How do customers check your presswork?

[gordo]

Do your customers measure your presswork or evaluate by eye?
If they measure, what do they measure and how?
Do they provide tolerances? If so what kind?

Gordo

 

[Fatboysmart]

These days it seems all they measure is the time between placing the order and having it delivered...

 

[dabob]

Gordo . . . are we looking for funny stories or the real way . . . I have both -

We were doing a job for Apple one time ( a freelancer brought it in not Apple officially) and when he gets to the press check he pulls out a 35mm SLR lens (I think it was a 50 mm) and proceeds to look over the press sheet with it . . . very strange

and I'm sure you have seen the luscious video on Youtube . . . Off Register: Luscious - YouTube

But its mostly just by eyeballing the press sheet

 

[txcynna]

Ours just kind of glance at it when they pick it up.... It's annoying.

Also.... dabob. Now I am going to have to watch ALL of the Off Register videos when I get home. Thanks for that. I'm supposed to be working a freelance job.

 

[Cornishpastythighs]

We supply Standards, lights and dark tolerances that the customer has agreed to and signed and they visually compare the incoming jobs to those standards. We however use every tool possible to keep ourselves inside those agreed standards.

 

[RGPW17100]

Our customers come in and adjust color they did not like on the proof (something they never bother to tell us when they sign the proof. We then find at least 10 samples of what they signed and mark them as samples then run the rest of the job the way we think it should be run

 

[toronar]

Eyeballing for the most part.

So far we only once had a customer who brought his own SpectroDens to measure the sheet.
But there is one company that has us print their own colorstrip on their print jobs. We send them every 1000th sheet of their print jobs and they check their own colorstrip.

 

[gordo]

Gordo . . . are we looking for funny stories or the real way . . . I have both -

We were doing a job for Apple one time ( a freelancer brought it in not Apple officially) and when he gets to the press check he pulls out a 35mm SLR lens (I think it was a 50 mm) and proceeds to look over the press sheet with it . . . very strange

Actually, a lens from a 35mm camera makes for a much higher quality lens than most linen testers. I believe that at one time you could actually buy plexiglass lens holders to turn the camera lens into a proper loupe. So not so strange.

gordo

 

[cosmo]

price and time

 

[dabob]

Actually, a lens from a 35mm camera makes for a much higher quality lens than most linen testers. I believe that at one time you could actually buy plexiglass lens holders to turn the camera lens into a proper loupe. So not so strange.

gordo

Yeah .. . its can be a great lens - but you have to know what your looking for (we have a 75 power Peak microscope he could have borrowed)- he didn't know a slur test from his third point of contact - he just wanted to "LOOK" important . . . .

 

[PreFlexoPress]

Flexo print here.

Currently by eye. And I hate it. For the last 7 yrs or so we have been printing one time use items. There's the occasional re-print but not a lot. And 90% of the work is 4cp.

Prior to that we were a prime pressure sensitive label printer. We were international award winners for a few of our speciality items. From around 1991 - 2005 we produced chromalins for every new prime 4cp job. One for us and one for the customer. Oh how I miss those days. Chromalins produced from my film, using cmyk and actual dots.

Now the end product is being checked by Susie Secretary on her 15" Gateway monitor with brightness at 100% and white point set at 8k (because it's easier on her eyes).

 

[kansasquaker]

We had a customer come for a press check with a sample of a job we printed a few years before. It had yellowed a little. But reprinted brochure was going in the rack with what was left of the originals and they wanted the new printing to match the existing brochures (not the standard the originally set). In particular, they wanted to match the slightly yellower cool grey 3 we printed. The old sample was about 2 greater in b* than the swatch book. We explained that there isn't any yellow in cool grey 3 so remixing the ink wouldn't make it any more yellow.

That didn't matter, so we had to make a new cool grey 3 with a little pantone yellow in it. Twenty years and ten reprints from now, that bank's corporate color will be Pantone 103 and they won't have any idea why.

 

[toronar]

That didn't matter, so we had to make a new cool grey 3 with a little pantone yellow in it. Twenty years and ten reprints from now, that bank's corporate color will be Pantone 103 and they won't have any idea why.

Do you sometimes think "there cannot be something more weird/foolish/idiotic/..."?
And only 5 seconds after that thought you read something like this

Simulating "yellowing" on a re-run job must be near the tip of the iceberg. On the corporate color no less. But oh well, the customer gets what the customer wants.

Reminds me of one magazine cover ... the customer had to have this pictures on the cover, edge to edge. Too bad that image was taken from a website, 120px by 90px. But he had to have it, quality be damned! There really was no convincing him to choose another picture or at least try to get a similar one with better resolution.
So that magazine issue's cover was a picture with around 7 ppi resolution and stretched from having a ratio of (landscape) 4:3 to (portrait) 3:4. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.

 

[seejay]

Hi Gordo,

It varies by client - depending on the order.
Some clients just expect us to 'print by the numbers' - ISO12647/2 - if we hit the numbers they're happy. Some will send in a previous copy sent by their 'last' printer - in this instance we rarely guarantee to match previous, but recommend they have a contract proof that we both run to. Our top client now just trusts us to print to their standard - rarely are there ever any questions asked. Some print managers expect us to run a quality evidence test - usually a test chart with a balance of images/wedges/fogra charts.

Finally theres the client who will ask why their job doesn't match last years copy - shame they didn't send it in when the job is on press and not after its been delivered!