From: INTERNET:KAIJORG@aol.com, INTERNET:KAIJORG@aol.com
Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2000, 11:08 AM
RE: new to the list
Hi to all- I am new to this list. Another list I am on recommended this list to it's members. There was a warning that the discussions do get "spirited"!
I am a commercial photographer in Southern California. I purchased a digital camera about 10 months ago. Digital capture is now about 80-90% of my work. I have a couple of observations and questions which I would welcome comment on (I think!).
I have been providing my clients with RGB files. I have heard a number of times that photographers more and more will need to make CMYK conversions. This will give the photographer more control over his image. This may be true and I am excited about learning a new skill, but does it really make sense? I have been shooting since 1983, not making separations. Can I really become as proficient in a couple of years as the prepress people who have been providing these services for their entire careers?
I would welcome RGB as the accepted file to provide. However, as many photographers know, after their file is sent out for conversion there may come a phone call..."this photographer doesn't know what he's doing", or "digital photography isn't as good as film". A few months ago this happened to me. In order to protect myself I had to take my files to another separator and have film and a proof made. Fortunately my client believed me and has now hired another prepress house. I could have easily lost my best client. I determined that they made a quick conversion, film and a proof and presented that to the client. They didn't make the effort to match the product color (which they had) and then show the client. Why would they do this? They have a photographer and would be happy to take care of the photography also!
Prepress companies are offering photography to their clients competing with photographers. Photographers are offering digital files (RGB or CMYK) costing the prepress people income from scanning film. It will all shake out eventually. What recommendations does the rest of the industry have for photographer's to contribute to quality work and a smoother workflow for ALL of us.
Forgive me, I have rambled too much...I'll stop now.
>>>I could have easily lost my best client. I determined that they made a quick conversion, film and a proof and presented that to the client. They didn't make the effort to match the product color (which they had) and then show the client. Why would they do this? They have a photographer and would be happy to take care of the photography also!<<<
Unfortunately I have similar experiences too. This was very frequent in "the old days" when I saw printers deliberately mess up the images and blame it on my images. Of course, then we gave them trannies. Most of the time the clients could see right away that it wasn't the tranny. Now we're asked to skip the tranny and just give them digital files. Usuallywithout much chance to contact the separator. This is why I started using ICC profile based ColorManagement. If I can get the separator to print the targets for me I'm pretty much dialed in in less than an hour. If the separator won't, then I use a profile I have that works well most of the time. In any case I send the profile along with a READ ME. This way I've done all I can to ensure it goes OK.
So far so good!
From: Dan Margulis, INTERNET:76270.1033@compuserve.com
RE: Re: new to the list
Kai writes:
<<I have been providing my clients with RGB files. I have heard a number of times that photographers more and more will need to make CMYK conversions. This will give the photographer more control over his image. This may be true and I am excited about learning a new skill, but does it really make sense? I have been shooting since 1983, not making separations. >>
Many things in the industry have changed since 1983. At the moment, in the teeth of the best economy in our lifetimes, things are bad for for professional photographers. Last week TrendWatch summed up their prediction for the economy for various groups as follows:
-- Graphic Design: GOOD YEAR AHEAD
-- Ad Agencies: MODERATELY POSITIVE
-- Corporate design departments: TIGHT
-- Commercial photographers: A TOUGH YEAR FOR MANY<<Can I really become as proficient in a couple of years as the prepress people who have been providing these services for their entire careers?>>
First, most prepress people have not been converting RGB to CMYK for their entire careers; most of the time they have started in CMYK. Second, it's not so much a matter of skill as of interpretation. There is no such thing as a literal translation from RGB to CMYK. Some aesthetic decisions will inevitably be made. If you cede these decisions to somebody else you can't complain if those decisions are not the ones you would make yourself.
Third, you should be able to do a better job with your own CMYK images than anybody else, because you can set your own ground rules. All CMYK work is basically horsetrading. You decide what to improve and what to sacrifice. If you are not willing to sacrifice anything and try too hard to match the art, you'll just get a flat mess. A typical decision is to sacrifice detail in the background in favor of enhancing detail in the foreground object. A prepress person may do this to some extent, but he won't make any drastic revision to the color. If you are willing to accept such a change, you may get a much better result. But the prepress person can't read your mind--only you can decide what you are and are not willing to live without.
