I have a question that has been bothering me about the the gray balance not being set to traditional standards.

I can understand the concept that the profile will make the yellow appropriate to what the press is actually printing, but what happens when you get a job on a press that has been imposed with files from a number of different suppliers. We work with a lot of magazines, and many of the advertising pages are supplied pdf files that are sent straight to the printer (ie we do not do the colour work on them). If an imposition contains some pages that have been set using traditional gray balance (eg 75 65 65 90 etc) and some pages that have been done using a profile such as the ISO web coated that uses a very different gray balance, with a lot less yellow, then how is the printer meant to handle balancing two very different gray balances in the same sheet? If the case is that print does have a lot more yellow in the shadow, and therefore less in the profile (which has been the case in all the press profiles that I have built), this obviously isn't a new thing since the advent of colour management, so why are our traditional gray balances suddenly seen as being wrong? This may not be a problem with ISO or SWOP profiles that have GCR and aren't really relying on CMY to make neutrals, but what about when the idea of tailor making your own profiles to suit your press really takes off, and different separations and black generations get used? Is there perhaps a case for a gray balanced CMYK 'working space' like there is in RGB? (ie work is done in this space and then converted to the appropriate press space). This would probably cause less arguments with scanner operators. Lets face it, the ideal RGB workflow is still not a workable reality for a lot of pre-press.

Also, there was a comment earlier that you don't want to set your scan range in RGB from 0 to 255 for the same reason that you would not set it to 0 to 100 for CMYK. I'm just wondering if this is unecessarily limiting the range of the scan. You don't actually print the RGB scan, it gets converted to a CMYK profile which would then handle what can actually be printed from that data (if that makes sense). Maybe I haven't fully thought through the logic of this, but any yays or nays would be appreciated.

Thanks for the rant
Bee

Belinda Beckinsale
Sinnott Bros Pty Ltd
85-91 O'Riordan St Alexandria NSW 2011
bbeckinsale@sinnottbros.com.au
Ph (02) 93539527