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Author Topic: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size  (Read 14099 times)

Stefan.Steib

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #20 on: December 26, 2011, 06:39:40 am »

In europe we have the ECI - European Color Initiative  to be found at eci.org.  their downloads page is here:   http://www.eci.org/doku.php?id=de:downloads
There are plenty of downloads and infos among these there is this document (in english) digipix3_v300_en.pdf :

http://www.eci.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=de%3Adownloads&cache=cache&media=downloads:digital_photography:digipix3_v300_en.pdf


take a look at page 43 / chapter 2.3 , this will answer all the questions you may have.
according to this there is also the  other normative whitepaper in version 1.1 (already back from 2002) about the workflow norm for printproduction:

http://www.eci.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=de%3Adownloads&cache=cache&media=downloads:eci_general_downloads:eci_whitepaper_1_1_eng.pdf

This is a bit harder to read , but this is the normative clamp for the whole european print production, and as I think valid worldwide.


Greetings from Munich
Stefan
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fredjeang

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #21 on: December 27, 2011, 02:42:11 pm »

Forget about all that s....t

Put PS in FOGRA27 and go to the bar to have a coffee on a rocking chair.

We have enough bullshit to deal with not having to do the work for the printers.
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Rob C

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #22 on: December 27, 2011, 04:01:09 pm »

Forget about all that s....t

Put PS in FOGRA27 and go to the bar to have a coffee on a rocking chair.

We have enough bullshit to deal with not having to do the work for the printers.





Reminds me of how lucky I was to be out whilst all I had to do was hand over to the printers some transparencies and a layout... Oh, and send the client my invoice.

Rob C

fredjeang

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #23 on: December 27, 2011, 05:48:25 pm »

And here in Ireland - we'd then go to the bar and drink Guinness, until we fall off the stool  ;D

I know yeah...and while you guys get pissed and fight, french and italian boys are picking-up your bored ladies in the parks next to the pubs.  ;)

Drink coffee my friend. (no, better descafeinado for blood pressure)


ps: back in the topic, here the 39 is still less implanted than the 27. It is specified, otherwise it's 27.
For a work in Europe both are standarts but IMO it's better to ask first for the 39.
27 is for sure everywhere.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2011, 08:01:45 pm by fredjeang »
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Stefan.Steib

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #24 on: December 28, 2011, 05:52:25 am »

This is the beauty of the Fogra Workflow whitepaper. Responsibilty is given to those who need to take it. You do not have to care about people who are not calibrated.
It´s  not your Business !  See about media neutral workflow.
The hasslefree standard should be either the original file with a camera color space calibration icc tagged
(best! but should be used only if you know that the recipients of your file will handle this correctly!!!! Check it - better double check it and get written approval ! )
2nd best solution is RGB converted to ECI RGB v2.icc (always tagged) as a working space.
NEVER EVER convert to CMYK if not forced to - leave this to the Litho of the dedicated Print house. It´s their job and their responsibilty !
If you do not know exactly what you are doing, which rendering intents to use and how to deal with dedicated custom colors or special needs in the conversion:
KEEP YOUR FINGERS OFF !
And lastly: communicate all these steps to your customer, send them the Whitepaper, tag it to the job if you are unsure and  keep this as a standard.

Greetings from Munich
Stefan
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lowep

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #25 on: December 28, 2011, 10:32:20 am »

For me every trip to a new printer is a roll of the dice. I often run into the problem that 16-bit RGB TIFF images I have worked on until they look very fine on my carefully calibrated monitor look for example much too dark or washed out after they have gone through the printers pre-press pipeline that fortunately can often be caught and corrected before the press starts rolling. This is partly a problem of me not knowing WTF I should be doing and partly printers also not knowing what they should be doing, so have found knowing who is doing what to your files can be important and so is communication.

When in doubt I deliver sRGB files that reduces the latitude for the printer to screw up that can happen not only because of lack of professional expertise but also due to the op being overloaded with other work, tight deadlines, the real expert taking a day off, or a lot of other reasons than I cannot think of right now. Same goes for me.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2011, 10:37:49 am by lowep »
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Rob C

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #26 on: December 28, 2011, 01:55:54 pm »

The fact is I've had far less problems supplying clients with digital images than I ever had when supplying transparencies. I'd far rather be responsible for making and supplying the corrected and finalised files than simply handing over a transparency and hoping for the best. Thankfully my clients tend to know their stuff.I'll typically supply unsharpened 16bit 300ppi Adobe RGB Tiff files. The one thing I will never do is convert to CMYK, it's not my job.





