Soft Proofing Technology Breaks the Limit into a New Market (2)

Benefit everyone
At present, soft proofing has been recognized by many publishers with a long-term vision. Both BBC Magazine and British Guardian News and Media Company Limited (GNM) are strong advocates of soft proofing. Dave Kirwan, the latter's project manager, said that he chose ICS Remote Director because it can meet the production requirements of the company's internal editing, imaging processing and printing departments, but so far, the company has not yet officially used this. Set of systems.

Kirwan believes that the first benefit this system brings to GNM will be directly reflected in the printing plant. On-screen soft proofing is much simpler than hard copy proofing, and it also presents all elements in front of the viewer. Before the press began normal production, we often did not get proofs, especially when printing short pages of multiple pages.

Maybe you don't know what benefit soft printing can bring to print customers, but according to Kirwan, it is an important factor in determining the production cycle. Just sending the electronic documents to the printing factory, you can see the proofs in an instant, which sounds like a crazy thing. Even with remote hard copy proofing, people need time to output after receiving the file.

Emerson of TPI said: "This technology is related to the speed of marketing and production cost savings of printed materials. In addition, soft proofing also breaks the restrictions of the printing area. People's work is becoming more and more extensive, and time requirements are also more Strictly, it can't even wait for the output of hard copy proofs.”

From Dunckley's experience, soft proofing can save the printer at least one day. If it meets the color requirements of the job, then it can shorten the production cycle of the job by two to three days. Of course, its other advantages are often surprising. As Dunckley put it: "You may find that the cost of delivering proofs is often higher than the cost of the proofs themselves."

Even though soft proofing has been chosen, no one has yet said that they should completely abandon the hard copy proofs. Most people find themselves able to obtain the best speed, reliability and production costs from these two proofing methods.

Dunckley said: “We have a customer who has to output four proofs for each order before, and now he only needs to output it twice. Although we know that you need to sign and confirm with the copy proofs, why don’t we try to Reduce unnecessary steps?"

Tips for Soft Proofing
Culture is the key. In the transition from hard-copy proofs to soft proofs, establishing people’s confidence in displays is a daunting challenge. Many people do not believe that this technology can present true colors.

Consider color management. The success of soft proofing technology depends largely on the level of color management in your printer and supplier. Therefore, it is necessary to regularly calibrate the observation environment.

Grasp the color separation process. If you want to improve the accuracy of soft proofing, you must control the color separation process to ensure that the CMYK value you display on the screen is actually printed on the press.

Invest in modern monitors. A typical monitor sells for around £600. But the higher the price you pay for it, the wider the angle of observation you get—if you want others to observe the proofs with you, this is very important.

Phased implementation. Are your employees and suppliers ready to go straight into the soft proofing workflow, or do you need to use remote proofing first? You can start with a job or a department and let people understand what soft proofing is and how to do soft proofing.