TIFF has green cast

P
Posted By
PermutedPress
Mar 8, 2005
Views
519
Replies
13
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Closed
Hello everyone,

I’m a Photoshop/graphics novice and I’m working on a book cover in Photoshop 6. Per the printers instructions I submitted the cover at as a 300dpi CMYK TIFF. All layers were merged before submission. The cover looked great in Photoshop but when I received the printed copy it had a green cast over the entire cover. I opened the TIFF file I submitted in "Micorsoft Office Document Imaging" only to discover it looks green there as well!

I haven’t the slightest clue where to go from here so I’m hoping someone has a suggestion. I have the option of submitting a PDF cover rather than TIFF–could that make a difference? I would just start experimenting but every cover update costs $30 for setup. 🙁 If anyone needs more information or would like to take a look at the TIFF itself please just let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Jacob

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

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H
Hecate
Mar 8, 2005
On 8 Mar 2005 14:19:11 -0800, "PermutedPress"
wrote:

Hello everyone,

I’m a Photoshop/graphics novice and I’m working on a book cover in Photoshop 6. Per the printers instructions I submitted the cover at as a 300dpi CMYK TIFF. All layers were merged before submission. The cover looked great in Photoshop but when I received the printed copy it had a green cast over the entire cover. I opened the TIFF file I submitted in "Micorsoft Office Document Imaging" only to discover it looks green there as well!

I haven’t the slightest clue where to go from here so I’m hoping someone has a suggestion. I have the option of submitting a PDF cover rather than TIFF–could that make a difference? I would just start experimenting but every cover update costs $30 for setup. 🙁 If anyone needs more information or would like to take a look at the TIFF itself please just let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Jacob

Did you soft proof it beforehand? Have you got the printer’s ICC profile to use in the soft proof? What colour management are you using? Mac or Win?



Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui
T
tg416
Mar 9, 2005
In article ,
"PermutedPress" wrote:

Hello everyone,

I’m a Photoshop/graphics novice and I’m working on a book cover in Photoshop 6. Per the printers instructions I submitted the cover at as a 300dpi CMYK TIFF. All layers were merged before submission. The cover looked great in Photoshop but when I received the printed copy it had a green cast over the entire cover. I opened the TIFF file I submitted in "Micorsoft Office Document Imaging" only to discover it looks green there as well!

I haven’t the slightest clue where to go from here so I’m hoping someone has a suggestion. I have the option of submitting a PDF cover rather than TIFF–could that make a difference? I would just start experimenting but every cover update costs $30 for setup. 🙁 If anyone needs more information or would like to take a look at the TIFF itself please just let me know.

First off, I’d lose the TIFF format altogether, and save the file out as an Encapsulated PostScript. I’ve worked in the print industry for nearly nine years, and me and my coworkers learned early on that TIFF files were strictly taboo[0]. They almost never match from monitor to press.

Secondly, you should always have a proof printed, preferably on something like a dye-sublimation printer (along with separations on celluliod if possible). Most serivce bureaus will do this for a nominal fee.

[0] With the exception of service bureaus who were too inexperienced to know any better. 😉

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T
Tacit
Mar 9, 2005
In , PermutedPress
wrote:
I’m a Photoshop/graphics novice and I’m working on a book cover in Photoshop 6. Per the printers instructions I submitted the cover at as a 300dpi CMYK TIFF. All layers were merged before submission. The cover looked great in Photoshop but when I received the printed copy it had a green cast over the entire cover. I opened the TIFF file I submitted in "Micorsoft Office Document Imaging" only to discover it looks green there as well!

It sounds like you are making several mistakes.

First, do not do the entire book cover in Photoshop. Do only the image in Photoshop, and do the text and other elements in a page layout program like Quark or InDesign, or a vector program like Illustrator. Using Photoshop for things like type is not the appropriate way to do anything intended for publication on press; even though Photoshop now offers vector type, the type can not be counted on to trap properly (if you don’t know what "trapping" means with reference to printing something on press, I urge you to consult with a prepress professional before trying any publishing job).

