Impasse working with/preparing for pre-press and separations

[Typothalamus]

Engrossed in producing our first 4-color offset book, a lengthy volume on architectural history and the built environment, forced, by circumstance to attempt to execute this at the highest level possible, comparable to anything by, e.g., Taschen, Prestel. Have spent years in development, negotiating image usage rights and all this entails, partly with grant monies, but largely supported by our press. I've had extradinary referrals on assistance in the area of separations (color separations and accurate translation to print), but am in quite a bind now. WIthout getting too bogged in the details, I'll bullet some areas:

▪ Printing with be in Latvia at Livonia Print. They run Heidelberg presses and have done, for example, the recent volume Carla Scarpa: The Complete Buildings for Prestel (London), exemplifying the quality they are capable of
▪ Printing on Artic Volume White stock, 130gsm
▪ The printer refers out to exactly one pre-press repro house, in Sweden
▪ The Swedish repro firm began work and at a surprisingly resonable price was producing results that, though needing some additional refinement, would've been nearly ideal because (as was only later understood) of their close working relationhip/ integrated workflow with the printer, something I had yet to appreciate fully. But the Swedish pre-press, due to an upcoming month-long holiday and perceived overly harsh critque of their Epson proofs, retreated and could not, at any cost and despite many attempts, be regained. This proved a torpedo to the workflow and would set us back months, interviewing other pre-press/repro houses in Germany and the US, then restarting the job with one, only to learn that we had had the best option in Sweden. The new pre-press proved disappointing without the attention to detail we expected, and at a far higher cost. After a month and a full set of Epson proofs with them, we cancelled. 

I returned to Taipei, attempting to engage a notable pre-press here, but without success. I've been kindly referred to a couple of the best separations experts in the US, yet this would cost in the $20-30K range, outside a feasable budget. But their admiration of the architect garners some very minimal consultation at no cost. As you may see, this is not a normal publication, but something of a legacy publication and passion. The impasse now is handling pre-press/ separations, and accurately reproducing and treating the images as required.

I have multiple questions.

The printer insists that they use only the Fogra 51 color profile, a standard EU color profile. The paper stock producer, however, has its own specific color profile for for the stock.

All the images procured over months and years directly from archives and photogrpahers are intimately familiar to me, and after seeing them in hundreds of Epson proofs, I know exactly the aesthetic direction and adjustments sought. But I cannot execute this techinically, not at the level that ensures accurate translation on press, and so the required specialists are needed, particularly with separations, a foreign art to me.

Local trusted retouchers are on hand, able to get the aesthetic direction right with me, at least in RGB before conversion to CMYK. But I/we cannot translate this accurately or with any assurance to files that will do what's needed on press. This is the realm of other experts, separators.  

What do others think of proceeding with the following plan?

1. Execuate all needed adjustments to images in RGB first.
2. Proceed either to do automated separations/conversions in ID for the pdf output; or have another pre-press/repro house here in Taipei try to enact the right curves to match what we have in RGB in CMKY on press. Do Epson proofs as needed.
3. Print at least one scatter wet proof. A scatter proof may be sufficient as a guide to what results we're really getting. on press 
4. Do the print run. I may attend, but not sure how, with my level of experience, I can guide/wrangle results there. 
5. And, backing up, I'm on an older version ID, CS6. Would using its automated conversions to CMYK (at the pdf output stage) be less capable than later versions?

Aplogies for the length. One way or another, this must come through. 

[Randy Hagan]

In short,

• Talk to your printer. Have their prepress operations prepare your job. They know their capabilities best, and likely produce beaucoup quality work for their own presses. For whatever reasons, it sounds like you've burned bridges with the best prepress house supporting your printer. By now, you're realizing you're not going to find anybody better. If your printer wants the job, they'll find ways to prep files to run it the best way they can. Make life easier and put it all on their shoulders.
• Get a contract proof. Make sure that both you and your printer understand that you expect the final job to match the final contract proof exactly. If the first proof isn't acceptable, lather-rinse-repeat until it is. Do not sign off until you and your printer are both clear the final contract proof is what you expect.
• Sit on the job. You and a production professional want to watch the pressrun, seeing press sheets continuously through the production run. Bring your contract proof. Be prepared to argue your case professionally if you're not seeing what you expect on the press sheets.

