Graphics Programs Reference
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tional darkroom again and would spend a great deal of effort trying to
understand how images were printed on a press. At that time, the only
issue photographers had to worry about was creating a well-exposed,
well-shot transparency. Hand that transparency to the client, go home,
and create an invoice for the job. If the final reproduction wasn't that
good, it wasn't my problem. Today, the world is a different place, where
photographers are capturing and in essence scanning their images in RGB
using a digital camera system. Many photographers are shooting film and
scanning in RGB on their desktop film scanners. We can no longer ignore
the processes that come about further down the reproduction chain.
Does that mean we need to handle CMYK conversions and under-
stand all this prepress nomenclature? We could output all digital files to
a transparency using a film recorder, and hand that off to the client. That
was the only viable pipeline I had in the early 1990s when I had to end
up with a transparency for reproduction. That expensive process de-
graded image quality and often produced color nightmares. One com-
pelling reason I suggest that photographers embrace the idea of handling
their work all the way to press is control and profits. Someone has to
control the color processes and be paid to do so. It might as well be you
or someone on your staff. I recognize that many photographers simply
want to take pictures and not be tied to a computer all day. Who better
to control the color intent of your images than you, the creator? Who
better to profit from this additional work than you, the photographer?
With a bit of education, some new tools, and a few tests under your belt,
I think you'll find, as I did, that producing superb color separations isn't
rocket science by any stretch of the imagination.
Even if you never produce a CMYK conversion, understanding the
processes, problems, and lingo may make you a better photographer since
ultimately, whatever image you produce that ends up on a press can be
improved early in the capture and imaging stage. The other reason I feel
most photographers should learn about prepress and printing is that so
much of their work is sent to four-color presses as the final output. At
this time, so few photographers understand the CMYK ink-on-paper
process that those who do make themselves more valuable to their
clients.
What Should You Supply?
Many photographers are under the impression that they can have their
RGB cake and eat it, too. That is, produce RGB data and hand it off to
someone expecting the CMYK issues to disappear. Others in the color
management food chain will handle the conversions and print process.
Although this is possible, more often than not, the resulting handling of
the RGB data is less than ideal. Sometimes the results are heinous! If we
go back in time to the days when all a photographer had to do was hand
off a properly exposed transparency, others handled the CMYK conver-