Second, your monitor is not calibrated properly; what you see on your screen is not going to match what you get on press until it is. Read the chapter on color management in your manual, and talk to your printer to find out if they can provide you with a profile for their press.

Third, never assume that what you see on your screen is correct no matter how carefully it is profiled; there are some colors in CMYK that simply can’t be reproduced in RGB. Ask your printer for a contract proof. The contract proof is what the image will REALLY look like on press; you color correct your image based on what you see on the proof, not what you see on your screen. The proof will be used by the press operator to adjust color on press; it is the proof, not the screen, that is your target.


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T
Tacit
Mar 9, 2005
In , Stephen
Edwards wrote:
First off, I’d lose the TIFF format altogether, and save the file out as an Encapsulated PostScript. I’ve worked in the print industry for nearly nine years, and me and my coworkers learned early on that TIFF files were strictly taboo[0]. They almost never match from monitor to press.

Then something is seriously, seriously wrong with your workflow, or you have the Quark Color Management XTension turned on.

A CMYK TIFF and a CMYK EPS will print to an imagesetter or platesetter exactly the same way, provideds you are not using something like a color management system in Quark or (God forbid!) PageMauler. You can verify this yourself in about five minutes with a sheet of film and a densitometer.

In my fourteen years’ experience in high-end professional prepress, it has been my observation that TIFF is one of the preferred formats for high-end image output. No color shift is inherent in a TIFF; the file format permits straight CMYK, and unless you have some piece of software deliberately mangling it, what you get on output will precisely match what is in the original TIFF, and will precisely match the same image output as an EPS.

I can’t imagine why you would believe otherwise, except to assume that there’s something wrong in the way your firm handles either color management or output, and you have erroneously concluded that the problem is the TIFF format. I would urge you to try an experiment or two and verify this for yourself.


Art, shareware, photography, polyamory, kink:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
T
tg416
Mar 9, 2005
In article , Tacit
wrote:

In , Stephen
Edwards wrote:
First off, I’d lose the TIFF format altogether, and save the file out as an Encapsulated PostScript. I’ve worked in the print industry for nearly nine years, and me and my coworkers learned early on that TIFF files were strictly taboo[0]. They almost never match from monitor to press.

Then something is seriously, seriously wrong with your workflow, or you have the Quark Color Management XTension turned on.

*snicker* Oh, yeah, we sure had fun with that one early on. 🙂

Yes, that was one of our original issues with TIFF vs. EPS, but there’s a bit more to it than that.

A CMYK TIFF and a CMYK EPS will print to an imagesetter or platesetter exactly the same way, provideds you are not using something like a color

Well, that all depends on what you’re doing.

management system in Quark or (God forbid!) PageMauler. You can verify this yourself in about five minutes with a sheet of film and a densitometer.

Like I said, it depends upon what you’re doing. Unlike TIFF, EPS files are already saved out in separate plates, so you don’t have to rely upon someone else’s software to separate the colors for you properly (and call me kooky, but I’ve learned to trust Photoshop implicitly over the years, as it’s never failed me… not once). Plus, when you get into presses that do more than 4-color processes, things get really hairy, and EPS files are much more managable.

For one, TIFF files store only bitmap data, and not much else. The vector-based mapping in TIFFs is not as clean as it is with EPS files. Also with EPS files, you can store color management data, and transfer curves and ruling as well for that matter. When you get to the high-end presses, these things tend to matter more (depending upon the project in question, of course).

Then there’s another slew of issues that we had with Quark (we were using version 3.32 when I worked at a shop that did both the prepress and press work). For one, sometimes QuarkXPress wouldn’t properly display TIFF images in their boxes. If the box had a default color of white, most of the time it was okay, but if any of them were set to ‘none’, the image was often blacked, or garbled. When you have close to one hundred pages, this becomes a real problem, especially when you have several people working alongside you who refuse to leave default settings alone.

Another problem we had with TIFFs under QuarkXPress is that the previews tended to contain more raster data, and therefore, made Quark documents that much bigger. It wasn’t unusual to have a QuarkXPress file that came close to 200MB in size in some cases when we orignally used the TIFF format.