With all due respect, all the rest is needlessly complex. Making your life and everything around this job needlessly complex. Work with your printer, agree on a contract proof and monitor the press run. And have an experienced production pro at your side. A production pro can help you set genuine and consistent production expectations throughout the process, and advise you what can be done to get the results you want.

I'm sure this is a labor of love. But you're making it unnecessarily hard on yourself. It's impressive that you can scan the world to find the highest quality prepress operations. But putting it with your printer, and having a production pro at your side to help you trust and verify the process, should get you the best results and definitely make your life a lot easier.

Good luck,

Randy

[Typothalamus]

Greatly appreciate your response and consideration of the issues, Randy. The printer indicates their pre-press services are limited, necessitating we manage much of it elsewhere. However, the stratetgy of "rinse-and-repeat" interations until getting the results desired, and then holding the printer to the contract proof's results, is advice we'll be following. Thank you. Can I ask:

1. Are InDesign's automated CMYK conversions/separations adequate, srtong enough to avoid a need for a dedicated external separations expert (particularly if we can check and iterate through Epson proofs and a scatter wet proof)?

2. Have ID's auto CMYK conversions meaningfully improved between CS6 to now, or are we fine with CS6?

I'll work to locate a veteran production pro who can be more at my side. The ones who I've had some interaction with, particularly while still under the impression that a dedicated separations expert is called for, are booked out and $$$$$. I'm not readily aware of where to seek others but will find a path, yet if suggestios come to mind, please don't hesitate. 

[Randy Hagan]

I hate to say this, but you may find that letting your printer work with that prepress house instead of you doing so directly will help speed the job. They know how to work with each other, and maybe can do that for you if you leave it between themselves.

Now, on to your specific questions:

1) My background is in publications, where pleasing (as in good looking, but approximate and imprecise) color is the standard. The most precise standards I've had to meet would be the occasional picky advertiser who either a) needed to have precise color representation or b) knew the materials provided wouldn't support it, and planned to use that as a bargaining chip after the ad was published. I could get by with soft proofing with no issues.

You, on the other hand, are looking for precise, art book-quality reproduction. I'd suggest that for your purposes, you cannot use soft proofing. There are too many variables for you to honestly get an accurate soft proof on your computer screen, independent of the calibrated and synchronized process your vendors use to ensure accurate color on your screen. Separation proofs may not be necessary if in fact you can afford to run a couple rounds of contract proofs of the entire book, and use those to precisely define and direct what you expect for a final result. Look into your pricing with your printer to see if that's an economical course of action.

2) InDesign's auto CMYK conversions haven't meaningly improved since CS6, but you're identifying the wrong steps in the process. Your color correction/adjustment is likely being done in Photoshop or some equivalent image manipulation program, and that's where your focus should be. InDesign is only the hopper you're pouring all those disparate original elements into to create your book. Not only that, but I'd strongly suspect that if you asked your printer, they'd prefer you to submit your images, and place them in your InDesign layouts, as Apple or Adobe RGB formatted images and let the pros handle the color correction and conversion for your book. Once again, I think that your contract proof for the entire job will be the place to determine how well that's been done, and let the pros do the voodoo they do to get you the best results.

3) I understand that hiring a pro at color reproduction can be spendy. But that pro, who ideally will be someone trusted by both you and your printer, will save you a ton of money in the long run. They will be able to translate what you want from the printer, and will be able to explain precisely to you what can be done to get you the results you desire. It's like that old bromide: "Why is there never enough time to do things right, but there's always plenty of time to do it over again?" 

