Paul Webster writes: >> Hi, a quick question , an ex assistant of mine who has gone digital is having problems with a printer (person not machine) who is supplying grey/dirty proofs from digital files and of course blaming her and her profile and then charging for retouching and requesting raw files to work from. Am I mistaken in believing that they have got their dot gain figures wrong and that this is causing the problems? <<
Without knowing more, it is hard to say. The issues you describe sound like more than just a general brightness issue (think of this like gamma if that helps). What I can say is... Communication is the key. Find what they require and supply that. Presuming handing off loose images and not final pages... If it is RGB, find the flavour of RGB that they can work with without harm. If it is CMYK, then use that. Supply both colour modes if you can. Supply tagged profiles, separate profiles, read me files, file or folder names that hint at colour spaces, hard copy read me notes, email and other contact details etc. This can be done when you don't know who the next party is or what their workflow or requirements are. The prepress/print trade has historically been a peer to peer relationship between trade colour houses and printers. Now that colour shops are pretty much dead and the market has taken colour work in-house, printers and their new print work suppliers need to communicate more than ever, as they are now forced to directly interact with the printer and they may not have the skill or knowledge of the folk who earn their living in prepress. >> By the by I am having a similar problem with a prepress house supplying dirty/grey proofs from adobe rgb .tif files viewed on my calibrated screen and printed perfectly on my calibrated printer. Is this also a dot gain problem or could it be someting else? << It sounds like they are presuming sRGB or a monitor like space than your A98 files - the result being loss of saturation. See the previous part of my post about communication so that you and your service provider are both talking the same language. P.S. I am a prepress operator and I work for a printer. I am aware of ICC profiles and their pros/cons. It is perhaps best not to presume this as being the standard for all shops/locations. Regards, Stephen Marsh. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