In my fourteen years’ experience in high-end professional prepress, it has been my observation that TIFF is one of the preferred formats for high-end image output. No color shift is inherent in a TIFF; the file

I have to disagree with this. IME, color shift is inherent with any screen display format (which is what TIFF is, essentially), especially if the file is an RGB file. From what I’ve seen, the primary reason why is because of the dreaded, "CMYK gamut". Think of the color range of RGB as a square. Think of the color ranges of a CYMK file as a circle which will fit into that square.

Where the edge of the circle cannot reach the edge of the square, those are the colors that CMYK cannot achieve the way an RGB mode image can.

Now, you can store your TIFF images in CMYK format, yes, but in doing that, you lose color information, so I personally wouldn’t recommend it.

format permits straight CMYK, and unless you have some piece of software

Many image formats permit straight CYMK. That doesn’t make them ideal for printing.

deliberately mangling it, what you get on output will precisely match what is in the original TIFF, and will precisely match the same image output as an EPS.

I can’t imagine why you would believe otherwise, except to assume that

I believe otherwise, because experience has taught me otherwise. But hey, if TIFFs work for you, don’t let me rain on your picnic. 😉

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that TIFF is unusable, or useless. In fact, I prefer TIFF for outputting proofs to dyesub printers, and such. I just don’t think it’s a practical format to run to presses, that’s all.

there’s something wrong in the way your firm handles either color management or output, and you have erroneously concluded that the problem is the TIFF format. I would urge you to try an experiment or two and verify this for yourself.

Alas, my friend, I have, and myself and my coworkers at that time had determined that EPS files were the optimum format to use.

Again, I must stress, this all comes down to three different factors:

1.) The nature of your services and your projects.
2.) The number of people you’re working with.
3.) The range of presses which you are outputting to.

Perhaps there should be a alt.image-format.advocacy newsgroup? 😀

In conclusion, I just think that EPS files make for less problems and snags, but again, this is really just my personal opinion.

Wow. It’s nice to talk to someone who actually knows something about the print industry. It seems our trade is unusually arcane, doesn’t it.? —
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I
iehsmith
Mar 9, 2005
On 3/9/05 12:07 PM, Tacit uttered:

In my fourteen years’ experience in high-end professional prepress, it has been my observation that TIFF is one of the preferred formats for high-end image output.

Thank goodness. I thought yet another part of my brain had gone haywire.

inez
T
tg416
Mar 9, 2005
In article <BE549E50.2E27C%>, iehsmith
wrote:

On 3/9/05 12:07 PM, Tacit uttered:

In my fourteen years’ experience in high-end professional prepress, it has been my observation that TIFF is one of the preferred formats for high-end image output.

Thank goodness. I thought yet another part of my brain had gone haywire.

I will restate for the record, that my opinion on the TIFF file format is exactly just that, my opinion. In the end, use what works the best for your needs, and if that’s the TIFF format, then ignore my rambling. 🙂 —
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M
mperlst216
Mar 9, 2005
I have had the green file issue appear also. Not a bit green tint, but green as in no other color. The problem was in a tif file that somehow corrupted when copying to another harddrive. Fortunately I found the original files and not the copied files.
T
Tacit
Mar 10, 2005
In , Stephen
Edwards wrote:
Like I said, it depends upon what you’re doing. Unlike TIFF, EPS files are already saved out in separate plates, so you don’t have to rely upon someone else’s software to separate the colors for you properly (and call me kooky, but I’ve learned to trust Photoshop implicitly over the years, as it’s never failed me… not once). Plus, when you get into presses that do more than 4-color processes, things get really hairy, and EPS files are much more managable.

TIFF files are intended only for 4-color process, and offer no provisions for spot color. So for spot color work, TIFFs are inappropriate.

Then there’s another slew of issues that we had with Quark (we were using version 3.32 when I worked at a shop that did both the prepress and press work). For one, sometimes QuarkXPress wouldn’t properly display TIFF images in their boxes. If the box had a default color of white, most of the time it was okay, but if any of them were set to ‘none’, the image was often blacked, or garbled.

