Has Proofing Gone ‘Soft’?

These days, the proof isn’t just in the pudding. It’s on screen and on the move, instantaneously bound for far-flung destinations along the information superhighway, a pixilated facsimile of the real thing. The advantages are obvious: reduced cycle time, fewer interim proofs, and a richer collaborative environment, for starters. But how applicable are the principles of remote proofing to the realm of package printing? This month we spoke with Tyler Harrell, solutions and innovations manager, Esko-Graphics; Gee Ranasinha, director of marketing, DALiM Software; Jim Summers, president of GMG Americas; and John Sweeney, vice president, sales and marketing, Integrated Color Solutions to learn just how far remote proofing technology has come in the packaging world and where it is heading.

pP: What is the difference between soft proofing and remote proofing?

Summers—We think of soft proofing as a scenario where you’ve got a monitor on your desktop. The designer is preparing a concept, a comp, or a final page at some point during the creative process, and they use that monitor to do a couple of things: to check physical size of things or the accuracy of placement. They also may go down several levels to verifying that the package on the screen or in print is the right color. And as soon as you branch into that area in terms of validation of what’s on the monitor, you go from the monitor as display to the monitor as proof. Whether it’s remote or not is a matter of who is using that monitor and where. If the monitor is in front of the designer, and the designer is creating and getting the feedback from the monitor, I wouldn’t consider that remote. However, if that monitor is being echoed and displayed at the consumer product company upstream, that is a remote proofing application.

Harrell—There’s a big distinction between real-time proofing and remote proofing. Real-time proofing essentially is always soft proofing. I don’t know that in today’s environment the soft proof is replacing the contract proof. The benefits are that you have something the customer and the vendor can immediately see and discuss. The opportunity for revisions is certainly promoted in an environment of collaboration. But quite often what is missing or perceived to be missing is color accuracy. More and more clients/customers/buyers want to see a proof printed on something as close to a representative of, if not the real material it’s going to be printed on; the screen can simulate this, but obviously can’t fulfill it. The soft proofing environment is more of a collaborative tool than a contract approval, and the fact remains that color management is the biggest hurdle in this whole process.

Sweeney—We prefer the term, “color-accurate, monitor-based, remote” proofing to “soft” proofing. An image doesn’t know whether it’s going to be on a soup can or in a magazine. From a color reproduction standpoint, packaging requires image capture, image manipulation, approval, and production—the same as in commercial workflows. However, virtual proofing is a disruptive technology; i.e., it disrupts the revenue stream for a number of parties. Vendors make a lot of expensive proofing material that goes in those proofing machines. Prepress houses drive a lot of revenue with that deliverable hard proof. Clients are reluctant to give up that hard copy proof because it’s the contract. There’s a lot at stake, a lot of liability, especially in food, tobacco, and pharma packaging. If you print a million Cheerios boxes wrong, somebody is in big trouble.

pP: What are the advantages and obstacles to soft proofing in a packaging environment?

Ranasinha—From the standpoint of business process and production control, there is a strong argument for soft proofing. That said, the effectiveness of soft proofing depends on whether the job has a color gamut that can be proofed remotely or soft proofed, whether the color gamut in a packaging environment has an ICC profile that can be displayed accurately on a monitor. As soon as you go outside the traditional gamuts with special spots colors, metallics, etc., the argument for soft proofing falls down. However, there’s a whole class of content proofing, where the vast majority of proofing for packaging and commercial work is done. For these sorts of applications, soft proofing is a godsend for many packaging companies and corporations because it allows many people to view and annotate on a proof in real time, and because it permits more proofing iterations to occur within a given time frame.

Harrell—Getting one monitor to look like another monitor and getting the output to look the same on two different inkjet proofers is a huge issue. At the same time, liability is the driving factor in much of what this industry does. Nobody wants to assume the liability for a print job gone wrong. So we’re approaching it in the same way by looking at the same file, not two copies of the same file. Spot colors, metallics and pearlescents, and translucent or clear materials, for example, present obstacles to soft proofing in a packaging environment because there’s virtually no way to represent them accurately onscreen. I think in a commercial environment where paper and CMYK and non-spot colors are the norms, soft proofing is a much more realistic and viable tool today than it is in packaging.

Sweeney—The difference between packaging workflows and commercial workflows is that there usually are more people involved in the approval process. In addition, when you get into food, tobacco, and pharma, there’s a legal aspect that isn’t present in other areas. With all these considerations, the question from the time you get creative signoff on the images and so forth is, ‘How long before it’s on the shelf?’ It’s usually 6-8 weeks or longer because the number of people and print disciplines needed to produce a package dictates the longer cycle time. Virtual proofing can dramatically reduce that cycle time and the costs associated with it.

pP: How do you control the viewing environment in soft proofing?

Ranasinha—It’s as difficult to control the viewing environment in soft proofing as in a hard proofing scenario, and just as necessary.

Harrell—The challenge in all of this is standardization of the environment, whether we’re talking about soft or contract proofing. The biggest challenges are standardization, calibration, and profiling—i.e., process control—to make sure I’m looking at what you’re looking at. Anytime that’s done remotely, the environments have to be standardized, whether that’s the monitor I’m viewing it on, the profiles used for viewing it, resolutions—all of that has to be the same. And it’s much easier said than done.

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.