<<I would welcome RGB as the accepted file to provide. However, as many photographers know, after their file is sent out for conversion there may come a phone call..."this photographer doesn't know what he's doing", or "digital photography isn't as good as film". A few months ago this happened to me. In order to protect myself I had to take my files to another separator and have film and a proof made. Fortunately my client believed me and has now hired another prepress house. I could have easily lost my best client. >>
That's kinda the way life is. When the job gets screwed up there's all kinds of fingerpointing. This is why prepress people also need to know the facts of life of printing. When a job looks bad on press the printer blame the prepress company, the prepress company blames the printer, and eventually they come to an agreement that the problem was bad photography.
<<Prepress companies are offering photography to their clients competing with photographers. Photographers are offering digital files (RGB or CMYK) costing the prepress people income from scanning film. >>
That's absolutely right. The two are now head-to-head competitors. If you wish to compete with them, you can't compete on price because they will gladly cut your price in half to get the rest of the work. Nor can you compete on turnaround, because they will gladly hire college students to run their digital cameras all night long.
If you stand still and ignore them, they will bury you, because the clients like the idea of one-stop shopping and don't like the idea of the finger-pointing you describe above. They clearly prefer to deal with just one vendor, so that if anything goes wrong with the job, they know who to blame.
The advantages you have are, presumably you are better able to discuss imaging issues with your client than the prepress house is. Also, presumably you can provide better-quality photography. OTOH, if you can't provide quality prepress services to boot, that isn't much of an advantage.
From: Skip Gerwin, INTERNET:sgerwin@global2000.net
Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2000, 9:11 PM
RE: Re: new to the list
Did you tell the prepress company you were supplying RGB files that needed to be converted to cmyk and that you wanted them to match the product you supplied and that you were prepared to pay the xtra cost for color correcting your files? If so the prepress company was at fault. If you did not give them those specific instructions then thats why they did that.
KAIJORG@aol.com wrote:
> I could have easily lost my best
> client. I determined that they made a quick conversion, film and a
> proof and
> presented that to the client. They didn't make the effort to match
> the
> product color (which they had) and then show the client. Why would
> they do
> this? They have a photographer and would be happy to take care of the
> photography also!
From: INTERNET:KAIJORG@aol.com, INTERNET:KAIJORG@aol.com
Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2000, 10:10 PM
RE: Re: new to the list
sgerwin@global2000.net wrote:
Did you tell the prepress company you were supplying RGB files that needed to be converted to cmyk and that you wanted them to match the product you supplied and that you were prepared to pay the xtra cost for color correcting your files?
Yes, everything was arranged with them before I shot the job digital for the first time. They preferred to make the conversions. When I supplied them with film in the past they were given the product to match, so they have always been matching colors. After I told the separator the next job would be digital he said he didn't think it was a good idea. The quality wouldn't be there. Then he called my client and told her that digital photography would yield inferior results. So sure enough when the first proof was shown to the client it looked very bad. When I took the files to the new separator with the product I told him to match the product. It took a couple of tries but he didn't show it to the client until it was close. My client told me that she had never seen a first proof so close! What's the difference? One company doesn't want to lose $ on the seps, and the other company wants to show what a good job they can do. It worked, they now have the account.
From: Bob Smith, INTERNET:rmsmith@calpha.com
Date: Fri, Jan 21, 2000, 6:06 AM
RE: Re: new to the list
KAIJORG@aol.com wrote:
> After I told the separator the next job would
> be digital he said he didn't think it was a good idea. The quality wouldn't
> be there. Then he called my client and told her that digital photography
> would yield inferior results. So sure enough when the first proof was shown
> to the client it looked very bad.As a photographer that does his own scans and separates his own digital camera files I'd just like to add that working with digital camera files, especially from an instant capture type of digital camera, can present quite a few problems that are slightly different from simply handling an RGB scan. For instance I may have an RGB file where the individual channels look quite clean but in reality there may be low level noise that can show like crazy in a given CMYK channel. The noise may or may not be a problem, but its something you've got to be aware of. I've also seen digicam images that contain strange color anomolies that aren't typical of scanned film. These aren't really problems, but they require slightly different techniques. Anyway, if these people aren't accustomed to working with digital camera files AND go in with a negative attitude then its no surprise their output was sub par.
