A View from Anywhere

Remote proofing developments raise fundamental business questions.

by Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor

REMOTE PROOFING IS a set of evolutionary image-communication technologies with mainstream appeal and very broad applications. There is debate on exact terminology, but we'll say that remote proofing denotes the concept of making digital image data accessible to another person, at another location, for review and commentary. The image data may be rendered on a hard copy output device, or it may be viewed onscreen, a practice known as soft proofing.

In either case, remote proofing facilitates the sharing of printable images throughout the iterative approval process from concept to completion. It's giving us new ways to connect key individuals involved in the printing production cycle and it's nurturing a higher level of digital collaboration.

The first implementations of remote proofing—and many are still in use—are the proprietary, point-to-point infrastructures designed by in-house digital workflow gurus to send say, a series of toothpaste line extensions from a prepress house in Chicago over an ISDN connection to a product manager in Cincinnati. Not possible, and certainly not practical, without brilliant IT support, expensive equipment, and a good deal of education and management.

Today there are a growing number of plug-n-play, subscriber-based programs that anyone with a modem can use. Programs like RealTimeProof, from RealTimeImage (RTI), which came on the scene several years ago offering client/server-based image management solutions through Scitex.

According to Yehuda Messinger, VP/GM of RTI's Graphic Arts Division, the company has repackaged and downstreamed remote proofing technology into an Internet ASP (Application Service Provider) configuration, using a fully scalable server built by RTI and hosted by San Jose e-trade giant Digital Island. "We allow packaging professionals to log onto our Web site and view even the smallest details of full-resolution digital art using a 28.8K modem, including traps, layers, marks, and the ability to accurately measure color," says Messinger, "without the need to send the file back and forth from location to location."

Messinger claims users of RealTimeProof can open a 100MB image over the Internet as fast as they can access the file from their own desktop because of RTI's patent-pending image data streaming technology called "pixels on demand." This technology extracts and renders key elements of the image first, then successively adds image details. The image can be streamed in any color space and in any bit depth with no preprocessing, converting, compression, or loss of integrity.

The ASP configuration has provided entry for smaller-volume and occasional users. There are no up-front equipment costs; subscribers pay based on their projected monthly usage.

Systems like RealTimeProof help to shorten turnarounds and improve overall economics of the process. But RTI's Messinger and other remote proofing experts are quick to point out that the concept, and the tremendous range of available technologies, raise some fundamental business questions.

Lee Stocking, business manager, Continuous Tone Proofing and packaging segment manager for Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG), explains, "What remote proofing is all about is trying to determine what the customer requirements are. What am I trying to accomplish? Am I trying to get content approval, or a contract approval? Am I trying to save time? What mechanisms are available to do that?"

"Certainly we can all send PDF files around, but there are other sets of issues. How closely does the remote device match what I have in my shop? Are there ways to linearize both devices so they get the same output result? Am I proofing to an ICC profile? And then, there are a whole set of behavioral questions that come up."

According to Stocking these behavioral issues center around a natural resistance to change, managing customer relationships, and education. He advises: "We had to go through a big behavioral change to switch from on-press proofing to Matchprints and Chromalins, even though they took only hours to make and might cost only $50."

Stocking speaks to the important sales aspect of delivering a color proof, in person, to customers, and the imperative of having reliable and extremely easy-to-use remote proofing options, so that service providers don't lose added values. He says KPG is developing new proofing technologies, like Matchprint Virtual Proofing and First Check Desktop Proofing, with high levels of automation to make the products easier to use, and "from the proposition that we have to be color accurate."

Color science institutions like KPG see remote proofing in a big-picture context. Says Stocking, "There are three things important to us right now [as we continue to re-engineer our printing process for new efficiencies]: color, content, and workflow."

"Up to now, we've used hard copy proofs as the medium for control because I can hold it in my hand and I know where it [was] created. But where we're headed is towards the ability to store media and brand assets in a central repository and make sure they are embedded with ICC profiles and sent to linearized output devices. Only then am I really going to be able to say that I can control color in an effective, distributed manner, as opposed to just point-to-point."