the more variable piece of equipment.

 

[gordo]

On a side note, Gordo, my shop recently had a rep from a major vendor (large red K) and he swore up and down that we should be trying to align the proof with the presswork. He and I had a rather heated discussion on the topic. I was surprised that he held that opinion, as it seems backwards to me to try to align to the more variable piece of equipment.

I fought that kind of thinking during the early days of color management by consultants. It was widely held thinking - and still is. "The proof should predict the press."
The attitude was, and very often still is, that if the printer asked the consultant to make the proof match the presswork then that's what the the consultant would do. Lots of folks made money profiling presses and then getting the proof to "match" that presswork.

I ended up writing white papers and doing presentations on the topic.

I contended that any color guru whether internal to the shop or outside consultant should start with a conversation with management and lay out the options and business impacts of implementing a color management strategy. Because it is first and foremost a business decision.

Here are the three options as I see them:

• Strategy One: Targeting an Industry Defined Specification - the press aligns to the proof
• Strategy Two: Proofing to a Shop-Specific Presswork Target - the proof aligns to the press
• Strategy Three: - Align to Your Customer

(more details here: The Print Guide: Press and proof alignment strategies )

Of course there is no technical reason why a commercial shop couldn't implement all three strategies as appropriate (a strategy I would endorse).

If the special K rep did not explore the business implications of these strategies - I would have shown him the door.

 

[chevalier]

Gordo,

I completely agree with you and I've built profiles for all three scenarios over the years. What I think your list is missing is a company target. I've been advocating this for some time now. I work in folding cartons and most of our paperboards exceed SWOP white point by a large measure but aren't quite GRACoL compliant. I've been pushing for some time for us to create our own internal standard which is near-GRACoL. Of course we'd still calibrate a curve set of each press for SWOP and GRACoL conditions just as we currently do (customer dictates...).

 

[gordo]

Gordo,
What I think your list is missing is a company target.

That's kinda what I intended to mean by aligning with the customer. It's not always a company though.

 

[DCurry]

If the special K rep did not explore the business implications of these strategies - I would have shown him the door.

That's pretty much what we did.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

Here are the three options as I see them:

• Strategy One: Targeting an Industry Defined Specification - the press aligns to the proof
• Strategy Two: Proofing to a Shop-Specific Presswork Target - the proof aligns to the press
• Strategy Three: - Align to Your Customer

Gordon, do any of these options use custom ICC profiles or is that a different issue?

 

[MacEarl]

Down but not really Dirty

Down but not really Dirty

Just got a proposal from our prepress supplier (a certain large Japanese company) to rebuild and upgrade our Oris proofer RIP. Their G7 expert would also profile two print conditions and set us up with ColorPath Sync for one year. Cost: $15,000. Upon reading that I thought that instead, maybe I should use the money to buy a small car and drive far, far away from this business.
Granted the science and technology of color management is very sophisticated. Should it really cost that much to get my proofs reasonably close to the press output? (even with these same G7 experts, we previously did not get spot-on results).
Am I torturing myself by imagining that there is a secret, down and dirty method of color management?
Please keep sarcastic responses to one sentence or less (although I am always interested in hearing a good joke about this stuff).

help buying that car... probably up to $2,000 per day is estimated for on-site installation, shouldn't take more than a day for a single proofer-printer-paper combination but the number of stocks and additional targets, like SWOP flavors or SNAP can ring up multiple days.

Color Tuner was never a least expensive RIP but an upgrade to latest version and reprofile should be all you need... rather than going to a subscription-based product and expect GRACoL, SWOP and SNAP to be dead-nuts but your press needs to also be dead-nuts to those same aims if in fact you are just proofing your press.

look to getting the pressroom to the G7 method and certified as Master Printer as a separate job and you can use external-to-large Japanese supplier consultant for that but also consider tried-and-true financing option of increasing the cost of consumables to pay for both adventures, the proofer and the press.

 

[ColorGeek]

There are much less expensive options, that are every bit as capable. Contact me directly at [email protected] and I'll be happy to explain in detail.

 

[tbkeffer]

I'm a G7 Pro. I work for a G7 Process Control Master Printer. There are very few of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at the Idealliance website.
I can honestly tell you that you will be wasting your 15K if you do not have someone on staff that will learn G7 and monitor your proofs and press. This is not cheap either.

 

[Prepper]

1 - You can't do anything color management-wise unless you already have a stable, reliable, predictable press condition.

Not directly related to the OP's question, but where I am today, is there really any such thing as a "predictable press condition?" We are testing some quality control software for the last 2 months and what I've learned is that TVI varies quite a bit run to run, depending on the coverage of each run and where the patches we're measuring are in relation to that coverage. So makes me wonder how much it is possible to really measure and create curves that will accurately bring a press into any sort of calibrated state on live jobs with largely varying coverages?

Sure, if we ran the targets again, we could probably be real close with those, but if next live runs are much heavier or much lighter than the target sheets' coverage was, how close will we be able to match it? At the exact same densities?


Tends to help me understand the density adjustments our pressmen are making from run to run to try and match the proof closer, knowing that most of what we print is screens and not solids, seems they would have to adjust densities from run to run to adjust for the tweaks in the TVI that happens simply from the coverage on any particular run. And that probably varies if there's heavy coverage at the gripper side or to the tail side of the sheet.

