Advertisments

Feature

Publish It Right.com

Premier column! This month: GETTING THE RIGHT STUFF FROM YOUR PRINTER. It's not easy to capture the rich, vibrant color of original artwork, but utilizing the latest printing technology-and lots of patience-can achieve magical results.

by Hallie Love

The publishers at Booksmythe had the right stuff for a classic Jewish children's book--a humorous, heart-warming story by the Jewish Bruegel /Grandma Moses, Renate Dollinger, told in Grandma's warm Yiddish idiom, about a rabbi in the shtetl who is so holy that he flies. Dollinger, a highly acclaimed Jewish expressionist painter, produced paintings of playful magic realism in the manner of Chagall to be used as illustrations.

The paintings are packed with people and action that captures the magic that is part of daily life. Executed in rich gouache colors and highlighted with thick black lines, they were so vibrant they nearly vibrated off the paper. Booksmythe knew it was time to wow the masses with knock-your-socks-off color. Time to go to press. NOT!

"The printing companies we showed it to told us to lower our expectations because the colors in the pictures would not be so bright when printed," explains Russell Dollinger, Ph.D. of Booksmythe. "And they were right. First time from Hong Kong it came back flat and boring. The printers said, 'we can't print these neon colors.' I said, 'Yes you can and here's how we're gonna do it.'"

Independent Publisher Online (IPO) interviewed Russ Dollinger (RD) to get the low-down on the complexities of achieving great color reproduction.

IPO: What exactly was the problem with getting the color quality you needed?

RD: The puzzle that we had to solve was how to convert those "neon" colors that were originally in gouache (a mix of watercolor and acrylic paints) into the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) that are used in standard offset printing and still have exciting colors.

IPO: Is there an answer?

RD: The answer to the puzzle lies in what is called "Color Management." The technology has actually been around for a few years and is incorporated into most programs (e.g. Quark, Pagemaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.); however, not many people use it and many traditional printing companies know little about it. You literally have to fight with the printers, and even educate them, to get it done.

IPO: Why isn't the existing technology incorporated?

RD:One of the reasons that it is seldom used may be that it is hard to understand how it is implemented in the various programs, and, if you don't do it correctly, it doesn't work at all!

IPO: Go ahead and get technical.

RD: The core of the problem is that the gamut of colors that we can see is substantially greater than what can be printed on an offset press. The exciting, vibrant colors that artists create on canvas, paper, or even a computer screen is from a larger palette of colors than the CMYK palette. Those "neon" colors are "out-of-gamut." So what happens to those lovely colors when you take it the local printer? They get compressed into the CMYK range of colors and they look flat! The main culprit is the "engines" that convert colors into the CMYK range. There are different formulas that exist for the conversion (e.g. Apple ColorSync, Heidelberg, Adobe Photoshop) but ultimately the color must be compressed into the printable CMYK range. The problem is that the compressed colors that are selected are closer together and don't look as different as the original colors do. In other words, the colors don't look exciting or vivid anymore. So what do you do? You can't print it if you don't compress it, and if you do it gets BORING.

IPO: What are the solutions?

RD: The standard solution is to fly by the seat-of-the-pants. Usually a file is created, a color proof of some flavor is made, and that, and perhaps another original picture, is taken to the printer. The hopeful designer tells the pressman to "match" the colors as close as possible by adjusting the amount of cyan, magenta, yellow, or black. A very good printer can get close provided that the file is okay and that colors are in the printable range of colors. But surprises in color are frequent, vary from press to press, company to company, and job to job. It's a hit or miss thing and everyone has numerous horror stories to tell.

IPO: What did you do to solve the problem?

RD: First we identified the key to color management, or predictable color, is the color profile of the device. Which device? Every device. The scanner, monitor, digital printer, and the offset press handle color somewhat differently and each changes the final result.

IPO: Walk us through the steps of color management.

