Screen soft proofing newspaper application (1)

In recent years, the development of newspaper printing has promoted the full popularity of color newspaper publishing, and most newspapers have already achieved color newspaper printing. With the change of the appearance of newspapers, color newspaper printing has brought new problems to the production of newspapers. In particular, color control has become a difficult and blind spot for press quality management in newspapers. Due to the timeliness requirements of newspaper publishing, the traditional analog proofing technology cannot be promoted in the newspaper industry. Therefore, the increasingly mature digital proofing brings new choices to the newspaper printing industry due to its high degree of digitization and high output speed. The industry has been rapidly promoted. Most large and medium-sized newspaper manufacturers have installed digital proofing equipment. At the same time, another kind of quick proofing method, screen soft proofing, is increasingly being favored.

Screen soft proofing is a concept that has been proposed since the DTP system was formed. Its initial goal is to enable prepress production personnel to have an accurate prediction of the printing effect through the screen. Recently, with the development of display technology and color management technology, the relatively accurate screen soft proofing process has basically matured, and some foreign companies have also introduced screen soft proofing systems applied to remote review. Because the quality requirements of the printing industry for printing are significantly lower than those of commercial printing, the application of soft proofing of the screen extends to the printing process of newspapers with certain feasibility.

(A) Digital Proofing Application View

Digital proofing, also known as hard copying, is based on digital prepress technology and is based on the printing production environment. The new proofing technology that directly outputs the dot image after the tide P to color proofs. Color proofing is usually achieved by a color inkjet printer or a color laser printer that simulates printed colors using color control software. That is, based on the color rendering range of the color of the printed matter and the data after the Japanese Confucianism, a CCProfile property file is established, and the printing color is reproduced by using a color printing space with a larger color gamut and a matching color gamut space having a smaller space to reproduce the printing color. Different printing methods, different printing materials, generate different matching files.

The main purpose of the press printing factory to introduce digital proofing is to improve the printing quality of color newspapers. Because the newspaper printing ink has a large adjustment space, the mixed color consisting of two or more ink colors is often very prone to change in hue due to a change in the amount of ink in a certain color, and is particularly prominent in blue-violet color. From the original intention and effect of introducing digital proofing in newspaper printing factories, the purpose is completely different from commercial printing. It is to reduce the number of mistakes caused by colorless reference, resulting in errors such as misprinting and misalignment. Advertisers' print quality disputes.

Although digital proofing has many advantages, it can reduce color quality failures of color newspapers and improve the quality of printed color reproduction. After using digital proofing, the color control of newspaper printing has a basis, and disputes related to color also have a fair reference. However, after one or two years of application, we also found that the positivity of the printing presses for digital proofing is not high, and it has only been applied to individual versions of individual content, resulting in a low usage rate of most digital proofing equipment. The reason is related to the printing process and color control requirements of the newspaper industry. For example, digital proofing as an additional process, prolonged the prepress processing time, there is a fixed direction for the timeliness; due to the large number of newspaper layouts, a print station corresponding to the proof is too numerous, inconvenient to use; operating costs are still high; In addition, more additional information cannot be provided for printing. Although the proof speed of a single-piece version is not slow, it takes a long time for a newspaper of up to forty or fifty editions. The personnel and cost consumption during this period is not a small number. According to a small-scale survey conducted by the author, the digital proofs in the general newspaper printing industry account for only about 30% of the total amount of color newspapers. The main application is in the advertisement layouts and main layouts where the color is not easily controlled and the quality requirements are relatively high. The role of digital proofing is not fully realized. Due to the large color difference of different systems and the large color difference in newspaper printing, some large newspaper printing companies still have no plans to introduce digital proofing systems.

Another complex issue in the application of digital proofing in the newspaper industry is the different understanding of whether proofs are identical or reference proofs. At present, many newspapers' digital proofing programs are located in advertising, beauty editing and other departments, but they only provide school color reference for them. Because newspaper printing pursues high speed, high timeliness, and does not require high consistency in color quality, digital proofs are in a passive position in the printing industry, and have not yet become a necessary process for the printing of color newspapers.

(to be continued)