> 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.
All I can say is that this puts the success of the color printing entirely in the hands of a pressman who may or may not be paying attention. It removes all hope of the editor and designer (the people with real expertise and who really care about the color accuracy) having any opportunity to intervene and improve color. We cannot require a printer to improve color if we cannot point to anything to show that the color is less than accurate. If museums are comfortable with this, then they should by all means remove the color bar and grayscale. But the publishers will then be in an excellent position to say, "Sorry, we printed what we were given." In my experience, museums expect more attention to color quality on the part of publishers. Absent a grayscale and color bar, our hands are tied. Also, of course, not all publishers work with the top printers, nor should museums expect that optimum printing conditions will be the norm. For example, most printers who know color printing well are working for the ad industry, where color standards are very different (e.g., maximum color saturation is desirable). There are almost no printers left who specialize in art printing-and they are mostly in Italy and Japan, which are beyond the budgets of most art publishers today. Lastly, newer generation studio printers are great-I hope they get installed soon. But in the meantime we are in a crucial transition period in which many (most) publishers and printers are not working with the latest equipment. I daresay smaller publishers will be in that position for a long time to come. > 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.) I don't dispute this, and I welcome it. Indeed, color printing has become less costly as a result. What I worry about is the blithe assumption that the tech can ensure quality, and that experienced editors and designers are not needed to take part in the process. In the past 5 years I have seen a sharp decline in much color reproduction of artworks because we are working with digital scans that have no visual guideposts. Every art publisher I know is distressed at this trend. Regards, Eve Sinaiko CAA