RD: It is possible to define every single color that we can see--and a lot that we can't--mathematically. And it is possible to measure exactly how each device changes that absolute color. So, each device has its own "profile" for how it changes the color, and in a color-managed system, each piece of equipment is calibrated to compensate for the way that it changes the color. Unfortunately, most people don't calibrate their eyes-that comes with experience. Other than your eyes, there are different programs to calibrate and create profiles for the various types of devices. Most computers come with software to calibrate the monitor. High-end scanners come with a target to scan and software to create a profile. Many of the digital printers available now include a method for calibration. Software and targets also exist for the offset press; however, they are not as common and are substantially more expensive. High-end digital printers even come with installed ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles that can imitate offset press profiles. In other words, you can set your digital printer to print in a way that imitates the offset press that you are going to print on later. But, I say again, "The profile is the key." If you have good profiles, a calibrated system, and you set the programs correctly, you will get great results. If, however, any of these factors are flawed, then you will get "whatever." It might be good. It might not.

IPO: So you can get consistent color using profiles. Is that the same as "neon" color?

RD: We were able to obtain predictable color--using color management techniques one of the pictures from the The Rabbi Who Flew was printed with very similar results in Hong Kong on very white, 100# dull-gloss paper, gang-printed on a "postcard" press in Los Angeles with Carolina card stock, and gang-printed on a different Los Angeles press with an 80# gloss white "house" sheet. The colors weren't exactly the same but they were very close. But predictable color is not necessarily neon. In other words, the color profiling system doesn't beef up the color--the colors are still compressed and flat.

IPO: What next?

RD: The simple answer: get the profile for the press on which the job will be printed. Unfortunately, the software to generate a good profile for an offset press is expensive. The target file will have thousands of swatches of known CMYK percentage. The printing company will take the file and print it on the designated press and paper to be used later. Then each of the swatches is measured with a densitometer and the results are put into the calibrating software. The profile that is created is specific for that press with that paper. It creates a curve describing the way that each of the CMYK colors behaves on that press/paper combination in a range from 0-100% density. If your printing company doesn't have that software, then it is still effective to have your printing company print a range of densities for each of the CMYK inks and then measure them with a densitometer (e.g. 2%, 5%, 10% ... 100%). The resulting numbers can be put into Photoshop and can be saved as a profile. The profile isn't as good as one generated by measuring thousands of swatches, but it works. IPO: Explain how it's done.

RD: The profile--perfect or make-do--can be loaded into Adobe Photoshop, and Photoshop can be set to view the picture as it will print later. Then, using all the magic that Photoshop and a good designer can muster, one can adjust the color (with CMYK preview ON) to be more like the original than the color chosen by the compression engine. It won't be perfect. Some colors simply cannot be converted; however, it is not too difficult to come up with a set of colors that are close to the original, exciting, and printable. The trick is to convert the colors while watching the way that it is going to print, and you can only do that if you have the right profile. If you carefully adjust the colors to match the original but have a bad profile, it will not print well. Thus it is very important to get the profile as close as possible. Then, if your digital printer allows, you can print out color prints with the profile of the offset press loaded. Imation even offers special software for some of the high-end digital printers to allow ink-jet matchprints to be made. Those pictures can be used as color proofs to help the pressman see what it will print like; however, he shouldn't have to touch it if everything is set correctly. If the colors don't match, the software (e.g. Photoshop, Quark, etc.) was not set correctly when the film was made. How close the final result is will depend on whether everything is calibrated, profiles are correct, and software is set correctly.

IPO: Is this the procedure you used for The Rabbi Who Flew?

RD: Yes, the reason this book looks so bright is I adjusted the colors. When I first sent the pictures to Hong Kong I had them print out colors and measured density and made adjustments in PhotoShop. In other words I set up the profile for their press in Hong Kong. The results are that it came out right. It's the reason this book looks so bright when many other books seem so flat. Ultimately, we succeeded!

IPO: Do you have any words of encouragement?

RD: It actually sounds more complicated than it is. The bottom line is that it is possible to print exciting, vibrant colors with predictable results with the technology that exists now. Over the next few years, as software continues to improve, color management will become more pervasive, important, and automatic. And so far, three separate printing companies have been able to print those "neon" colors!

- - - - - - - - - -

The Rabbi Who Flew: A Grandma Hanne Sheyne Story, 2000, 48p., Booksmythe,17216 Saticoy St., #360, Van Nuys, CA 91406, $18 (ISBN 0-945585-20-9) for ages 5-8 by Renate Dollinger is available from Booksmythe directly or from Ingram and from Baker and Taylor. The text was set using the Tiepolo family of fonts. This book was printed and bound in Hong Kong by Pacific Rim International Printing on 100# Neo Art gloss stock and case-bound with a smythe-sewn, hardcover library binding.

---