articles/Media/proofbeyondreasonabledoubt-page11

Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing - part 11 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2008

RIPs

There are many RIP solutions around, some much less impressive than others. If the evidence of advertisements provided with contract proofs to Professional Imagemaker are anything to go by, the GMG seems to reign. Although GMG provide RIPs for Epson, Canon and HP wide-format printers, we see mainly Epson-based proofs. Most of the RIP suppliers also provide a proof verification module, frequently as an add-on.

The industry is used to selling into the press market and prices will seem high to photographic sole-operators; this is the difference between controlling a desktop inkjet and an £8 million press!

While the GMG RIP seems to rule the roost in the proofing market an effective and far less expensive RIP is available from ColorBurst. They make strong claims for their colour precision as demonstrated by this graph of a number of Epson printers, tested at the PMA shootout.

Some things have not changed! You still need an accurate, controlled viewing environment for assessing proofs. D50 is the standard viewing colour temperature in the print industry (ie 5000°K) and you need a rendering index of at least 95 to comply with ISO standards. Perversely, the most common screen set-up for photographers is D65 with a gamma of 2.2. An accurate screen is as important as your viewing booth and instrumental screen calibration is essential.

OVERALL

The improvements in the accuracy of the proofing process and its relative ease of use are quite outstanding over the five years since we last looked at the topic. This is almost exclusively due to the progress that has been made in inkjet technology in providing a high gamut, stable output onto well-controlled paper stock. In a well-managed environment the photographer should never get a shock when they open the publication they have supplied - sadly they still do on occasion, but that is not the fault of the proofing workflow!

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• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 2
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 3
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 4
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 5
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 6
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 7
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 8
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing - proofing page 9
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 10
  
• Proof Beyond Reasonable Doubt - proofing page 11
  

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