Harrell—In my experience, and for the reasons we’ve discussed earlier, there are very few, if any, packaging customers who do not also require a hard contract proof.

pP: Does monitor soft proofing have a place in the process?

Summers—Absolutely, particularly in the early, collaborative stages. But as a final approval—a contract—I don’t think it’s there.

Harrell—Without soft proofing, I might send two or three contract proofs to get to the final approval stage. That’s time-consuming and expensive. So now I’m reducing that greatly and as a result of using soft proofing in the intermediate stages, maybe I have the ability to send out just one final contract proof.

Sweeney—A proof used to be an object; now it’s an activity. Color trade shops used to charge for a scan—four pieces of film and a proof. That was the deliverable for the activity of scanning. With the advent of computer-to-plate, the hard copy proof was the deliverable and all the activity was embedded in that hard deliverable. In our view, virtual proofing is not a technology issue today. The act of proofing a file can be done by anyone anywhere. The technology is proven and capable, and the software is cheap, off the shelf. However, as I said earlier, in the packaging realm, there’s still a reluctance to give up that hard copy proof.

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.

Ranasinha—Certainly customers are only ever pushing prices in one direction and it seems to me the response from many companies today is, ‘Okay, if we’re going to do the job for this price, then it’s going to require a certain amount of collaboration and work on your part to make sure we can get to that stage.’

It’s the same issue we were going through a few years ago in the commercial world with the adoption of PDF-X1A. The whole idea behind PDF-X1A was to make everybody’s job easier; however, the onus was on the client to supply files to the PDF-X1A specification. Clients adopted it because they saw the cost savings. In a soft or hard proofing scenario, we’re talking about the same thing. It also gives the print providers an opportunity to increase their value-add so they’re no longer looked upon as a commodity, but as a partner in the whole project—offering other services apart from output, and these other services make life easier for all concerned.

Harrell—Anytime you promote collaboration in any capacity, you’re empowering the customer to help you make decisions about their job. That builds trust.

pP: When all is said and done, however, doesn’t every soft proof wind up in hard copy somewhere?

Ranasinha—I would agree that for a lot of packaging work a hard copy proof would be the ultimate result of the soft proofing process, but I would also contend that there is a small but growing percentage of jobs that lend themselves to having the only proof being a soft proof—depending on the job in question. If the reason for proofing is purely for content and if that is the issue, it’s far more efficient to use a soft proofing method than a hard proofing method—even if you just think about the time factor savings and the ability to have multiple proofs sent to a number of project participants all at the same time, and allow them to respond and approve all at the same time. Soft proofing systems allow you to set up a certain level of approval hierarchy, you know, participant number one gets to approve before participant number two.

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.

To get there, [you need to consider] the components of the actual output device; the consumables (in inkjet that would be the media and the inks that are used in the machine); a PC or Mac or computer platform that is going to drive it; software that can manage that device—control its color; some kind of measuring device—a spectrophotometer or colorimeter; and then some sort of viewing condition to look at the output. And hopefully, a human in there somewhere who knows those variables and understands how to operate the system.

pP: Is inkjet the preferred technology for the remote output of remote proofs?

Ranasinha—If you’re looking for the combination of accuracy, consistency, and price per proof, then certainly inkjet technology lends itself to the process very well, yes.

Summers—It very much depends on the application and which inkjet device you’re talking about, because not all inkjet devices are created equal. Let’s say we had an app that requires an opaque white, metallic coated substrate, metallic inks on top of that, then several layers of wild spot colors on the edges of the gamut. Depending on how many of those kinds of parameters are included in the requirements, an inkjet device in all fairness may not be able to handle all those things. Now if those colors are just a piece of it and people can use their judgment and say I know that one color out of all the things we’re working on this package won’t render properly on inkjet, and we’ll have to make sure the printer uses the special ink on press and let’s watch carefully—but everything else will be okay—well, okay. But if these 10 or 12 colors we have to remember won’t look right, then at some point you throw your hands up and say well, ‘It’s an interesting idea what it might look like,’ and you’d want to rethink your choice of output device. And in many cases, people still won’t accept anything less than a press proof—realistically—but I think that’s getting less and less.

But the fact remains that the closer a proof gets in the process, the better off you’re going to be in reducing cycle time and taking jobs on and off press, that kind of thing. Then the press-okay truly becomes a press-okay, not working on the press to get the job right. We see many of our packaging customers today still getting a press okay.

So yes, people are using inkjets and our technology, particularly with clients scattered across multiple nations or states within nations to bring people together in the collaborative process. [This is] because having a remote device that’s producing a hard copy that someone can mark up and compare to previous packaging is incredibly valuable in reducing the cycle time, or allows them to hold the design process open longer.

Harrell—We’re seeing a lot of customers tackle remote contract proofing. And that could be anything from a screen contract proof on a Kodak Approval or inkjet. Inkjet technology today is such that with color management, the quality of the devices, and stability of the inks and materials, you can contract proof from inkjet.

pP: What is the difference between soft proofing and product visualization?

Harrell—Dimensional accuracy is key in a packaging environment. There is absolutely no way to validate dimensional accuracy onscreen. Product visualization (Virtual Reality Meta Language or VRML), which marries graphics with structure, is a separate and distinct operation that takes a CAD file and displays it in 3-D. Content is a big part of soft proofing, particularly in pharmaceutical or ingredients labels and things like that. Wrapped around a three-dimensional can or bottle is not the most convenient way to approve it. pP