Bob Croxford wrote.
>As a matter of interest how did you know whether the Iris proofs were the
>best that could got from the press?
A valid point Bob . It's an issue that we've looked long and hard at on
the DIG committee. It comes back to the old conundrum of should the press
match the proof or the proof match the press.
In an ideal world , the proof would accurately represent the specific
press running at its optimum.
In the instance of the IDEA book , the printers assured us that they had
profiled their press at it's optimum over several days , and that this
was the profile that they sent to us.
With IDEA being a labour of love and not a profit making book , we could
not afford he luxury of wet proofs.
However the proofs were of good quality , matching our validation prints.
So we signed them off , they matched the proofs and everybody was happy.
> Could the Iris proofs and the final
>print
>be compared to anything as a yardstick?
In this instance no.Except of course the validation prints and the
monitor images.In both cases they were fine.
>What if the press, paper and ink
>combination could have achieved a better, wider gamut, result? Would
>you
>have
>known?
See above
>
>I have seen specially done machine proofs which were a lot better than an
>in-house profiled Iris.
I've no doubt that you have.But unfortunately,we didn't have that luxury.
Which brings us back to the proof/press/proof conundrum.
Some would argue (including pre press and press houses ) that many
industry wide accepted proofing colour spaces/devices are flawed in that
they don't match the true capabilities of the press.
This is something that the DIG committee and myself along with Neil
Barstow and Thomas Holm have been looking at for a long time. As you may
know , the AOP commissioned a set of generic profiles CMYK from Phil
Green at the Colour Imaging Group of the LCP.These were based on FOGRA
data , and the aim was to produce a more specific set of CMYK targets
than those available in Photoshop.
One may be able to argue that these profiles are a more accurate
representation of presses than some of the present 'Golden Standard'
Eurostandard and Euroscale profiles available.We are still testing these
(we are now testing some revised profiles produced by Thomas ) with some
prime repro houses.
But the bottom line is , that as long as the major part of our industry
believes that the press has to match the existing proofing methods , then
we have to find an acceptable method of providing files within tthat
framework .
And one of the main reasons they accept the existing standards is that
even if they may be (slightly?) flawed , at least they are consistent in
their output (which also enables remote proofing). And of course that
they represent (albeit sometimes a lower common denominator target) a
standard to which all parties can agree......a contract proof.
I'd like to write about this longer now ,but I've got an art director
arriving in about five minutes , so I'll catch up later.
In the meantime,the DIG committee are continuuing doing their very best
to keep standards as high as possible , so all positive suggestions as to
how we achieve our aims are of course gratefuly received.
Regards,
Bob Marchant ( DIG chair )
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