Has Proofing Gone ‘Soft’?

Harrell—If you want more than pleasing color and most packaging clients want scrupulously accurate color, it’s better to stick with the hard copy for your contract proof.

pP: What are the requirements for remote hard proofing?

Summers—Apart from the system components required to get there, the two paramount requirements are accuracy and repeatability. Accuracy would mean that the output device has a broad enough gamut and is capable of representing the colors that you want to reproduce on press. Particularly in packaging, where you’re using extended color printing and spot colors and things like that the output device may not have enough colors on it to reproduce. The second piece is repeatability, so even if the output device does have enough colors, if it moves around and it drifts in and out of calibration over time, then what’s actually appearing on the proof may not be correct, even though the color is available to print, it may not actually appear because the system is not properly calibrated.