Hi All,
Has anyone hired a color consultant for color workflow and color profile set up? I work for my family's printing company in Seattle, WA. We offer fine art, photo, and large format printing services on Epson Stylus Pro Printers (we have GS6000s and SP9900s and in the fall when Epson releases the new SureColor printer that is 64" wide and has white ink and metallic ink in the printer we will be buying two of those printers). We do a lot of printing where I look at the color and its what I would describe as okay or close, but not really a "perfect match".
No such thing as a perfect match. Depends on media, ink, profile quality and the viewing conditions.....viewing conditions is probably the most overlooked aspect of color matching but it's extremely important.
I've spent hundreds of hours trying to understand how color management and ICC profile making works, but I still don't get the results I would expect for the effort I'm putting out.
Amount of effort rarely equates to the quality of the results.
1) What are the proper instructions to provide to my customers when it comes to file preparation for printing? Does it change between having people provide files for business graphics (like wall wraps or pop signs) and photo/fine art printing? What types of guidelines do other printers provide to their customers as to file prep?
File prep can be different for proofing, business graphics and fine art/photo printing. Principals are the same but it's more about matching up color spaces with the type of media used.
2) Proper Color Management workflows using the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, acrobat). - What I mean by this is what should my color settings be in each of the programs, when I get a file what color checks should I do, how should I save files (embed color profiles or not etc...), what file formats should I be using/are best for printing (tiff, Jpeg, PDF, etc)?
To answer that question, it would take a small book...or at least a pamphlet.
I would say GENERALLY that your color management polices should be synced and match across the entire Creative Suite.....but these color management settings can be different depending on the type of work. IOW, color management settings/polices should follow the type of work you're doing, not the application.
3) We use the EFI Fiery XF RIP to drive our printers (I was told by an Epson employee that the Fiery RIP will give the best, most accurate color prints and I think he is right - I just need to know the proper settings to have in the RIPS "Workflows" and "Output Devices" in order to maximize my printers potentials. Does anyone have an recommendations on settings for the workflows in this RIP?
The Epson employee probably had to say that since that's what comes bundled with some of the Epson printers...and probably all that person has been exposed to. For accuracy and *consistency*, it's GMG Colorproof, hands-down. For your situation of many different printers (and likely different substrates), you should seriously consider a "central" color server product like GMG ColorServer and GMG SmartProfiler. It's a complex product but it ironically could greatly simplify your life.
Having said that, there's no reason that EFI Fiery XF shouldn't be delivering an accurate print but it can be tough wrangling a bunch of stand-alone RIPs and keeping things consistent.
4) Color Profile making in EFI Fiery XF - Any advise on how to make really accurate color profiles in this RIP?
Yes, probably hire a consultant that can REALLY show you the ins/outs of EFI.
Now to bring this all to the subject I posted this under. Since I'm asking for a lot in this post, I'd be willing to hire a professional consultant so I'd also like to know if anyone has used a color consultant before and how the results of using the consultant were. Our company hired a consultant from this list: http://www.colormanagement.com/about_us/cmg_profiles.htm and he was okay. He flew in and tired to teach our art department and myself some color concepts and then worked on profiling, but he wasn't that great. I'm not going to name him or his company on this forum because I feel that is bad taste, but if you'd like more feedback because you are planning on hiring someone from that list, feel free to PM me and I'll share my experiences and opinion with you.
Well, ahem, I'm on that list (but it wasn't me!) and, yes, consultant "quality" can certainly vary.
As a consultant, one of the biggest challenges can be getting all the information up-front on what's expected of us and being able to deliver an accurate quote. There's nothing worse than what I call "mission creep" once you've quoted a job and you arrive on site only to find out you didn't get all the information or expectations have changed.
My advice would be to tell any prospective consultant EXACTLY what you expect once the job is complete. If you expect them to write a set of "file preparation guidelines" that you can hand to a customer, tell them that up-front. If you expect to have enough knowledge under you belt to profile a new or unknown media from scratch, let them know. Be ESPECIALLY clear if you expect the consultant to simply get everything up and running for you.....or if you expect them to train you how to do that after they leave. If you want the complete "knowledge dump" then expect to pay for a much longer engagement. What can take me as a consultant to set things up vs. *properly* training a customer how to do it can take literally 2-3x longer because of the necessity of not just doing it once but possibly 2-3x to make sure you understand the process and get enough practice at it that it's going to stick after I leave. And be VERY CLEAR on how much support you expect to get once the consultant leaves. It can be chargeable or not chargeable depending on the type of support (phone, remote log-in or just email) and the length of time after the on-site visit. Typically there's a "grace" period of perhaps 14-30 days but after that don't expect free support.
Again, talk to the guys over at CHROMiX since they are local...nothing better than possibly getting a pair of eyes on-site so than can help assess your needs and hook you up with the right sort of consultant. As a disclaimer, I do sub-contract work with CHROMiX occasionally but they will tell you that I'm up-front about the types of jobs that I feel are a good fit for my skill set....and jobs that aren't a good fit. You'll find too many consultants possibly willing to take jobs outside of their core skill set and simply "wing it" once they get on-site. I'm not saying that's what happened to you, but it can happen.
Good luck,
Terry
