Details:
Summary:
As the technical improvements accelerate, the premedia (prepress, repro) colour workflow is on the way to full digitalisation and automation, especially the business-to-business workflow. In this context soft proofing will save time, money and will reduce the environmental impact due to reduced material and transportation needs. However, the main application areas for soft proofing are somewhat different depending on the industry implementation, e.g. newspapers and commercial printing have different needs and thereby they use soft proofing in somewhat different ways. The aim of this paper is to map the technical criteria and routines that are needed to achieve an optimized colour management system for various premedia situations. The focus is on soft proofing in order to find out where soft proofing can be used, the pros and cons of using soft proofing, and the colour tolerance aspects. One interest is to specify the technical demands that are needed while using Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) in the workflow. Since the development of LCD techniques is fast and the prices are decreasing, rnany professionals consider switching their Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors for LCDs. This paper looks into the possibility of such a conversion and the necessary aspects of soft proofing on LCDs for the newspaper industry. A suggestion will be presented on how to achieve an optimal and stable soft proofing system.