Hearst Magazines Proves Print Proofing Accuracy

Hearst Magazines, part of Hearst Corporation, has installed GMG's Colorproof proofing system to boost the accuracy and consistency of its colour proofing workflow for editorial pages.

Supplied by GMG Americas, Colorproof is answering the need for consistency because Hearst operates 26 individual proofing systems.

As with many publishers, Hearst agrees with its printers to establish one colour standard - normally SWOP - to ensure a match between proof and press.

GMG said that with Colorproof, Hearst is consistently able to prove how accurately it can supply proofs to that standard.

Armed with an accurate SWOP proof, Hearst's multi-plant printers can now work more efficiently and accurately on press with a minimum of tweaking, added GMG.

GMG said that the objective of any colour proofing system is to achieve a match between proof and press.

However, in reality such perfection is elusive and users of most systems typically expect to perform fine colour adjustments to compensate for inaccurate matches.

The company added that with such an expectation in mind, Hearst was pleased to find that Colorproof demonstrated an ability to achieve most basic Pantone colours immediately.

Hearst's pre-press team installed the Colorproof software and trained the imaging personnel to calibrate the systems.

With standard profiles, it is claimed that users of Colorproof need to only run a single printer calibration process, whilst the re-designed user interface makes navigating in Colorproof more intuitive, enabling users to get up to speed more quickly, claimed GMG.

Most of Hearst's 19 US magazines (including Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, O, House Beautiful and Town and Country, for example) have their own production departments, as well as a digital imaging specialist who performs colour corrections and scanning.

Page layouts and internal proofs are also performed by those magazines.

Completed pages are sent to Hearst's central pre-press department, where they are trapped, pre-flighted, double-checked, re-proofed using Colorproof and sent to the printer.

Michael Patrissi, Hearst's colour and quality assurance analyst, explained: "Trying to get everyone on the same page was important.

Since we have implemented Colorproof, the magazines have the confidence that when they send us a file, it will look the same when we're finished with it.

The proofs we produce have the same colour match as the proofs they have produced using their own Colorproof systems.

As long as the printer does the same, we end up with good results." He added that feedback from Hearst's printers showed that although the company's proof-to-press accuracy was good, in certain areas of the colour gamut it could have been better.

And he added: "Our printers have commented how they can achieve a closer match to our proofs, resulting in faster make-readies.

We can stand behind what we send out now because Colorproof is able to verify a closer match to any particular colour target." Patrissi emphasised: "We didn't anticipate that when we brought in Colorproof.

We expected to do a little tweaking, then found we didn't have to." And he explained that Colorproof also has enabled the company to profile and output on different types of stocks, expanding its in-house capabilities with newsprint, poster and photographic media.

According to Patrissi the software's interface makes it fast and convenient to administer and calibrate machines and once the target is achieved, only a routine calibration was necessary.

He added: "Of the systems we evaluated, Colorproof was one of the best systems for achieving a very accurate match to any target.

It's customisable in the sense that you can take SWOP or GRACOL or anything else and match to it.

If you're looking for day-to-day repeatability, Colorproof is an excellent tool." GMG said that Colorproof calibrates digital inkjet proofing engines to produce digital contract colour proofs, matched to the printing press.

It contains a variety of tools and output modules for a range of output devices and can be calibrated against all standard colour charts using a spectrophotometer.

Colorproof is said to support all currently available spot colour systems, including the recent Pantone Goe and it is compatible with standard ICC profiles, which can be combined with GMG device link profiles.

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