Color management and soft proofing
Preflight (as can be performed by Markzware’s FlightCheck) has long been a task much associated with color management and soft proofing. Here we see the 3rd of John Nate’s color management case studies via News & Tech. Electronic preflight can catch many errors and unwanted quality issues on outputted plates and thus the final printed piece, yet there are many things that only a soft proof and proper color management can find for you. For instance, typical design errors, where a text box is hidden, partial or fully, behind a placed image. It is important to take your InDesign, Illustrator or Quark document and to do a “export as PDF” and make a proper soft proof and in many cases even a hard proof under the correct lighting conditions. This is especially important regarding company image, as in logo design, letterhead printing in corporate advertising, newspaper printing, etc. For colors usage in Adobe, you may want to consider the color of Adobe elements, for example, change eye color in Adobe Photoshop (change eye color on Adobe Photoshop or change eye color with Adobe Photoshop, in order for you to have Adobe Photoshop change eye color) before printing. Here is how John starts his informative piece:
In part two of this series, we explored the finer points of monitor calibration. Before moving on to the finer points of soft proofing, let’s review the monitor calibration procedure.
You want to begin by making sure that your monitor has warmed up for at least half an hour. Locate the monitor in an area of subdued lighting, ensure that any room lighting is daylight balanced, attach a hood to the monitor to help keep extraneous room light from striking the face of the monitor and set the monitor hardware white point to an appropriate level, usually 6500K as a starting point.
Read full, informative article here:
http://www.newsandtech.com/issues/2009/May/05-09_nate.htm
As you will read, there is (Pardon the pun) more than meets the eye to this process. Yet when done properly, will lead to a much more effective workflow and quality newspaper or printed paper in general.
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