It's been a really long time since I had any printing press runs done, but there is one thing I remember from the old days when I was doing brochures, etc...
The only proofs that have any meaning at all are the "proofs" that come off the presses at the point of setting up the run. That's the only time you can make really meaningful changes in color. You've got to be there at the beginning of the run, looking at the proofs with the press operators. And you've got to understand that your "gamut" at that point offers very little wiggle room, sigh. And if you are going for quality, you have to be willing to say (sometimes expensively) "look guys, this all wrong, no way are we going to run this job."
Maybe times have changed. That would be wonderful.
I did try some online 11.75 x 36" posters a few years ago. Thinking myself clever, I first bought the minimum (100 prints), had them overnighted, they were beautiful, top quality. That morning, less than 24 ours later, I called in for a run of 5000. Those were Pure Crud. They probably ran them on different presses suited for limited runs versus large runs. Duh. Never tried it again, I'm not a gambler.
Fike, I would sincerely like to hear how your stuff turns out, how you prepped, who did the job, etc. Thanks!
Hi fike,
I am at the end of doing the artwork and color corrections on a cook book, which is being printed in Hong Kong, and I am in Western Australia. there is not the budget for me to do a press-check personally in Hong Kong.
I too have asked a lot of question here, and have received some great answers, along with reading between 2-3000 pages of information, spoken to about 30 different people. Spoken to the printer in Hong Kong, who I might add, have been very helpful.
I did test proofs at a local printer, checking what I could expect in density, compared that with the TIL (Total Ink Limits) that I was provided with, softproof with the printer supplied ICC profile (CMYK) now, I had a further few test prints done, and was then lucky to find a book similar to what we are producing from the same printer, on the same stock that we will be using. Stop! my proofs are on different paper then this book! started to compare the proofs to the book, book was on slightly darker paper.
Unable to get this paper locally, I have had to make adjustment to may color corrections, mainly density, based on my perception of the proof versus the actual paper. I have gotten a final proof back, which is a screen match, except it is just that bit brighter (intentionally) so that when we print on the actual paper, I will hit the mark.
Slightly different jobs, but you will have a similar process. If you print locally, you can get responses much quicker, I still had to go between publisher, photographer, printer locally and final printer.
So, to boil it down,
make up a sheet, and scale down or crop your original image, usually proofs are approx A3 or 13x19", ad a control image with a gray scale step wedge, I am sure DigitalDog has one on this website or OutBackPhoto has one. I have used the later one, which I have used when I make my paper profiles on my printers as test print. So I am familiar with it, and have seen what can go wrong.
Note, when doing the book I was also very lucky to get in contact with a gentleman from the UK, who had made the software, the printer uses to softproof with, and this software unlike Photoshop could tell you which color was out of gamut. He kindly processed crops of three images, that I thought was trouble, and I got those test back, showing that my fear wasn't warranted, maybe I was lucky.
Any how, convert your sheet to the output profile that the printer is using. It could be one of the "newer" CMYK FOGRA standard. Evaluate the print, for color and density
If this is a CMYK job, you will need to know TIL (Total Ink Limits) eg the max density and GCR but I think the TIL is more important.
There are others here who know more then what I do, and may even correct me, which is great if they do, cos I want to learn more.
Once you have this confirmed, you can either feel relieved or running back to the drawing board :-)
I hope this helps - now, go get the information you need - then come back here and tell us. even make en image available. We are here to help.
Good luck
Henrik
PS: I have been told i am rather pedantic :-)