That trusted production pro can not only define and refine the standards to get the results you're looking for from your printer, but perhaps smooth the turbulent waters that are causing all the churn hindering how your prized project will be produced. By the time you get through this process, you may well find that buying that professional's time isn't expensive but invaluable.

Hope this helps,

Randy

[Typothalamus]

Randy, thank you for the guidance. Points about focusing on contract proofs and working with the right partners rather than becoming submerged in technical complexity are well taken. However, to clarify a few specifics based on your response:

On the printer's pre-press limitations: Livonia explicitly states they don't offer pre-press services and refer exclusively to one Swedish house (JK Morris) – the one we can no longer work with despite going through great lengths to re-engage them. So we're genuinely in a position of needing to handle pre-press elsewhere, then deliver print-ready PDFs to Livonia.

On your RGB workflow suggestion: You mention doing color work in PS, using ID as the layout "hopper," then submitting RGB files for the printer to handle CMYK conversion, but again, Livonia explicitly requires print-ready PDFs. What's the actual deliverable you suggested or presumed, based on prior experiences – to submit ID files directly, or to export a PDF with RGB images for the printer to convert? Or, export CMYK-converted files via basic auto conversion in ID's output to PDF (using Fogra 51) and try to have Livonia further refine results, despite their conveyed limitations on pre-press? There's a disconnect between what I'm telling you about Livonia's limitation on pre-press and your recommendation to have them do pre-press.

On the Photoshop workflow: When you mention color correction should happen in PS rather than ID, are you suggesting that even with a production pro involved, the RGB aesthetic work should be completed before handing off to the pro for CMYK conversion and press preparation? Note: To avoid misunderstanding here, image restoration and aesthetic work are distinct from CMYK conversions/separations and their accurate translation to print. We're prepared to handle the former, not the latter, to be clear. And "color correction" may not indicate what I mean, i.e., that we're more concerned with curves, density, preserving finer gradations of midtones, and textural and shadow detail, than we are with absolute 100% precision color accuracy with no minor shift in hues whatsoever. Images are 75% B&W.

On contract proofs: Livonia charges nearly $6000 for full Epson proofs while the print run itself is $12,000. So Epsons are, it looks, in the range of a single offset-printed copy, which would be the final word. Given this, I think no one is recommending full book Epsons at that rate. Yes though to scatter proofs, both Epson-type and wet. As for on-screen soft proofing, I never believed or meant to suggest this was sufficiently accurate, hence much of the discussion.

On finding a production pro: Surely quite correct on the long-term value. Do you have suggestions for locating experienced production professionals who work with European printing operations? Most of my contacts have been U.S.-focused.

Final note: We've talked with the printer for 6 months. A lack of communication is not the issue.

Thanks again for cutting through the complexity. The "rinse-and-repeat until satisfied" approach with contract proofs sounds right regardless of workflow.

[Randy Hagan]

On the prepress house limitations: I've been tap-dancing around addressing this directly, but I guess it's time to define this in simple terms. Does the prepress house refuse to work on the job, or does it refuse to work with you? If one printer works exclusively with one prepress house, are they willing to intercede for you to get the job done? And if not, is it worth it to you to stay with Livonia or should you leave and find another printer?

No matter how you got into this bind, you've got to get out of it. Because no matter who you use for prepress, you've opened an avenue where if things go sideways, neither the prepress house or the printer are positioned to take responsibility for it and each will blame the other for the problem. I'd suggest that maybe you don't need another prepress house. You need another printer.

ON RGB workflow: If your printer explicitly requires print-ready PDFs, they need to explicitly define to you what they consider print-ready PDFs. What requirements they have, and what they need from you to do the job. If they're taking digital files, they're either subbing out preparing press-ready materials or they're doing them in-house. I just scanned their website, and there's nothing really unique to their requirements. They do want CMYK files, because they're printers. They want to take/make film, burn plates, lock them onto the press and start the press counters. That's what they're set up to do best. 

