last minute color adjustments

[misha]

Hi,
I'm doing a study on the usability of color workflows and I kindly ask you, if possible, to help me with the following question.
How often do you (or your operators) do last minute color adjustments at the engine(directly on the printer) ? I'm talking here about adjustments like color balance, light/dark, saturation, contrast, etc.
If you do these kind of adjustements at the engine, what's the reason?
Thanks,

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

engine? you mean the press? We do not do any andjustments on a per job basis, there have been instances where a certain batch of paper has had a too high dotgain in eg magenta, and we have made a small veer to aim for the low end withing the density tllerances… but that is very rare, and we would logg it and try and it would we would first verify that it is a fix for that specific batch by printing on equivalent papers too see that we are fixing the exception to the rule.

 

[gordo]

engine? you mean the press? We do not do any andjustments on a per job basis, [SNIP]

Do you have designers/creatives attend you presses to do press color approvals?

best, gordon

 

[misha]

Thanks, Lukas,
By engine I mean press or printer. Actually, the question is more about printers.
It seams that operators ask for more&more buttons on the engine. If you take a look at the menu on a Canon Imagepress 7000vp you will see a mini-Photoshop in there!
It doesn't matter how good the Rip, the profile, the workflow is, the operator always wants to put more cyan just before printing.
So, I'm wondering, why??

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Do you have designers/creatives attend you presses to do press color approvals?

We do proofs, but and will adjust images untill we are pleased with the proofs. (our monitors are fine, but a hardcopy proof is easier to handle in discussions with customers. Some customers will come in and watch over shoulder, as we make final adjustment. But all that is in pre-press.

At press the aim is to print by numbers. We are small enough to look at jobs printed to make sure we are allways on track. But that is more a quality reciept than a necessity. It happens our proof is with the client at time of print, but printing by numbers we know it wil match, nice to have the reciept of that fact before we deliver though

Oh well it is no point matching the proof at press, the proof simulates dry ink and at press ink is wet ;p