Has Proofing Gone ‘Soft’?

pP: Is there such a thing as a contract proof in a packaging environment?

Summers—Some would claim yes, some no. There are a lot of things that fundamentally won’t display on a monitor the way they’ll display on hard copy and for that matter, there are some that won’t display on a hard copy proof the way they’ll display on press—so there are degrees of accuracy. Today, in practice, very few CPCs will accept a soft proof as a final. There’s too much money and brand identity and other things at stake to risk it on that. The thing that gets a little fuzzy here is that monitor resolution is about 72 dots per inch. So if you’re trying to determine how accurately a dot will reproduce in a package and the plates are being imaged at 2400 dpi and the screen image is going to be north of 150-line screen, maybe 220 or even higher, to suggest that a monitor would accurately represent that is dubious.