PANTONE Certified Printer Program?

[Gio-PANTONE]

Hi Gordo,

The process is very involved. It includes every aspect of work flow and customer handling. Forgive me for not posting it all on this message board, but we would be more than happy to discuss it with you over the phone when you have some time.

 

[J]

Hi Gordo,

The process is very involved. It includes every aspect of work flow and customer handling. Forgive me for not posting it all on this message board, but we would be more than happy to discuss it with you over the phone when you have some time.

If the results of the survey are any indication - it appears that Pantone has not made a convincing argument to printers as to the value of the process needed to get certification.

J

 

[Munsell]

It looks like some time since anyone posted about this. Since a year has gone by, has anyone else persued this certification? What are your thoughts.

I just got an email that one of our plants got the certification, and another is in the works. The plant I work in is a G7 Master printer. The plants getting the Pantone certification are not G7 Master printers. I have not heard anything down the corporate grapevine about us having to do it though.

If we are a G7 Master printer, is there any real point to this?

 

[Munsell]

Well, Pantone must have made a convincing argument to our marketing team, because this certification is being forced upon us.

Reading the documentation, it really just seems like a money grab for them to push their Pantone brand. I mean, most of the spot colors we print are based on Pantone colors anyways.

It looks like the program is trying to be a 3rd party "process control" auditor for printing and prepress. I guess there must have been people outside of the industry clamouring for a certification, since G7's mantra is more of a methodology than a set in stone certification audit.

 

[gordo]

Well, Pantone must have made a convincing argument to our marketing team, because this certification is being forced upon us.

Reading the documentation, it really just seems like a money grab for them"

Could you put me in touch with your marketing people? I'd like to certify you for something or other. After I certify your process I'll give you a very nice gold star plaque which marketing can hang in your lobby. ;-D

Best gordo

 

[D Ink Man]

All systems are GOE.

 

[dabob]

I really don't care what Pantone thinks . . . to me its all about what my customers think and my customers pretty much think that our color is "spot on" - and thats a quote!!!!

 

[iamgemini]

There's no way I would sign up for that but I completely get why they are doing this. It reminds me of the Adobe subscription shift for Creative Suite. On one hand the services offered are high quality, but this may simply be too much money upfront.

Inversely, there may be a generation of businesses who only wish to purchase from 'certified printers' which may be a reason to sign up. But yes, it is borderline blackmail.

 

[weststreet]

This Certification program has been offered for 1 year now, and there are 3 printers who have gone through with it. 3. We are just reading the audit package now, and it seems to me that if you are CRACoL or G7 or ISO certified, that should do it for reproducing Pantone colors. What would be neat, and more helpful, is if Pantone would pick a deck of conversion values and stick with them.

 

[David Milisock]

>
What would be neat, and more helpful, is if Pantone would pick a deck of conversion values and stick with them.


I believe they're now at a resting place with the LAB specification.

 

[Munsell]

I'd like to add a little icing on the cake here. I'm working on getting all of our monitors calibrated. I normally have used the software that comes with the i1 Pros. One of my newer computers in the department is running OSX 10.7 (lion). Lo and behold, the software is not compatible with Lion. There is some free upgrade software out there available for Lion, but it does not support the i1Pro. In order to use the i1Pro on 10.7, I have to buy $900 more worth of software. Completely ridiculous.

 

[David Milisock]

>In order to use the i1Pro on 10.7, I have to buy $900 more worth of software. Completely ridiculous.
We don't call it MAC CRAP for nothing!

 

[gordo]

>In order to use the i1Pro on 10.7, I have to buy $900 more worth of software. Completely ridiculous.
We don't call it MAC CRAP for nothing!

Oooooh, don't blame Apple for a customer's mistake.

Best gordo

 

[David Milisock]

>Oooooh, don't blame Apple for a customer's mistake
Dud I have stuff that ran on DOS that strill works in Win7, all my CM software does

 

[gordo]

>Oooooh, don't blame Apple for a customer's mistake
Dud I have stuff that ran on DOS that strill works in Win7, all my CM software does

Assuming that's true - it's irrelevant. Do you blame Microsoft because Coreldraw doesn't run in DOS? It is not Apple's responsibility to support all the thousands of applications that have been created for its platform since 1984.
It's the user's responsibility to determine that their software applications are compatible with the updated OS before installing. If it's not, then you don't update your OS. End of.

Gordo

 

[David Milisock]

I don't disagree, but Apple does not give a rats butt for helping the user control costs. Apple has been a waste of time since about 1996.

CorelDRAW runs in 3 and soon 4 Microsoft operating systems apanning nearly 12 years. On the PC side backward compatibility has always been vastly superior to the MAC as well as most of the OS.