Yes, that is correct. You can never place a grayscale or color TIFF in a "none" box; this is one of the basic rules of QuarkXPress.

If you need to place an image in a "none" box, you need to put a clipping path on it. If you place a TIFF in a "none" box, the edge gets chewed up. If you place an EPS without a clipping path in a "none" box, it looks OK on the screen but it prints with an opaque white box. To get transparency, you need to place an EPS with a clipping path in a "none" box.

That’s not relevant to whether or not a TIFF will change color, though.

When you have close
to one hundred pages, this becomes a real problem, especially when you have several people working alongside you who refuse to leave default settings alone.

This is a user education issue, not a problem with TIFF files; you can’t put a TIFF in a "none" box in Quark. If you are working with employees who refuse to change their work habits when they are not doing things properly, I most respectfully suggest that your business has problems which have nothing to do with TIFF files.

Another problem we had with TIFFs under QuarkXPress is that the previews tended to contain more raster data, and therefore, made Quark documents that much bigger. It wasn’t unusual to have a QuarkXPress file that came close to 200MB in size in some cases when we orignally used the TIFF format.

That is true, depending on the resolution of the TIFF. Of course, that is both an advantage and a disadvantage. A Quark file containing placed TIFFs may be larger (especially if you place the TIFFs at small sizes; if you leave the TIFFs at 100%, it’s not as big an issue, as quark creates a 72-pixel-per-inch preview at 100% of the original size), but the previews will be higher quality. EPS previews are, depending on the host app, often quite crappy in quality–sometimes making them difficult to place precisely.

I have to disagree with this. IME, color shift is inherent with any screen display format (which is what TIFF is, essentially), …

No, TIFF was developed by Aldus sepcifically as an output format.

…especially
if the file is an RGB file.

Well, of course! You shouldn’t be doing prepress with RGB files. If you place an RGB TIFF, it may be separated by the host app or by the RIP, depending on the host app and your workflow. If you place an RGB EPS, it will be separated by the RIP. If your workflow is such that the separation is done by the RIP, then TIFF and EPS will give you dot-for- dot identical results. If your separation is done by the host app, the quality of the separation will vary depending on the host app.

But no sane prepress professional would ever let a page layout program do his separations.

From what I’ve seen, the primary reason
why is because of the dreaded, "CMYK gamut". Think of the color range of RGB as a square. Think of the color ranges of a CYMK file as a circle which will fit into that square.

Actually, it’s not that simple; the gamut of CMYK does not entirely fit inside the gamut of RGB, and therre are CMYK colors that can’t be reproduced in RGB.

Now, you can store your TIFF images in CMYK format, yes, but in doing that, you lose color information, so I personally wouldn’t recommend it.

You alsoways should store any image, EPS or TIFF, *in the output colorspace.* Storing a TIFF intended for prepress as RGB gains you nothing; it only means that what you see on your screen will not match the output. Do your color correction and save your image in the desired output format and you will get on press what you expect. It does no good to have unprintable colors in your image if your goal is print!

I see only low-end prepress shops work in RGB. I’ve never once seen any high-end shop work in RGB.

I believe otherwise, because experience has taught me otherwise. But hey, if TIFFs work for you, don’t let me rain on your picnic. 😉

You don’t use Microsoft Publisher, by any chance, do you? Publisher does mangle TIFF color, because Publisher internally converts TIFFs to its own RGB color space, then re-converts them to CMYK on output, with crap results. But then, Publisher is a crap program used by amatewurs for crap work, not by high-end trade shops. Use an application other than Publisher, and your experience will be quite different.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that TIFF is unusable, or useless. In fact, I prefer TIFF for outputting proofs to dyesub printers, and such. I just don’t think it’s a practical format to run to presses, that’s all.

Dyesub proofers? You’re still using syesub proofers??! I though we were talking about high-end prepress here.


Art, shareware, photography, polyamory, kink:
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T
tg416
Mar 11, 2005
In article , Tacit
wrote:

In , Stephen
Edwards wrote:
Like I said, it depends upon what you’re doing. Unlike TIFF, EPS files are already saved out in separate plates, so you don’t have to rely upon someone else’s software to separate the colors for you properly (and call me kooky, but I’ve learned to trust Photoshop implicitly over the years, as it’s never failed me… not once). Plus, when you get into presses that do more than 4-color processes, things get really hairy, and EPS files are much more managable.

