With apologies to Eve, please consider the following: Regarding the second part of her email; If your budget allows you to use a good commercial printer who has printed art publications before, you will have exceptional results from an entirely digital workflow. True, we rarely see press-proofs any more, but that is due to the fact that color seps and printers have been able to produce very accurate guide proofs from newer generation studio printers.
Capture software as well as CMYK printing is moving forward very quickly and at this point has surpassed film, allowing us to control color and ink densities like never before. Image quality control is far more ?in front of the curtain? now as we all see the images immediately at every point of the workflow. In some cases your printer may provide on-line services, allowing you to soft proof images and make edits on the fly (all before you go on press for quality control.) JEFF Jeffrey Evans Digital Imaging Specialist Princeton University Art Museum 609.258.8579 On 10/28/08 6:30 PM, "Eve Sinaiko" <esinaiko at collegeart.org> wrote: > Imperfect as a color bar or grayscale may be, I would put in an ardent > plea for their inclusion in all digital scans, whether of old rescanned > transparencies or new scans of artworks. I speak on behalf of the > publishers and printers who have been left with no visual cues to guide > color correction on press. > > The quality of color printing from digital scans fluctuates wildly > because the skilled eyes of editors and book designers have no guide. > However good the embedded digital information may be, there is no > substitute for looking at a color bar and grayscale to see if the press > proof is running too warm or cold, too contrasty, or too saturated. Not > to mention that digital presses are calibrated as variably as computer > monitors, and most printers use standard settings. > > Every art publisher I know is deeply unhappy with the shift from > transparencies to digital scans for this reason. We may love the > financial savings in using digital files of art images at the design and > layout stage, but we have completely lost control of the color process, > and are dependent on the guesswork of printers. > > To be clear: The grayscale and color bar are normally not guides for the > printer but for the editor and/or designer who checks the proofs. The > color correction is made by them, and the printer follows those > directions. Printers typically do not consult the color bar or > grayscale, as they use their own standard settings at the proof stage. > > Comparison of a color proof with the original artwork is a vanished > concept. Today's production budgets, schedules, and methods have done > away with that step, except perhaps within a museum's own publication > program. The digital scans made of artworks by museums are used not only > internally, but also by myriad outside publishers. > > I will dodge the interesting but unresolvable question of what > publishers mean by "accurate" color printing. To quote Justice Potter > Stewart in another context, we know it when we see it. > > Regards, > Eve Sinaiko > Director of Publications > College Art Association > > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