All that being said, we are still getting better matches, much quicker at startups, since we've went to G7 and use curves, than what we were doing before, but I do understand more now why densities may be changed around from run to run.

Thanks

Do these thoughts make any sense to you? How much would we have to run to get a good average?

 

[gordo]

Not directly related to the OP's question, but where I am today, is there really any such thing as a "predictable press condition?" We are testing some quality control software for the last 2 months and what I've learned is that TVI varies quite a bit run to run, depending on the coverage of each run and where the patches we're measuring are in relation to that coverage. So makes me wonder how much it is possible to really measure and create curves that will accurately bring a press into any sort of calibrated state on live jobs with largely varying coverages?

Sure, if we ran the targets again, we could probably be real close with those, but if next live runs are much heavier or much lighter than the target sheets' coverage was, how close will we be able to match it? At the exact same densities?


Tends to help me understand the density adjustments our pressmen are making from run to run to try and match the proof closer, knowing that most of what we print is screens and not solids, seems they would have to adjust densities from run to run to adjust for the tweaks in the TVI that happens simply from the coverage on any particular run. And that probably varies if there's heavy coverage at the gripper side or to the tail side of the sheet.

All that being said, we are still getting better matches, much quicker at startups, since we've went to G7 and use curves, than what we were doing before, but I do understand more now why densities may be changed around from run to run.

Thanks

Do these thoughts make any sense to you? How much would we have to run to get a good average?

I'm sure that Erik will have a comment on this ;-)

You're also pressing some of my hot buttons

Presses are stable - but not consistent within a run. Presses, unlike proofs, also print differently according to the image content. The test files that are used to profile and/or audit a press are supposed to be designed to average out ink lay down on the press form in order to get meaningful data and compensate for issues related to the mechanics of laying down a film of ink (something that the industry gurus seem to forget). If it's a really good test form it won't even have any images to confuse the press operator - like this one:

When I say "predictable press condition" what I mean is that if the press operator comes up to the appropriate SIDs on a job which has no special bias in terms of ink coverage (i.e. not one large red tomato covering the entire sheet) the presswork should align closely with the proof and require only minor SID adjustments.
If the press operator has to make extreme SID adjustments to align with the proof (i.e. more than about .2 on such a job) then there is likely a problem in the system.
A good test is to simply give the plates to the operator - but not the proof. If the makeready time is longer than standard and/or if the presswork does not align with the proof then there is likely a problem in the system.

There is a video of TVI variation during a press run here:

The Print Guide: On-press stability and consistency

 

[Prepper]

So the whole idea of printing to a standard is that you run that way and you will get a pretty good "pleasing" match. Our trouble is when the pressman, in the interest of trying to match the proof more closely in all areas, adjusts SIDs to accomplish that, is actually then back to adjusting to his eye, which is different from some here and the same as some here, normal I guess, some see warm and some see cool. We want him to run to SIDs, measure all the metrics, keeping them within tolerance as much as possible, realizing there will be areas, or colors, that will match press to proof better than others and that as long as we do that consistently, the amount of difference should remain constant. Theoretically, of course. But just when you think you've got it all set up, he changes the paper, the ink, the press speed, and sometimes all at once! Worst case scenario, but things like that do happen, and sometimes it's just part of the whole process and some of it is out of your control.

 

[gordo]

So the whole idea of printing to a standard is that you run that way and you will get a pretty good "pleasing" match. Our trouble is when the pressman, in the interest of trying to match the proof more closely in all areas, adjusts SIDs to accomplish that, is actually then back to adjusting to his eye, which is different from some here and the same as some here, normal I guess, some see warm and some see cool. We want him to run to SIDs, measure all the metrics, keeping them within tolerance as much as possible, realizing there will be areas, or colors, that will match press to proof better than others and that as long as we do that consistently, the amount of difference should remain constant. Theoretically, of course. But just when you think you've got it all set up, he changes the paper, the ink, the press speed, and sometimes all at once! Worst case scenario, but things like that do happen, and sometimes it's just part of the whole process and some of it is out of your control.

If the press operator just runs to specified SIDs as measured from a color bar there is a good possibility that the presswork will fail to align to the proof (a pretty good "pleasing" match to use your terms). That's because a press is mechanically quite different that a proof in how it creates color.

When a press operator makes SID changes to better align color in some areas he is intuitively leveraging factors related to the ink laying mechanics of the press relative to how we see color. For example, humans tend not to see changes in density in solid areas of color compared to changes in density in 50% areas of color. So, he can change SIDs up or down relatively drastically in solid areas without changing the perception of those areas in order to move the color of some screened areas closer to to proof.

To make a visual evaluation the press operator will cut through the press sheet at the area of concern and lay it over the proof.

Like so:

If he can't distinguish between proof and press sheet at that edge then the match is made. Generally doing the visual comparison that way eliminates the difference between viewers.

In my experience press operators don't change things for the sake of changing them. There is usually a good reason - even if the reasoning may be flawed. It is certainly within control. The first step is communication.