Ian Reynolds writes about his experience giving a print house a helping hand to handle his (and everyone else’s) image files correctly…
There are some in the Repro Industry who think they know better, just because they have big printers. They don’t.
Recently I had some posters done at a large printers, they insisted I sat in to check the colours.
They turn over millions of pounds (GBP). I sat there only to see them strip the profile and it looked rubbish. I said that is never going to work, they said it was my fault, I then said let me open it, I then introduced them to the colour settings in Photoshop, “oh I never knew what that did”. It looked better, I then said how often do you calibrate your monitor, er we do, what system do you use, show me. Errr answer there was no calibrator. I said ok do one proof. It was wrong. I said “ok you want my business so listen…”. I then went with my Eye One the following day, calibrated the monitor and opened correctly. Their canned profiles in the RIP were spot on. The I said “Ok try this. Just print from the RIP and don’t open in Photoshop”. Result, right first time. Their answer, was we always have problem with files from photographers.
So the situtation since my visit is that they now have an Eye One and have calibrated monitors, they now understand how to deal with photo files and sRGB etc.
Ok they haven’t gone for custom profiles on the printers, but their canned ones are damn good and very close.
Man, it makes you mad. It would take one Eye One and half day training to sort 90% of problems out. The RIPS printers have available are pretty good these days and can be used straight off the shelf, so that’s going to save time and cost as well.
The mad part about color management is people don’t actually have to pay for the information either. It’s out there in droves and you can even download the dedicated color management chapter from Martin Evening’s book from his website.
link: Ian Reynolds
link: UPDIG
photo: Ian Reynolds
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