Creating a proof when using a digital workflow is now straightforward. The problems lie with choosing the system that is best for you. By Rod Hayes.

Proofing has been subject to endless debate but the issues have now largely been resolved, for in the main some form of inkjet system can deal with most proofing requirements.

There is of course good business being made around the fringes with proprietary systems such as the Phaser/Tektronic system from Xerox, integrated digital Cromalin-based solutions from DuPont and the Kodak Matchprint family.

Admittedly when ctp first arrived on the scene the problems of creating a plate took precedence over how to create a proof with which one could confidently work, and this hampered the take up of ctp, but now if there are any real problems left they are ones of choice.

One debate closes, another opens. Now the debate concerns not the creation of the proof, but how best to produce identical versions remotely.

There is no particular difficulty with carrying out such a task; it is more a case of being certain that what has been reproduced remotely is identical to the original.

Colour management, calibration and consistency have all improved by leaps and bounds and there can be no question that remote proofing is not only feasible but very practical.

Additional refinement

An additional refinement of the problem is how to integrate the printer into the workflow. This is not a trivial issue for often the creative studio is working closely with the print buyer rather than the printer, and in more cases than is wise the printer is only brought in when the job is ready to go to press.

The print buyer may well have sought out his mandatory three quotes when the job was conceived, but more likely than not, he will only have brought the printer into the loop at the time of commissioning an order.

The effect of this quite common practice is that the printer becomes dictated to by the customer on what form a proof should take, whether remotely or conventionally.

Only recently have some printers got off their backsides and started to bring design and creation into their sphere of expertise, prompting print buyers from the beginning of a job's life to be more considerate of the printer, or at least the type of press best suited for the job.

While it could be argued that the print run is the most important element in the whole production cycle and so should be involved at an early stage, the truth is that what has developed is virtually the opposite.

The printer has to do what Sir says or otherwise he does not get the job. The corollary is also true, if a printer can demonstrate a willingness to respond to a customer's way of working he gets the job, and what is more keeps it.

Two examples will suffice to establish this point.

Meat and drink

CMCS at Dartford Kent, has specialised for many years in producing the printed support material for the music industry. CD and DVD covers and related promotional print, texts and 12 inch record sleeves are meat and drink to CMCS.

So much so it is a front line producer for most of the big names such as EMI and Sony. Adam Teskey, production director says: "We were one of the very earliest printers to take up ctp and we continuously invest in upgrading our workflow with the latest technological developments, but I think it is fair to say that we must respond to the way our customer wants his proofs, rather than us establishing our own way of doing things.

Many of his major customers such as EMI now work out of The Netherlands so remote proofing is a very relevant issue for CMCS. He goes on to explain that EMI has its own standards and proofing targets and as a result cross calibration is comparatively straightforward, with PDF being the preferred data transfer method.

Early days

Mr Teskey says: "In the early days, it took a good deal of effort to get things right. The problems were more ones of interpretation with a feeling on our part that the colour values established were a little warmer than we perhaps were used to.

"But now the problems of proofing remotely are largely behind us and it is a long time since we last had a problem related to proofing with EMI."

This suggests that the customer may be the best person to dictate how the proof and of course how the job should look, but it has the potential of leading to a fragmentation of standards. If a customer can dictate the method of proofing this can of course force a printer to have available a variety of different solutions.

Mr Teskey observes: "We have hundreds of individual customers each with their own labels, and in many cases they are an independent subsidiary of one of the main players, but they still often want a conventional proof which can involve motorbikes or some other form of delivery."

Small specialist music producers are probably similar to many publishers and print buyers, so investing in remote proofing can take up funds greater than the value or cost of shipping around printed out proofs.

The evidence for this lies in the take up and general acceptance of large format inkjet proofing. Most printers find that their Epson, HP or Sherpa is more than adequate for their needs.

But the second example of a customer's need leading the way as being a good thing, can be seen in a recent proofing solution installed by Wyndeham Heron, of Maldon, Essex.

It recently won a major contract to produce the British Medical Journal because it was able to implement a soft proofing workflow that was ideal for both publisher and printer.

Completely automated

John Hernden, Wyndeham, divisional group sales manager, says: "The publisher set a turnround time of 15 minutes but the solution we set up has completely automated the process of routing the file from the sender to the proofing device and so we have been able to shave the time down to six minutes end to end."

This has been done using Vio to manage the flow of proofs into BMJ from Maldon. To trigger the process, BMJ staff have to drag and drop any of the job files required into a Vio icon on their desk top.

This then starts a delivery process into an Apogee workflow at Heron, which can send a file back to generate a hard copy proof at the publisher or else be available for viewing via a web browser.

This is all very fine where artwork origination has been completed, scans done and separations carried out to specific standards. It cannot be all that difficult from this stage to remotely establish that the printer, provided he runs to a target density and has had the press fingerprint fed back to the originator, can run the job.

Essence of debate

The essence of the debate on proofing now in a great many situations is that what is called a proof is not always a failsafe device to make sure that the final job will be within an acceptable colour range, but a method of ensuring there are no glaring mistakes of default or missing files.

The systems we have now in place achieve this, but desktop publishing has now brought forward a much more complex problem, the use of images taken by a digital camera, a device which bypasses scanning.

The effective use of a digital camera can slash enormous amounts of time out of a production cycle, particularly in catalogue production, but the fact that viewing any images taken with a digital camera is subject to the vagaries of the printing out device, has meant its take up within the graphic arts has been a good deal slower than one might have expected.

David Lawless thinks he has found the answer and the growing success of his Leeds business Anorax Imaging suggests he is on the right track. He says: "Unless the person taking the images with a digital camera thinks like a scanner operator, many of the benefits gained by reducing or even eliminating retouching out of the production cycle is lost."

Considerable sense

This makes considerable sense, for a scanner operator is well tuned to the concepts of calibration and is continually thinking of the final output and how to achieve the best results.

A conventional photographer takes a trannie and then after processing, views it using a powerfully backlit light source. A scanner operator then has to reinterpret this and as a result the image may be subject to half a dozen retouches, each costing up to ?00.

And what is Mr Lawless's answer to this problem? Control all of the factors that influence every aspect of the shot from the camera itself, the lighting used and its positioning, the monitor used for initial assessment and finally to the output device.

Target cards are an integral part of the shoot, calibration is a matter of course with full CIE Lab references. Monaco Software is used throughout to achieve a common standard and Gretag MacBeth Spectrolino spectrophotometers are used to read the output.

At all points any element capable of affecting the final output is given a defined numeric value and recorded to CD.

Once a benchmark is established, it is straightforward to measure how much an image differs from the norm and being digital can be rectified almost immediately.

Initial viewing

Initial viewing of an image is on a CRT monitor that has been calibrated to a set of control standards and is kept in a monitored light environment.

Mr Lawless stresses: "The monitor must be the first thing to be calibrated. Don't do this and everything else that follows is a waste of time."

He adds that the greatest value in using a camera operator with scanning experience is that he is alert to the potential hazards of moire and possible screen clashes from the pixel array in the camera.

"At Anorax, we are almost proofing the job as it is being photographed and this is of immense value when producing catalogue work particularly for gravure."

His experience suggests why the proofing dilemma has, to a very large degree, been resolved in favour of inkjet: "We use an Agfa Grand Sherpa for output and this can be configured to reproduce a print as if it were on a gravure press or any other press for that matter. It is quite fair to say that we can take out of production as much as six sets of proofs."

Proofs are of course still required and being generated, but the Lawless approach is surely the way of the future.