NEWS :: CM and Imaging developments.

Proofing and Press news

Work in the pressroom and repro department:

Recently Neil Barstow has been working on UK projects alongside German Repro and Press expert Florian Sussl, technical director of MetaDesign in Berlin. Florian works with ECI, FOGRA and ISO and thus has an immense amount of information at his fingertips. See our press and prepress section for information about this work and ISO standards based workflows, also our press and prepress equipment page for info about Florian Sussl's own excellent MetaPrintCheck application.

Extensive work for our clients on press and pre-press - in optimisation of the plate production process with adjusted plate curves and press running requirements - has left us with a clear picture of the requirements and advantages of standardized working in print.
The advantages are enormous, since any necessary visual optimisation can be carried out at proofing stage (given a good ISO standard proofer) rather than at press side.
Of course, no amount of colour management will replace the skill needed to run a press properly, but receiving properly optimised plates produced from correctly made separations (i.e. made to a standard) is a great adjunct to press operators skill. With a properly optimised press and with well made separations used to make good plates, running to numbers now becomes a way to match a proof properly.

click here to download a pdf about our work at Christie's International media Division. (.zip file 3.1MB)

Press measurement and profiling:

FOGRA, Ugra, bvdm, ISO and ECI continue to carry out an immense amount of work on press characterisation. To the extent that they can now provide characterisation data and, from this, ECI make good quality icc profiles to cover a variety of press types, these are free to use can be downloaded at the ECI web-site. Look for “eci offset profiles”, each package contains useful profiles and info on their use / origins.

Proofing – Using the Ugra/FOGRA mediawedge:

Our tech partners color-solutions, working in conjunction with Ugra and FOGRA, have provided us with the basICColor Control application package – thus, the wherewithal to print and measure (on each proof) an Ugra/FOGRA mediawedge (an approved proof control strip, illustrated here).

This official strip is measured with a spectrophotometer and the software then provides a detailed printable report (or label) on specific proof quality in comparison to an ISO standard. This means that anyone receiving a proof can know or sure that it's not just a pretty picture - it truly does relate to press output. We feel that this is the future of proofing, working to proof to an open, internationally recognised, non proprietary ISO standard, based on real world printing press performance.

A more complete explanation follows below.

Making an ISO Standard proof. What does this mean?

Start with a .tif
Basically, we take a document, at simplest, say, an image .tif. We'd like to know what's going to happen when this image goes to press, how will it reproduce? Might we be able to improve reproduction by some simple adjustments at this stage - often the answer to this question is “yes”.

How will the job be printed?
It is important to know a little about the printing process to be used (perhaps it is destined for a magazine, thus, normally, printed using a “web” press which prints onto a long roll of paper, or perhaps for a shorter run, normally printed on a “sheet-fed” press.

The value of press standardisation:
This is where the work on press standardisation becomes very useful to us, because if we know that the eventual press will be run well, we know that the freely available standard ISO profiles will represent that press well. So, a good simulation is possible.

What type of print run?
Once we have an idea of print destination we can, of course, “Soft-Proof” on a well set up Display Screen, but it is plain that nothing replaces the ability to make a good printed proof.

A Proof or a pretty Picture?
It has been said that “There is no proof without an Ugra FOGRA MediaWedge ”. This means that without some form of standardised control strip which can be measured by producer and recipient of proof, any printed image can only be considered as a pretty picture. It may or may not relate to press output.

How does the Ugra FOGRA MediaWedge work?

The Standard press: characterisation data:
First a standard press is characterised (by printing an extended CMYK patch-set for reading into a spectrophotometer).

This characterisation data has two important uses:
1 :
The characterisation data can be used for making CMYK separation profiles which will be used to make CMYK press ready files from RGB originals.
2 :
Colour accurate patch data can be extracted, showing just exactly how the standard press will reproduce a certain CMYK colour ink recipe.

Separation and Simulation:
When proofing we use both products of the characterisation process.
1 :
The RGB data is separated (converted) to press ready CMYK.
2 :
The same CMYK profile is used on the proofer RIP to tell the system to simulate that specific press output.
3 :
The Ugra FOGRA MediaWedge on the printed proof is measured and compared it against the same CMYK patches which were printed on the press.

Simply: the Ugra FOGRA MediaWedge contains a sub-set of the patch-set originally printed at the press.

A comparison can be drawn between proofer result and press result. The ISO standards body have specified tolerance figures for use in comparing press colour with proofer colour. Basically, that's what the MediaWedge is all about.

Making an ISO proof, the practicalities:

Hardware and Software
We are seeing excellent results from Epson's Ultrachrome K3 machines, e.g. 4800, 7800 and larger. Many high end repro. houses are turning to Epson and Ultrachrome K3 in conjunction with a decent software RIP as a way of producing cost effective proofs, as evidenced in the Wuppertal proofing shoot out which used the Altona test Suite. As a result of these initiatives, we are pleased to see that open standard print and proofing really is taking off.

RIPs for proofing, RIPs for photo reproduction?
We've spent a lot of time researching the ins and outs of various printer RIPs with proofing AND photo reproduction in mind. Not many RIPs can do both. We now have solutions which, in conjunction with Epson's Ultrachrome inks and the right paper, as well as making excellent photo-quality art prints, allow us to produce certified ISO standard proofs.