TIFF files are intended only for 4-color process, and offer no provisions for spot color. So for spot color work, TIFFs are inappropriate.

And in many cases, that was the kind of work we were doing. We were not only doing the prepress work but also the press work.

8<SNIP>8

When you have close
to one hundred pages, this becomes a real problem, especially when you have several people working alongside you who refuse to leave default settings alone.

This is a user education issue, not a problem with TIFF files; you can’t

And even if the users had been educated, TIFF files would have still proven to be unsuitable for us for many other reasons… chief among them, it’s limited in design and scope.

I have to disagree with this. IME, color shift is inherent with any screen display format (which is what TIFF is, essentially), …

No, TIFF was developed by Aldus sepcifically as an output format.

TIFF was developed as an output format for PC peripherals, not for output devices like imagesetters or plate processors.

There is nothing that you can do with the raster data from a TIFF file that you couldn’t do with the raster data from a TARGA file, or an SGI RGB file. It’s basically all binary raster data. EPS files have much more flexibility built into them. It’s a format that was designed to address a wide variety of output needs for graphics professionals.

In fact, EPS is not just a file format. It’s actually an interpretable programming language, which gives it tremendous advantages over the TIFF format. EPS gives raster data contained within it "a brain" so to speak.

From what I’ve seen, the primary reason
why is because of the dreaded, "CMYK gamut". Think of the color range of RGB as a square. Think of the color ranges of a CYMK file as a circle which will fit into that square.

Actually, it’s not that simple; the gamut of CMYK does not entirely fit inside the gamut of RGB, and therre are CMYK colors that can’t be reproduced in RGB.

I don’t see how this is possible, considering that the CMYK colorspace is smaller than the RGB colorspace.

Now, you can store your TIFF images in CMYK format, yes, but in doing that, you lose color information, so I personally wouldn’t recommend it.

You alsoways should store any image, EPS or TIFF, *in the output colorspace.* Storing a TIFF intended for prepress as RGB gains you nothing;

If you’re storing the images in an archive for future use, I wholly disagree with you. If you store images in CMYK, as I said before, you lose color information. What if you need the same image to be output on a different media, such as video, and you wanted to keep that nice rich blue or red? Too bad.

it only means that what you see on your screen will not match the output. Do your color correction and save your image in the desired output format and you will get on press what you expect. It does no good to have unprintable colors in your image if your goal is print!
I see only low-end prepress shops work in RGB. I’ve never once seen any high-end shop work in RGB.

Erm… define "low-end" shop versus "high-end" shop. Prepress shops all basically have the same grade of equipment: computer workstations hooked up to a variety of peripherals. That’s why they’re called *prepress* shops.

Having an expensive PC output peripheral doesn’t make a shop any more "high-end" than a shop that uses a pool of color laser printers. A prepress shop is what it is… PRE-press.

This "high-end" stuff is usually just coined for the purpose of separating someone from their money because they’re falsely led to believe that $SOME_NEW_FANGLED_GADGET is better than $SOME_OTHER_GADGET. You’ve been duped by the marketing machine.

I believe otherwise, because experience has taught me otherwise. But hey, if TIFFs work for you, don’t let me rain on your picnic. 😉

You don’t use Microsoft Publisher, by any chance, do you? Publisher does

*sigh* Did you even read my reply?

mangle TIFF color, because Publisher internally converts TIFFs to its own RGB color space, then re-converts them to CMYK on output, with crap results. But then, Publisher is a crap program used by amatewurs for crap work, not by high-end trade shops. Use an application other than Publisher, and your experience will be quite different.

*sigh* Apparently, you didn’t read my reply.

First of all:

To assume that the software someone uses determines their level of artistic skill is not only absurd, it’s childish. Also, Microsoft Publisher is sold as a home-user’s software package. The fact that it’s intended for use by amatuer graphic designers with limited needs is no mystery.