True, Keith, but as long as the transparency looked correct on a professional lightbox, the responsibility was that of the next step in the production chain.

The nighmares, for me, were when I was taking a job the whole way through print: then, my own experience in photography simply wasn't enough for me to argue successfully with the friggin' printers who, despite beautiful, client-signed machine proof prints, never equalled that in the actual runs.

Some other guy will always find a way to screw you.

Rob C

PdF

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #27 on: December 28, 2011, 02:09:53 pm »


I'll typically supply unsharpened 16bit 300ppi Adobe RGB Tiff files. The one thing I will never do is convert to CMYK, it's not my job.



I totally agree. But with experience, I deliver my files in RGB 8 bit, with a "good" sharpening, carried out in FINAL PHASE. The files delivered without sharpening are too often very badly treated by the printers, which use them without any other intervention than transfer in CMYK !!!

I do keep my images in 16bit without any enhancement or sharpening. They then remain fully available for another postproduction process.

Customers grumble when sending the 16bit, very heavy to transmit and manipulate. If there is no more essential intervention, the 8bit seems sufficient to me. Although, in principle, nothing beats a good old 16bit.

PdF

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Martin Ranger

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #28 on: December 28, 2011, 02:29:09 pm »

It all depends on the magazine you are dealing with. I have had very bad experiences with sending anything other than 8bit sRGB files. sRGB looks at least decent in print if the graphic designer has no clue what she or he are doing, larger color spaces will look washed out unless they have been converted properly. The same goes for 16bit. Granted I have only dealt with small publications, so the bigger magazines might be better with this, but make sure they know what they are doing before you send them anything other than 8bit sRGB files.

Funny aside: I once ftp'ed an Adobe98 16 bit tiff as specified in the magazine guidlines only to get a call from their designer asking me email her a jpeg like everyone else.
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Guy Mancuso

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #29 on: December 29, 2011, 05:17:28 pm »

I read it as Guy being tongue in cheek.


Yes but lets remember what invaribly mostly happens it goes to print looks like crap in print and it aint the printer the client will complain to it's US. But seriously I did buy a MF system for a reason no question about that. Guy
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Stefan.Steib

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #30 on: December 29, 2011, 05:20:15 pm »

BC

This is a song that all the people in the business have sung a lot of years. You are absolutely correct in all what you say.
But the whitepapers have changed something here at least in Germany and as much as I know in most of Europe.
The reason is because of responsibility - and - if something goes wrong and somebody did not comply with the standard
who will have to cover the costs. This works ! The Customer giveth and the Customers takes it - so true - and they sue you !
In case of a large campaign and several hundred of thousands or even millions € of ad costs the word "partial refund" gets a quite different sound
to the agency , the litho or the printhouse which cannot cover their backs in this chain.
This paper is the base for the court to speak who has to pay when all else fails.
Believe me ALL the lithos and printhouses have a quality assurance manager who can pray this paper backwards and forwards like a Muezin sings the Koran.
It´s their Life insurance.

Greetings from Munich
Stefan
Who has worked as a Colormanagement consultant for several years.............. :)
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lowep

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #31 on: December 30, 2011, 04:50:08 am »

Stefan,

Thanks for the links.

When we deliver to Europe, just like in America or Asia, I find file size, type, etc. to be somewhat all over the place.

Most countries have standards, the AP in London probably had the best and easiest to understand standard, but when it comes to delivery it's all client based.

We rarely get questions about still delivery, though every now and then we have a request that is something like "we want a 350 dpi (ppi) file at 200 inches tall uninterpolated.

We usually say fine, ship a file and let it go.  It prints, people are happy, life goes on.

The biggest issue I find is colorspace.  Almost everyone asks for adobe 98, but have their Photoshop or printer Rips set for something else that assigns a profile and then the images go flat.

Or they view the images in some other proprietary program and nobody knows what the results will look like.

What concerns me most is how the clients preview our images.  Most have their apple monitors set out of the box with somewhere around 2.0 or 2.2 gamma and are very blue.