I'd strongly urge you to learn how to handle the color corrections and image edits yourself. You'll add considerably to your value as a service provider. Learning more about what happens to the image down the line will make you a better photogrpaher as well. You'll understand better what type of problems are easier to solve during photography as opposed to relying of fixes down the line. The reverse is also true. You'll learn not to spend thirty minutes fiddling with a set when thirty seconds in front of the computer will correct the problem. The bottom line is that your time is more efficiently used. Your clients get more bang for their buck and you gain a competetive edge.
Probably the biggest hurdle to cross in the learning process is simply that of gaining confidence in your abilities before you put them to test on a costly job. There's no substitute for experience so budget a generous amount to run out test proofs as you experiment and learn new techniques.
Ease into the real jobs by handling some simple ones first. Chances are the SB that runs your test film and proofs will quickly realize that you'll be able to help them look good so guess who they'll be recommending when people ask them about photography.
From: INTERNET:KAIJORG@aol.com, INTERNET:KAIJORG@aol.com
Date: Fri, Jan 21, 2000, 10:29 PM
RE: Re: new to the list
Dennis Dunbar wrote:
This is why I started using ICC profile based ColorManagement. If I can get
the separator to print the targets for me I'm pretty much dialed in in less than an
hour. If the separator won't, then I use a profile I have that works well most
of the time. In any case I send the profile along with a READ ME. This way
I've done all I can to ensure it goes OK.All I am doing right now is embedding Bruce RGB into my RGB files when I save
them. I have been using Knoll to calibrate my monitor.
Any recomendations on what my next step should be? Also do I send a Bruce
RGB file along with my images to the separator?As a reminder I am a digital photographer delivering RGB files. From some of
the comments I have read I will be working towards doing my own conversions
eventually.Thank's to everyone that has commented so far.
From: jacob, INTERNET:jglazer@after-image.com
Date: Sat, Jan 22, 2000, 9:51 AM
RE: Re: new to the list
First off, do yourself a favor and buy a monitor calibrator (xrite).
Second, start using Colormatch RGB space. It is closer to CMYK, though the gamut is still big-- and you will be pleased to see you CMYK files closer to what you have fallen in love with on the screen.>All I am doing right now is embedding Bruce RGB into my RGB files when I save
>them. I have been using Knoll to calibrate my monitor.
From: Andrew Rodney, INTERNET:andrew@digitaldog.net
Date: Sat, Jan 22, 2000, 11:24 AM
RE: Re: Dan-Re: new to the list
on 1/21/00 8:28 PM, KAIJORG@aol.com at KAIJORG@aol.com wrote:
> All I am doing right now is embedding Bruce RGB into my RGB files when I save
> them. I have been using Knoll to calibrate my monitor.
> Any recomendations on what my next step should be?Yes, stop using Knoll Gamma and use Adobe gamma so you can profile that display. Photoshop 5 needs to know the condition of the display and have a profile of it. You could try profiling the display after altering it with Knoll but that's not recommended. Better still, skip Adobe Gamma and get a good Colorimeter to do the job. The MC-7 for $199 (USB) does a very good job.
From: INTERNET:phaedrusd@aol.com, INTERNET:phaedrusd@aol.com
Date: Mon, Jan 24, 2000, 12:07 AM
RE: Re: new to the list
Kai asks for reccomendations on how he should be sending his files. Here's mine:
#1) As Andrew Rodney said, stop using Knoll Gamma to calibrate your monitor. The newer version, Adobe Gamma, allows you to make a profile of the current state of your monitor. (Better yet, use a hardware based calibration system, such as Xrite's DTP92 and ColorBlind's Prove It!) This Profile then gets used by the RGB setup to tell Photoshop how your monitor is responding to the color.
#2) Get, (or make) a profile of the proofer the separator uses for his "contract proof". And use this in Photoshop's CMYK setup.
#3) If working in RGB then use the CMYK preview while working on a file destined for CMYK. This way you'll be previewing the CMYK output.
#4) Don't expect the separator to do anything other than what his normal workflow is. If you're using the profile and he's not then convert to CMYK in PS using that profile and send at least that file to the separator. If his method of converting to CMYK is different than yours you won't get the color you wanted.
#5) Do your best to communicate with the separator to be sure you're all on the same page. Whenever I've been able to do this I'm much better able to get the correct setup so the files print better. (At the very least we're not looking at each other as the enemy.)
Hope this helps!
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