Secondly:

1.) The job in question is history.
2.) When I was working there, we were using the standard apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, and some specialized RIP software running on SGI Indigo2 workstations, and some
PostScript level 3 RIPs as well.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that TIFF is unusable, or useless. In fact, I prefer TIFF for outputting proofs to dyesub printers, and such. I just don’t think it’s a practical format to run to presses, that’s all.

Dyesub proofers? You’re still using syesub proofers??! I though we were talking about high-end prepress here.

I’m not talking about prepress at all. I’m talking about EPS vs. TIFF for *press work* (ie: output to film, polyester plates, or DTP devices). The fact is, TIFF was developed to meet the needs of people using output peripherals for personal computers. EPS was developed for people who needed a more flexible way to handle output for a larger range of output devices.

You can call a hammer a screwdriver all you want. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re still using a hammer.

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HP
helmut.p.einfaltNOSPAM
Mar 11, 2005
Stephen Edwards wrote:
I don’t see how this is possible, considering that the CMYK
colorspace
is smaller than the RGB colorspace.

If you put it this way, the statement is wrong. The two colour spaces are *different* and there are quite a few CMYK colours that cannot be reproduced in RGB space and vice versa. However, it is true that RGB as a whole can produce colours that are simply impossible to set up with CMYK. But the same is true for quite a few spot colours, too (have you ever looked at Pantone’s conversion tables for some of their spot colours?).

Now, you can store your TIFF images in CMYK format, yes, but in doing that, you lose color information.

You always should store any image, EPS or TIFF, *in the output colorspace.* Storing a TIFF intended for prepress as RGB gains you nothing;

What if you need the same image to be output
on a different media, such as video

The same image in two different colourspaces isn’t necessarily the *same* image by definition. The RGB version of an image will nearly always differ to a certain extent from its CMYK counterpart.

Tacit’s advice still holds: If you work for press output, work in the colourspace it requires. If you work for screen output, work in the appropriate colourspace. If you work for both, work in both colourspaces.

The file format used has nothing to do with it.

Helmut

All typos © My Knotty Fingers Ltd. Capacity Dept.
T
Tacit
Mar 11, 2005
In , Stephen
Edwards wrote:
Actually, it’s not that simple; the gamut of CMYK does not entirely fit inside the gamut of RGB, and therre are CMYK colors that can’t be reproduced in RGB.

I don’t see how this is possible, considering that the CMYK colorspace is smaller than the RGB colorspace.

Imagine two circles, one large and one small. Now imagine them overlapping; the small circle does not completely fit within the large circle, so some parts of the small circle are not contained in the large circle.

Colors in CMYK which do not fit within RGB include 100% CMYK yellow, and some very deep, rich reds and browns, and very dark blue.

There is a graph at

http://www.serif.com/pageplus/printing/learn/color-models.as p

showing L*a*b color space, with wide-gamut RGB, monitor RGB, and CMYK superimposed on it. CMYK extends beyond wide-gamut RGB and monitor RGB, even though it is smaller.

If you’re storing the images in an archive for future use, I wholly disagree with you. If you store images in CMYK, as I said before, you lose color information. What if you need the same image to be output on a different media, such as video, and you wanted to keep that nice rich blue or red? Too bad.

If your goal is to archive images to be multipurposed for RGB and CMYK output, you are well-advised to keep them in L*a*b, not RGB. L*a*b preserves the RGB colors you can’t get in CMYK, and also the CMYK colors you can’t get in RGB.

Erm… define "low-end" shop versus "high-end" shop. Prepress shops all basically have the same grade of equipment: computer workstations hooked up to a variety of peripherals. That’s why they’re called * prepress* shops.

Low-end shop: A prepress shop which does the bulk of its work for such applications as magazine and newspaper ad, low end to midrange catalog work, brochure and pamphlet work, and so on. Such shops rarely do 6 or 8 color jobs, hexachropme jobs, and the like; may not do high-end, complex image composition and retouching; and don’t usually do challenging projects such as extremely critical color correction, limited edition litho work, coffee table books, complex six or eight color (or more!) work, and so on.

