Hello,
Very interesting post. There are a few things I would like to ask
about, however.
Andre Schützenhofer wrote:
We run a device independent workflow in reproduction
since a couple
of years now and noticed large increasement of quality and
efficiency.
Are you a print house? Great that you have been able to implement such
a workflow since a couple of yearas ago. What percentage of your
clients would you estimate give you RGB PDF/X-3 documents? Or in the
case that you are a prepress house, what percentage of printhouses ask
you for RGB PDF/X-3 documents?
From this viewpoint, in a sense it does not really
matter which kind
of colorspaces are in PDFX3 - we only have to take care of the
right
choice in correct rendering to the output intent.
This sounds too easy to be possible, but in fact
today's workflow-tools
are sophisticated enough to allow this on a high
professional level.
Are you saying that you are using some application that makes on-the-fly
decisions about whether to use a RelCol or Perceptual trasnfomation
depending on the image? If you don't mind divulging secrets, I would be
very interested to know.
PDFX3 gives us all options - completely CMYK or
completely RGB or
completely mixed, preferably device independent. No reason to be
scared.
I definitely agree - we currently set up CMYK PDF/X-3 workflows and it
works very well.
The process of decision works simple: if there is no
profile attached
or obviously a wrong one, we do not assume that the creator of this
file
really expects that the outcome will be exactly like
anything he saw
on his equipment. So he will be satisfied with a pleasing look.
As you mention, when an image comes in with an incorrect profile or no
profile, a decision must be made using the monitor output as to which
profile to assign - and there are not so many choices as it may seem at
first (usually three or 4 at most) But, it is not so easy to know what
is pleasing. If you are fotunate and have images with known colors or
people in them, for example the decision is usually much easier but this
is often not the case. Ex. Images from art books (of course with an
abstract painting just about anything could be "pleasing" or not
"pleasing"), fashion shots - many times the photographer is looking for
a mood depending upon the type of clothes the advertising is aimed at
(greenish skintones, or for the younger generation, very dark images
which have almost no shadow detail). Assigning a profile with a 1.8
gama, for instance, looks much more "pleasing", but is incorrect.
Furniture - the wood tones change greatly depending upon whether sRGB or
Adobe RGB is assigned.
We never had real problems from that with proofed or
printed data,
because in the mind of them only the proof shows what they will get -
and that >is what we give them.
You have not had problems with your proof being substantially different
from some other place the client may have gone before or after your
site?
Can you explain, also, what security measures you employ with RGB images
when the results are not what the client expected?
Regards.
Darrian Young