Has Proofing Gone ‘Soft’?

pP: With soft proofing, you’re asking the customer to assume a large portion of the responsibility for process control. Easier said than done?

Summers—The people who are trying to use the monitor in the continuum of different proofing requirements further downstream, closer to the printed product, are aware of the issues and are taking more pains to ensure they’re implemented properly—like using better monitors and calibrating them properly. In hard copy proofing, people are accustomed to, and quite familiar with, the need to view those proofs under controlled conditions, and almost any credible organization is going to have a good viewing booth and good viewing conditions. With monitors it’s quite different. Even if you have a great monitor and it’s calibrated properly, the likelihood that it will be in accurate viewing environment—no windows in the room, the right level of ambient lighting, no glare, the walls are the right color—realistically, the likelihood of that is very small. So that’s another practical consideration. This is not to say that it can’t be done, but to say that in practice, it often is not done.