How can we help you?
We can provide any component part or a complete package of Epson Ultrachrome or HP Z series printer and proofing and / or photo RIP. Also, the on site optimisation and training as well as the necessary ink and paper.
The colourmanagement part of this service is basically on 4 levels.
1: On site work is carried out to linearize and profile the RIP + printer to perform to the ISO proof standard.
2: Planned site visits ensure continued accuracy.
Training in the maintenance process is also an option, for those who prefer self sufficiency.
3: For really critical applications we recommend training in the use of the basICColor “Control ”application and that Ugra/FOGRA mediawedge be placed on every proof.
4: Alternatively, we can measure a MediaWedge on installation to ensure accuracy - and, later, re-measure at an agreed period to keep an eye on proofer performance.

:: FOGRA web-site :: Ugra web-site ::

basICColor Display SW v4 now available:

You'll see from our Colour Gear Section that for monitor calibration/profiling we recommend color-solutions' basICColor Display SW, from what we've seen and reviews we've read, Display trounces the opposition, giving a really great Soft-Proof (screen match to print). Because we like the basICColor Display software so much - and because clients found it painful to import direct from Germany with all the issues of overseas transfer - we've become the UK agent.

The basICColor Display SW supports the basICColor Squid 2 colorimeter, the various Eye-Ones (Design/Photo etc. and the Eye-One Display 2) and the Spectrolino, to name a few. Color Solutions like the GretagMacbeth Eye-One device for cross monitor matching, I agree that a spectrophotometer is the needed tool for this job

Got a supported device? (not the Spyder I'm afraid) - There is a demo link here.

In my work with City of Westminster College in their COVE (Centre of Vocational Excellence) I helped set up 2 old iMacs, 2 PC's with XP, 3 G4 macs with 17 LCD and 2 x eMac. With the right settings they were able to be extremely close, a lot closer than I'd expected as I'd heard of disappointing results on an eMac. I'm not saying the eMac becomes a Cinema display, but the results are very good.

Since the update to version 3, Display 3 has a new option to add extra calibration points to the grey axis in any area which shows discolouration in a neutral gradation.
There is now a L* option (as in L*a*b*) which replaces the choice of gamma and the attendant need to experiment and choose a gamma which suits your screen hardware.
Also a new option to validate the resulting profile. A nice way to be sure the screen is up to scratch.

Seminar reports

September '04, Apple UK HQ:
Imaging Seminar with Steve Upton of Chromix USA
- colour guru and inventor of the profile toolkit Chromix ColorThink.

We had a great day at Apple UK with Steve who was over in the UK for a few days. Steve and Neil spoke about general colour management issues and gave a taster on ColorThink PRO

If you missed the '04 Seminars , you may like to click here to register an interest in future events
we'll keep you posted.

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Imaging Seminars with Pixl

We had a great feedback from our 2 day Colour Management and Imaging Seminar at Apple UK in May '04, featured alongside Neil Barstow were, among others, Richard West of Apple, Emma Lomax of Epson UK, Thomas Holm of Pixl Aps in Copenhagen and, author of Photoshop CS for Photographers , Martin Evening.

GATF 03

Neil Barstow was invited to speak in a seminar entitled Advanced - Better Scanner Profiles and Customer Files at GATF 2003 in Arizona - also taking part in a Lab session with Derek Brown and Steve Upton - Setting Up Digital Camera Profiles and a few very interesting panel sessions including one with John Zimmerer, Apple's Colorsync guy. It was a very interesting event with many vendors present and the opportunity to met many of the worlds top colour guys as well as to address a big audience of mainly press and pre press guys. Yes, Standards based Printing on press has taken hold in the supremely cost conscious USA too.

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Inkjet print output colour shifts

There is currently a furore in North America about problems with colour changes (among other issues) on inkjet printers. Some users have talk of disappointment when the colour changes on loading new cartridges. Sometimes those carts were bought cheap, sometimes for full price, nevertheless the inks seem to be at the root of the problem. Counterfeiting raises it's ugly head. I'd have to say that it doesn't seem to be happening here - but I think we need to be aware that there could be counterfeit carts out there. It's always worth checking for a head blockage since that can happen often at the time of cart swops, but this news seems much more sinister.

Changed the ink cartridges and seen colour changes? click here for inside info (on a new page)

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Advances in Profile Making technology

We have a new and improved profile making set-up with special RGB targets with many more patches, these targets were designed especially to get the last drop of performance out of inkjet printers, by US inkjet guru Bill Atkinson. Additionally, Spectral Patch Reading now enables us to more accurately target prints for the viewing environment. We feel that the printers previously suffering from "illuminant metameric greybalance shift" can now be dealt with much more effectively. why not go to our inkjet profiling page and get the new profiling kit to see just how easy it is.

Why not consider a superbly crafted ICC printer profile?

Not only have we updated the PDF manual on how to print patches for profiling RGB printers, we also have adopted of a new development in output profiling, a new and more accurate profiling target with over 900 patches, plus, we have some new improved high end software too! Altogether this latest update to profiling technology will improve the quality of most printer profiles:

We are finding that he results for printers suffering from "illuminant metameric greybalance shift" are improved immensely, when compared with previously available technology. "Illuminant metameric greybalance shift" is what's happening when colours change their appearance in unexpected directions when viewed under different light sources, let's abbreviate that to "illuminant metamerism". For example, neutral colours can appear green in daylight but correct under tungsten lamps. These effects are often localised, e.g.. only darker tones go green, it looks awful. There was little point in using these printers - which had a great claimed longevity but prints which changed under differing lights.

For the printers which do not have problems with illuminant metamerism, results are better, but not as dramatically improved by the new technology. A big plus is that shadow detail, especially, is rendered more accurately. On certain 6 and 7 colour printers grey balance is slightly improved too. Remember that the profiles for these printers were pretty accurate before, so there wasn't that much room for improvement.

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