RVNG
Well-known member
I found a recent post discussing early and late binding. I have been in prepress for roughly 15 years and embarrassingly, these were new terms for me.
This is rather a long post and I apologize but if you have the time to get through it, I would appreciate your comments. This isn’t about a technical issue but more about a philosophy.
Working mostly on my own in prepress, I have formulated a methodology in checking and preparing files that hasn’t really changed for more than a decade. This is something I set in place well before colour management was so widespread. Even to this day, I make sure that everything is CMYK in the front end. So, I guess I am an ‘early binder’ if I have my definition correct.
I should mention as well that most of my prepress experience came from working in a service bureau. It was my job to supply plates and film to a number of offset printers using a variety of different presses. Strangely, for many years I had never seen a press first hand, yet at the height of our business we were supplying film and plates to more than a dozen printing companies.
Looking back, I imagine it would have been a logistical nightmare to profile them all if I had incorporated the idea of colour management into the workflow. So, I didn’t.
Everything was kept CMYK at the front end and the numbers maintained right onto the film or plate. If the file called for a 50% screen of Cyan, that is what was imaged (mostly), obviously being mindful of total ink coverage and supports under black, etc.
Our proofers profile target was based on Photoshop’s U.S. sheetfed coated v2 – it was actually supplied through Agfa and it was called NASS (North Amercian Sheetfed Standard). This profile, as I recall, was created by Agfa and generated through a sampling of normal press output from across North America. I still use it to this day and over the 15 years I have never had any colour matching problems on press.
Since January 2010, I am now working for a Printing company having left my service bureau job. The company was a customer of ours and so I still work in the same way. Now having access to real pressmen, I often speak with them to find out if there is anything I can improve on my end to make their lives easier, I always get the same response, everything is good.
95% of the jobs I receive are supplied in the original authoring format, so ultimately I have full control. The other 5% is PDF, which mostly adhere to the old PDFx-1a standard and if the PDF have transparency, I quickly pop them into Indesign for reprocessing or use the flattener in my PDF production workflow to tackle this.
This may come as a shock to people but I still use CPSI renderers. Even more shocking is I have AdobePDF renderers at my disposal but don’t use them. Why haven’t I switched? Firstly, because I haven’t needed to (yet) and secondly, I haven’t sat down to go though all the colour management features yet.
Anyway, to get back to my point…
When I hear of headaches that late binding and colour management give others, I wonder why bother? Is seems trying to tightly manage colour is like squeezing a slippery bar of soap, over time it will get away from you.
Am I a dinosaur? Will an asteroid of colour problems soon leave me extinct as the future of print evolves? Possibly. But in my defense, I am really just a product of the jobs I encounter and so far my customers are happy, jobs are done on time and everything is running efficiently.
I know what you’re thinking, it must be that the cross section of work I get is inherently simple and from only a few sources. The fact is I get files from everywhere and on a daily basis deal with; magazines, catalogues, brochures, envelopes, packaging, die cut promotional materials, spots, foils, metallics, U-glues, varnishes, etc. I believe I have seen it all.
I am interested in what people think about what I have written here. To me it feels strange that others have so many problems with prepress but I do not. I would hate to go extinct because my simple ways leave me exposed to a changing industry… or is it that my simplicity has helped me to survive?
thanks,
rg
This is rather a long post and I apologize but if you have the time to get through it, I would appreciate your comments. This isn’t about a technical issue but more about a philosophy.
Working mostly on my own in prepress, I have formulated a methodology in checking and preparing files that hasn’t really changed for more than a decade. This is something I set in place well before colour management was so widespread. Even to this day, I make sure that everything is CMYK in the front end. So, I guess I am an ‘early binder’ if I have my definition correct.
I should mention as well that most of my prepress experience came from working in a service bureau. It was my job to supply plates and film to a number of offset printers using a variety of different presses. Strangely, for many years I had never seen a press first hand, yet at the height of our business we were supplying film and plates to more than a dozen printing companies.
Looking back, I imagine it would have been a logistical nightmare to profile them all if I had incorporated the idea of colour management into the workflow. So, I didn’t.
Everything was kept CMYK at the front end and the numbers maintained right onto the film or plate. If the file called for a 50% screen of Cyan, that is what was imaged (mostly), obviously being mindful of total ink coverage and supports under black, etc.
Our proofers profile target was based on Photoshop’s U.S. sheetfed coated v2 – it was actually supplied through Agfa and it was called NASS (North Amercian Sheetfed Standard). This profile, as I recall, was created by Agfa and generated through a sampling of normal press output from across North America. I still use it to this day and over the 15 years I have never had any colour matching problems on press.
Since January 2010, I am now working for a Printing company having left my service bureau job. The company was a customer of ours and so I still work in the same way. Now having access to real pressmen, I often speak with them to find out if there is anything I can improve on my end to make their lives easier, I always get the same response, everything is good.
95% of the jobs I receive are supplied in the original authoring format, so ultimately I have full control. The other 5% is PDF, which mostly adhere to the old PDFx-1a standard and if the PDF have transparency, I quickly pop them into Indesign for reprocessing or use the flattener in my PDF production workflow to tackle this.
This may come as a shock to people but I still use CPSI renderers. Even more shocking is I have AdobePDF renderers at my disposal but don’t use them. Why haven’t I switched? Firstly, because I haven’t needed to (yet) and secondly, I haven’t sat down to go though all the colour management features yet.
Anyway, to get back to my point…
When I hear of headaches that late binding and colour management give others, I wonder why bother? Is seems trying to tightly manage colour is like squeezing a slippery bar of soap, over time it will get away from you.
Am I a dinosaur? Will an asteroid of colour problems soon leave me extinct as the future of print evolves? Possibly. But in my defense, I am really just a product of the jobs I encounter and so far my customers are happy, jobs are done on time and everything is running efficiently.
I know what you’re thinking, it must be that the cross section of work I get is inherently simple and from only a few sources. The fact is I get files from everywhere and on a daily basis deal with; magazines, catalogues, brochures, envelopes, packaging, die cut promotional materials, spots, foils, metallics, U-glues, varnishes, etc. I believe I have seen it all.
I am interested in what people think about what I have written here. To me it feels strange that others have so many problems with prepress but I do not. I would hate to go extinct because my simple ways leave me exposed to a changing industry… or is it that my simplicity has helped me to survive?
thanks,
rg