Though we calibrate everything, (actually spend too much time calibrating everything), I always run an image past a standard bone stock I-mac to get a look at what the client sees and usually adjust for that.

Once it's ready for press, web, pad etc., we give different options.

I still hold by the theory that a jpeg 10 will reproduce as well as any tiff, or psd, but jpeg is somewhat the dirty word in image delivery land.

The same holds true for video.  The standard 90% of our clients request is prorezz 422, though a properly transcoded h264 will perceptually look exactly the same and the file sizes drop to one tenth the size shipping a h264 vs a pro rezz.

A year ago we had a large project that was on an extreme rush with a great deal of processing and post production.  The client wanted layered psds which upped the file sizes dramatically.

The good thing with this client is they were will to go through a series of hard proofs and send them to us so we could adjust colorspace and imagery to match their system.

The downside was we pushed over 500 gigs of final still images through ftp delivery.  At the time it was fast as in our Santa Monica studio we have fiber optics, though lately our connection has been slowing down.

But in the process of this job, delivering images from the retouch team, back to us and back to the client, with rounds of corrections we probably pushed over one and a half to two terabytes of data through the web.

Kinda cool, but somewhat amazing.

The most difficult part is asset management and keeping up with it.  

But in my view the only correct file delivery is what the client requests.  

IMO

BC


Better than spinach :)
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fredjeang

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #32 on: December 30, 2011, 06:20:21 am »

Could it be that once for a while we would end with WW standarts and simplified procedures.

It's completly ironic to see that we are supposed to be in a global economy-exchanges and nothing in this image industry is globalized, standardized (there are zillions of them) and simplified.

Yeah, the wild west...but really really wild!



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PdF

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #33 on: December 30, 2011, 01:03:10 pm »

<<But in my view the only correct file delivery is what the client requests.
IMO
BC>>

Unfortunately, even today, when asked for some (many) clients what type of file they want, the answer is often (and only): 300dpi.

That's it!

PdF


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Peter Devos

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #34 on: December 30, 2011, 02:13:26 pm »

Sometimes they even know it must be cmyk...... luckely there are good PDF standards for people using pictures in ads and pre-press :-)
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Schewe

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #35 on: December 30, 2011, 05:39:29 pm »

Once again, we can read and disseminate all the proper white papers on the planet, but the only real, sure fire way to deliver what a client requests is to deliver what a client requests.

You give them what they want or give them what they need? Big difference...too many photographers try to give clients what the clients think they want only to find out the client doesn't have a clue about what they want.

An educated photographer (maybe somebody who has read a white paper or even written it) will listen carefully to a client and determine for themselves what the client needs. Designers and art directors aren't always the most technically gifted people so you need to have certain knowledge about their needs, not just their wants.
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fredjeang

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #36 on: December 30, 2011, 06:51:19 pm »

You give them what they want or give them what they need? Big difference...too many photographers try to give clients what the clients think they want only to find out the client doesn't have a clue about what they want.

An educated photographer (maybe somebody who has read a white paper or even written it) will listen carefully to a client and determine for themselves what the client needs. Designers and art directors aren't always the most technically gifted people so you need to have certain knowledge about their needs, not just their wants.

Jeff, some years ago while I was working in an ad agency, they had a big car client for japan wich name I can't reveal. Well, Tokyo would send regularly 72ppp images for printings! We went crazy but had in the end to do it with this material. Designers and printers did wonders. The company couldn't care less about the fact that obviously there was a mistake involved in the chain, if we didn't resolve, we'd loose the contract. Other times it was ok but you never knew what would show-up. Of course, the photographic team that shooted the campaign delivered the files properly, but they go through a lot of different hands in commercial. If people are competent or not it's a bet. They generally are competent but not always. So really, to my experience, being professional in commercial (I insist on this commercial area) is not specially providing the correct or ideal material, wich is important, but much more resolving all sort of issues with whatever material.
And doing it fast. People rarely hire you to educate them, specially the AD wich egos are generally bigger than any dictators in active service and very sensitive if a lack of knowledge would be revealed. like in politics, a great dosis of diplomacy is a plus.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2011, 06:54:49 pm by fredjeang »
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David Eichler

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #37 on: January 03, 2012, 10:55:20 pm »