High-end prepress shop: A trade shop specializing in extremely complex prepress, including hexachrome or other 6-color process work, complex retouching and image composition, challenging and critical color correction, unusual jobs such as complex coffee table books, and so on.

Concrete examples of high-end prepress work include: a catalog printed in CMYK with two bump plates (touch blue and touch red), two metallic inks, and four spot colors, with text as a special black plate to allow insertion of foreign-language text; a coffee table book of black and white photography printed in eight different gray inks, with each photograph separated into eight plates by tonal density; a fine-art poster printed in six-color (CMYOGK) process; and so on.

Having an expensive PC output peripheral doesn’t make a shop any more "high-end" than a shop that uses a pool of color laser printers. A prepress shop is what it is… PRE-press.

High-end prepress is not dependent on the equipment used, but on the nature of the jobs and the talents of the employees.

This "high-end" stuff is usually just coined for the purpose of separating someone from their money because they’re falsely led to believe that $SOME_NEW_FANGLED_GADGET is better than $SOME_OTHER_ GADGET. You’ve been duped by the marketing machine.

Nope. In my experience, this "high-end" stuff is to separate those shops which have practice and expreience working on unusual and challenging prepress problems. Output is output; an eight-color separation output on an old SelectSet imagesetter is still high-end work.

To assume that the software someone uses determines their level of artistic skill is not only absurd, it’s childish. Also, Microsoft Publisher is sold as a home-user’s software package. The fact that it’s intended for use by amatuer graphic designers with limited needs is no mystery.

No reasonable person, myself included, assumes that the program determines the skill. However, professionals do generally prefer professional tools, as those tools do tend to provide better results. A dedicated professional can use a low-end program like Publisher, but such a person will likely be frustrated by the limitations and design flaws of that program.

I’m not talking about prepress at all. I’m talking about EPS vs. TIFF for *press work* (ie: output to film, polyester plates, or DTP devices).

Actually, you origfinally made specific statements, such as the statement that TIFF output is unreliable because the color may shift, which you have not yet supported. Again, I challenge you to confirm this yourself; save a CMYK image in EPS and TIF formats, output both files to film, and run the film through a spectrometer or density analyzer. You will find no color shift; both images will be dot-for-dot identical. This is why TIFF remains one of the most popular formats in professional prepress.

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T
tg416
Mar 12, 2005
In article , Tacit
wrote:

8<SNIP>8

Actually, you origfinally made specific statements, such as the statement that TIFF output is unreliable because the color may shift, which you have not yet supported. Again, I challenge you to confirm this yourself; save a CMYK image in EPS and TIF formats, output both files to film, and run the film through a spectrometer or density analyzer. You will find no color shift; both images will be dot-for-dot identical. This is why TIFF remains one of the most popular formats in professional prepress.

Actually, this little debate of ours got me thinking:

Just for kicks, I called up an old coworker of mine that I still keep in touch with from time to time and I asked him about all of this…

It turns out that, as you suggested, the original problem was that we were using QuarkXPress’s EFI color-management system. But we actually were UNAWARE that EFI was causing the problems we were having, so we decided to try switching to EPS, before which, another coworker had discovered the EFI extension, and he decided to disable it on all of our machines late one evening, just *because*.

So, we were all under the impression that the EPS format had solved our problems, and our other coworker never bothered to mention it to anyone until many months later that he had disabled EFI because apparently HE had no idea that disabling it solved our problems either.

However, as time dragged on, we started liking EPS, simply because we were able to do more with it on our hardware than we could do previously with TIFF files. It was easier to adapt them to our specialized software (we were also lucky enough to have an in-house programmer at that time too), and they resulted in smaller Quark documents as well. So we stuck with it, and we never used TIFF again.

So apparently, I didn’t have the whole story until this afternoon. I originally started that job back in 1993. There were five of us, and that job ended for me about seven years ago. Chalk it up to a bad brain DIMM. 😉 That said, I personally still prefer EPS over TIFF, simply because I think it’s much more flexible overall. Of course, these days, since I’ve returned to comic art and illustration, I just do most everything in Illustrator anyway, so I’m biased. —
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