CMYK Profiles and Paper Weight

[Kirk Gittings]

I am having a small disagreement with the printer that prints a couple of the magazines I regularly work for. One of the magazines recently (signs of the economic times) went over to a thinner paper stock. I want them to generate a new profile for me with the new paper, but they don't think it is necessary. The new paper is still decent with little bleed through or transparency. While color remains predictable, to me I think it has changed the ink absorption and my images seem to be printing a hair contrastier and compacting the shadow values. Does that make sense with a paper weight change?

[C. D. Keth]

It would make sense to me to make a new paper profile for ANY change in paper, not just weight.

[Gordon Moat]

Absolutely. Paper weight can affect opacity. Any paper company will tell you that. One thing you can do is find out what paper they are using at the publication, then contact a paper distributer or the paper manufacturer, and get the specifications. Then you can alter the profile yourself.

Barring finding that information, I would suggest dropping the Total Ink Limit to a lower value. Sometimes just doing that by 5% to 10% can make a huge difference. Then you only need to verify the darker tones and shadow areas in your files to ensure you are not out of gamut.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks Gordon.

[Kirk Gittings]

I have heard some good things aboiut these new generic SWOP profiles. Any thoughts?

http://www.gracol.org/resources/iccdownload.asp

From a LL post by Scott Martin about what you do when you do not have a custom profile from the printer:

I would suggest downloading the latest greatest SWOP (grade 3) profile from:

http://www.gracol.org/resources/iccdownload.asp

and convert your images to this newer SWOP profile using "Convert to Profile" with Relative Colorimetric and Black Point Compensation. These newer profiles offer better conversations to CMYK than Adobe's somewhat outdated profiles.

[Frank Petronio]

Then again, "a hair contrastier" is within the wide range of variables that occur day to day with offset printing... the weather, the variability of the paper quality, etc....

So you might be better off sticking to the same profile that everyone else in the magazine is already using so there is some consistency to everybody's images and the press operators can make global changes. Because they probably aren't going to adjust everything just to print the Gittings photo better at the expense of the ads and the rest of the magazine.

They teach pressmen to reproduce the ads properly first, then the copy. Guess where your photos rank?

[Kirk Gittings]

They teach pressmen to reproduce the ads properly first, then the copy. Guess where your photos rank?

Understood.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

I am having a small disagreement with the printer that prints a couple of the magazines I regularly work for. One of the magazines recently (signs of the economic times) went over to a thinner paper stock. I want them to generate a new profile for me with the new paper, but they don't think it is necessary. The new paper is still decent with little bleed through or transparency. While color remains predictable, to me I think it has changed the ink absorption and my images seem to be printing a hair contrastier and compacting the shadow values. Does that make sense with a paper weight change?

I recently switched papers, from Gould Gloss to EuroArt Gloss. Completely different mills. Did not change color profiles and there was absolutely no difference in reproduction of the same image on two of the different papers.

[Gordon Moat]

GRACoL is a good source. The value of a generic profile is when one image goes to one or more unknown outputs. In other words, you don't have a profile to work from, so you choose a variant of SWOP as a safe choice.

Yes and No to what Frank wrote. Yes that the press operators will vary the output accordingly. No in the implied message that they will get it right. If you are finding that a publication looks fairly nicely printed, but your images are an aspect that could be improved, then only you will be able to change that. Frank is right that they will not be that concerned about your image, unless it is a cover shot.

If you want to optimize your images in publications, then you need to control your files. Those who understand the relationships of paper and ink can make an improvement. Those who don't quite grasp this should stick to SWOP (pick one variation), or send off RGB files.

Gould do not make paper, they distribute it; check their list of available papers. EuroArt is from M-real papers. Anyone curious about papers should take a look at the EuroArt link, and view the caliper, opacity, whiteness, and brightness values. I got an M-real sampler about a year ago, and I like what they produce.

Note: if you want to compare two press papers (web or offset), ask for a 12.5" by 19" test paper through a paper vendor. The small swatch book and other materials are often more marketing than good examples of capability; though when you get larger printed samples those can be very informative.

The aspects to be most concerned about are brightness and opacity. How much the backside printed page is viewable through the front is an aspect of opacity. This can be adjusted and compensated by controlling total ink, or just controlling black ink levels. Brightness will affect all aspects of a printed image, though it will be more apparent an affect on the lighter tones; you can somewhat relate that to white point in your files; a 100 brightness paper is not always a true white, and might have some blueness to the paper. Adjusting for a brightness difference/change would be optimizing an image.

Caliper is the thickness of the paper. Two papers can have the same weight, but be different caliper. A thicker paper is not necessarily more or less opaque. Sometimes there is a shipping advantage for publications to carefully control weight and caliper choices, the sometimes result can be a thinner magazine, or lower shipping weight. This choice can affect images, though as Frank points out this should be compensated by the press operator.

If two different papers have the same whiteness and brightness, then technically images should look exactly the same. Where there might be some variance is when the whiteness value changes, usually apparent as one paper being slightly bluer than another (with high brightness value papers). So switching from one supplier to another should be possible without altering much on pre-press preparation.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography