A Standard for Magazine Color Management

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 1999 by Dzintars Dzilna

SWOP proponents urge publishers to use TR 001 for checking color.

* While color-management tools are getting easier to use (see "Color Control Gets Closer," FOLIO:, October 1999, page 131), implementing an all-digital system from desktop to printed page still involves careful execution. For example, input and output color profiles must be created and applied to each piece of equipment--from the press, back to proofers, monitors and scanners-- along the manufacturing chain, and all must be routinely calibrated and maintained. Also, the application of profiles has to be verified, ensuring they were used properly throughout the workflow.

To simplify the process, proponents of Specifications for Web Offset Printing are advocating the standards-accredited ANSI/CGATS Technical Report 001 as the basis for color output at any point in the workflow. Instead of developing whole workflows around the color output of a particular press, publishers, prepress shops and printers could instead all shoot for TR 001's colorimetrics in producing color, reason SWOP advocates.

"TR 001 is something both the prepress side and the printer side can use as an unequivocal target," says Michael Rodriguez, technical director for Chicago-based printer R.R. Donnelley. "You can make profiles from the data, and they can be used in standard ICC color-management applications, so it forms a very nice anchor point--to which we can anchor the meaning of color data--for prepress and print vendors. And it's a framework that allows us all a checkpoint for responsibility for this transfer of color information."

In a seminar called "Color Control and Management: Standards, Specs and Guidelines for an Industry in Transition," at the Graphic Communications Association's Spectrum conference in Tucson, Arizona in September, Rodriguez said that TR 001 documents SWOP press proofing using standardized measurement techniques and calibration. "It's a document that lists the colorimetric values--the L' a' b' values--of all the print color combinations for CMYK input values. It's the kind of characterization from which ICC profiles can be made."

Tell your manufacturers

Why hasn't TR 001 already been adopted for color management in magazine production workflows? "It's relatively new-it's been out four years, but it's taken that long for people to appreciate it, and it's also taken that long for the color-management tools that utilize it to be mature enough," said Rodriguez. "It's the difficulty of conveying something to a very large industry, and conveying the importance of it."

To move forward with TR 001, Rodriguez urged publishers--and their advertisers and manufacturing providers--to tell proofer manufacturers to use TR 001 as a target for ICC-based color management. (See sidebar.) "It vastly simplifies color management if we can get proofing systems to get into this standard framework," said Rodriguez.

SWOP Certifies Proofers

Just because a proofing manufacturer says its proofer is able to reproduce TR 001--and hence, be SWOP-compliant--may not necessarily be true. To help publishers know for sure, SWOP Inc. has recently completed a first round of its new certification program. As part of the program, an appointed SWOP panel examined proofs made by participating proofing manufacturers to see if the proofs visually match TR 001. For the future, RR Donnelley's Rodriguez anticipates that the SWOP-certification process will define measurable tolerances. Here's the list of machines that so far have shown to cut the SWOP mustard:

Agfa Pressmatch Aqueous Negative

Agfa Pressmatch Dry Negative

DuPont Digital Waterproof AX4

DuPont Waterproof

Fuji Color-Art System CR-T4 SWOP

Imation Matchprint Laserproof

Imation Rainbow 4700

Imation SWOP Matchprint Negative

Imation SWOP Matchprint Positive

Iris Pro SWOP

Kodak Approval Digital Color Proofing System

Polaroid PolaProof Digital Halftone Proofing System

Separately, SWOP Inc. is gearing up for a revision of its specifications. The initiative, called SWOP 2000, will move SWOP to be more "digitally oriented," said Joel Rubin, chairman of SWOP Inc.