Jeff, some years ago while I was working in an ad agency, they had a big car client for japan wich name I can't reveal. Well, Tokyo would send regularly 72ppp images for printings! We went crazy but had in the end to do it with this material. Designers and printers did wonders. The company couldn't care less about the fact that obviously there was a mistake involved in the chain, if we didn't resolve, we'd loose the contract. Other times it was ok but you never knew what would show-up. Of course, the photographic team that shooted the campaign delivered the files properly, but they go through a lot of different hands in commercial. If people are competent or not it's a bet. They generally are competent but not always. So really, to my experience, being professional in commercial (I insist on this commercial area) is not specially providing the correct or ideal material, wich is important, but much more resolving all sort of issues with whatever material.
And doing it fast. People rarely hire you to educate them, specially the AD wich egos are generally bigger than any dictators in active service and very sensitive if a lack of knowledge would be revealed. like in politics, a great dosis of diplomacy is a plus.

Amazing story. I would think that, for this kind of advertising, maximum resolution and tonal range would be preferred, unless, perhaps, the images were more evocative scenic shots, rather than shots that emphasized the details of the product.  And, how hard can it be to get a major manufacturer to deliver a high-resolution file, unless, perhaps, there simply was no access to a high-resolution file?
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bcooter

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #38 on: January 04, 2012, 01:17:00 am »

You give them what they want or give them what they need? Big difference...too many photographers .....snip
An educated photographer .....snip

It wouldn't be good business not to cover all the bases.

We have a good system that works easily for clients and their respective suppliers.

Each project has a download page with links to various packets such as 1. client requested finals, 2. alternative final images in rgb, cmyk and web use (all sharpened with the final output in mind), with an icon for each packet that downloads through a zip to a folder.

It's really just a touch and download process and what they chose to use or don't is up to them.

I've gone the route of explaining what "I" think is right and once again we do cover the project, but people are going to do what people are going to do.

Actually, it's better to offer alternatives than start shipping pdfs of white pages of "expert" opinion because they rarely go noticed and honestly I've never met more than two clients that required the same exact delivery.

Some of this is because today, unlike a decade ago, a creative group rarely knows exactly where the media will be played.  If it scores well in testing, or is a hit, then it can go from standard print to outdoor, in-store, bus cards, web, magazine print, etc. etc., so that's why we deliver so many variations.

It's better to get the heavy lifting done in the front end than the back and anything is better than allowing a project to become contentious.

I could write a book on some of the requests, mostly from contracted pre press houses and you can respond in two ways, do what they ask, do what you want or actually you can respond in a third way and that is cover all the alternatives.

I chose the third way and keep it positive.

imo

BC


« Last Edit: January 04, 2012, 01:18:31 am by bcooter »
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David Eichler

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Re: Magazine Reproduction/Image-File Size
« Reply #39 on: January 04, 2012, 03:35:53 am »

It wouldn't be good business not to cover all the bases.

We have a good system that works easily for clients and their respective suppliers.

Each project has a download page with links to various packets such as 1. client requested finals, 2. alternative final images in rgb, cmyk and web use (all sharpened with the final output in mind), with an icon for each packet that downloads through a zip to a folder.

It's really just a touch and download process and what they chose to use or don't is up to them.

I've gone the route of explaining what "I" think is right and once again we do cover the project, but people are going to do what people are going to do.

Actually, it's better to offer alternatives than start shipping pdfs of white pages of "expert" opinion because they rarely go noticed and honestly I've never met more than two clients that required the same exact delivery.

Some of this is because today, unlike a decade ago, a creative group rarely knows exactly where the media will be played.  If it scores well in testing, or is a hit, then it can go from standard print to outdoor, in-store, bus cards, web, magazine print, etc. etc., so that's why we deliver so many variations.

It's better to get the heavy lifting done in the front end than the back and anything is better than allowing a project to become contentious.

I could write a book on some of the requests, mostly from contracted pre press houses and you can respond in two ways, do what they ask, do what you want or actually you can respond in a third way and that is cover all the alternatives.

I chose the third way and keep it positive.

imo

BC




Do you mean that you know exactly what the alternatives will be when you make the delivery? If not, I don't see how you can deliver what you say you deliver: cmyk, output sharpened, Web sized, etc. In my case, I may have to deliver images not knowing exactly the final display size or medium, hence some additional final processing will need to be done by me, or a printer or designer, once the display parameters are determined. Thus the delivery of full-size, non-output sharpened Tiffs.



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