The reason they don't want RGB graphics is because they rely on somebody else to do the conversion for them. I can't emphasize this enough: for a job this exacting, you don't want to be that person. Your posts sound like you're considering it and that's the wrong idea. I'm sure their prices are impressive, because they're Baltic country vendors who can price very competitively based on their local economy and they handle one part of the process precisely. 

I have no idea of what the pricing is between their preferred prepress vendor and their pressrun, but I would take that combined sum and price it against a full-service book printer who can support you with both the prepress and printing parts of the process. It hurts me to say this, because I used to run a prepress house, but you want one company which can handle your book job. You want a company that can ensure that every part of the process is done to specification and insure that they can fix problems correctly, efficiently and quickly if they do crop up. 

As far as your question about the deliverables? I would suggest that you provide the prepress department with your original packaged InDesign files, which will include all the images and illustrations placed within it. You can find out more about packaging InDesign files for print through this link. For your purposes, dismiss the responses before the last one, which walks you through the packaging process and explains what that does.

To put it simply printers want press-ready PDFs they're not expected to mess with. Prepress operators like press-ready PDFs, but don't count on them to be that way. For an exacting project like yours with lots of images that need to be prepared for art book-quality reproduction, they will also want all the relevant original files so they can fix problems/complications as they find them and get you the best results possible from what you provide them.

When both those parties are inside the same company, they're fully responsible for getting you the results you expect and familiar with what's required on their side to deliver it.

On Photoshop: Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting. You want to do all your image adjustment/correction of each image, at the image manipulation level, using whatever color settings your printer specifies in Photoshop's color settings. Then you place the corrected image to proper prepress specifications into your InDesign layouts. Output from InDesign should reflect those same color settings, but you want the images prepared to specification and InDesign output to mirror that specification. You do not want to use InDesign to apply those specifications to images that do not match them. That workflow is fraught with peril.

On contract proofs: Livonia's website specifically excludes color reproduction quality from its proofing processes, by running images at low resolution for position only. They may be providing a proof that they want you to sign off on, but they're exempting themselves from even ensuring, much less insuring, that your final proof is representative of the color reproduction you will get for your book. That's not a contract proof; that's a printed disclaimer requiring your signature.

On finding a production pro: I regret that I don't have recommendations for a European-based consultant to help you. We have some very good ones commenting around this forum, but not specifically in this post. Bob and I are both located stateside, and probably not best suited to supply the capabilities you need. 

Frankly, I think you need to flip the script. If you're spending time in Taipei, it's a short hop to Singapore and multiple high-quality book and publication printers. I understand there are great ones in Taipei as well, but I've never done work there. I've worked with printers from Singapore on a handful of high-end projects over the years though, and was thoroughly satisfied.

It's been a good 20 years since I've specced a job from there. But the prices were competitive on a worldwide level, the quality was excellent and, by my experience, they're receptive to working with you to get the best possible results. The only liability for my needs in the US was waiting for product to arrive on the proverbial slow boat from China. I'm inferring from what you've written here that quality is your overriding priority and time not as much. In that case, it's probably not an issue for you.

As I've read through all this, I'm beginning to understand your frustration. Right now it must seem like you're racing your way into a blind box at 100 mph. From my limited perspective, I'd say that's because you are.

You don't have a full understanding of what's required to prepare a high-end book project for quality print reproduction, and your current vendors aren't fully invested in providing that for you. Which isn't surprising, because that isn't their job. Their job is getting you to sign off, run their materials and bill you for their services. You really need that pro in the middle. Someone who will understand what you want, be able to translate that into terms your vendors can understand and understand their capabilities enough to explain what's possible and what's impossible, and advocate for your interests throughout the production process. 

The good news is, by my experience, if you take this job to the Far East a good print rep could provide this service for you. Which is a lot cheaper than hiring one on your own.

I've got to sign off from here, because I've spent a good 5-6 hours gratis advising you through this forum. Not to hustle your business, but if you'd like to continue this you can contact me by private message through this forum and we can work out whether you'd like this discussion to continue.

Good luck,

Randy

[Typothalamus]

Randy - Thank you for the detailed response and time spent on this. To clarify: I understand your recommendation to find a full-service printer, but given my timeline and existing relationship with Livonia, and a few other constraints that require this, I'm proceeding with them. My specific question was about a workflow within Livonia's constraints: Should I do aesthetic work with my retoucher in RGB then find a separator to handle the technical conversion before creating the final PDF for Livonia?

You mentioned "you don't want to be that person" doing conversion work, which suggests finding a separator for the technical CMYK work while I handle the aesthetic RGB adjustments. To clarify the division of labor: I perfect the aesthetic appearance in RGB with our retoucher, then hand off those finished files to a specialist who handles CMYK conversion - not me/us dealing with technical color settings during the aesthetic phase.

Regarding printing in Asia: All this actually started in Taipei, long ago, with local printers, but was forced into a switch to Europe as they wouldn't use the Arctic stock without applying an aqueous coating, a glare-inducing and texture-disrupting coating, to our very deliberately selected premium European paper (and refused our required specific color and finish German endband - an essential aesthetic requirement tying into our cover design's color scheme). 

However, the essential question above is, I hope, clear. Sincere thanks again.

Very frankly, it's thousands, not hundreds, of hours over 4.5 years invested as editor, archives researcher, image curator, usage rights negotiator, and lead designer, essentially gratis until the title is in circulation; it's shaping up to be a kind of last effort/step in this world. And the architect's surviving son is in his final days. The history is complex; the project is the definition of 'critical'.

[Randy Hagan]

Good luck.

[Typothalamus]

I'm here with a direct, straightforward question after re-reviewing detailed responses, filled with excellent general advice that I appreciate, but seeming to miss a specific question:

Is a workflow of handling image retouching in RGB followed by engaging a specialist separator, acceptable; or are you suggesting one pre-press must do all retouching in CMYK and be the same people doing separations?

It's not the all-under-one-house scenario recommended, but a division of labor. You may refer back to general advice, but I'm presenting a case with options available. We're not starting from scratch, and have relationships, investments, and constraints of all type in place. Again, I appreciate your efforts greatly - they're not at all unrecognized, as I pose a basic follow-up, a clarification, that I can't see in the reply. Thank you. Others may respond.

[Randy Hagan]

And I specifically told you that you've run up enough gratis support from me. This is my direct, straightforward response. Good luck to you.

[Typothalamus]

And I gently phrased what you were missing in my extensively documented experience and days-long parsing of your replies. Now that I've pointed it out, directly, our relationship is gone. Let's not get any ruder, please. I am on a knife's edge. Literally.

[BobLevine]

Randy's right. Your entire post is filled with completely unnecessary details which is quite likely to get you less help.

And please, stop adding links to your post. They're not only unnecessary, they're a bit on the spammy side.

[Typothalamus]

"The post is filled with unnecessary details" as opposed to "your entire post" and "completely unnecessary" would've conveyed the message fine. Links were not intended to be spam - they linked what I felt were relevant info, specifications, and examples under discussion. Didn't see links proscribed in guidelines and was unaware outsiders could edit. Again, it's a complex history I've tried to distill, without perfect success, but bearing many of the relevant details. Apologies. I'm on the edge.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"The printer insists that they use only the Fogra 51 color profile, a standard EU color profile. The paper stock producer, however, has its own specific color profile for for the stock."

It's the profile the printer wants to use that matters. They have calibrated their workflow to that so to use a different paper profile may actually do more harm than good.

At the printer i used to work for, we created custom profiles for our different presses on a selection of standard stocks we would use, and provide those to our clients, when required, but these would only be slight deviations from standards like FOGRA and GRACOL (our standard was GRACOL).

[Typothalamus]

Thank you, Brad. Speaking directly with Arctic Paper, the European paper stock producer, and knowing of their tailored profile for this unique stock, naturally raised a question of whether it may be best. Thanks for clarifying that the bottom line is the printer's profile and their chosen callibrations. Appreciate it.