Hi,
My
name is Don Hutcheson and I’m an independent color management consultant.
I develop and install ICC and G7™-based systems for agencies, photographers, separators, printers,
publishers - in fact anyone who needs accurately-controlled color. 40 years of color scanning plus
a love of color science and photography help me bridge the learning
gap between conventional and modern color reproduction methods.
I am available for hire to set up a system in your own plant,
or you can come to one of my G7 Professional training courses. You can also catch
me preaching the color management gospel and G7 at trade shows, industry meetings and better brew pubs.
Background
I learned pre-press color separation through a 5 year apprenticeship at
Photengravers Ltd., Auckland, where I operated one of the first two scanners
in New Zealand - a Hell C-296 Vario-Cromograph. It exposed four separate continuous- tone films, 25 minutes
per color, which then had to be screened on an enlarger.
In the late 1970s I worked my way through England, Europe and Iraq (deserves
its own page of adventures) before coming to the USA in 1979 with
Linotype-Paul Scanner Division (later Royal Zenith, now ICG).
In 1988 I joined Crosfield Electronics where I ended up in DuPont's Core
Technology group working on Digital Waterproof and HiFi color.
I am basically a geek. I love to push technologies beyond their
intended uses and I believe laziness is the mother of invention - not that
I object to hard work - it's just that I hate wasted effort. If there's a
better, easier, cheaper way of doing something, I like to find it. That's
why I love color management. That's why I invented G7.
How
I got into RGB scanning
When I saw my first color scanner in 1968 I immediately realized its
potential for pure photography. Since then I have pioneered numerous RGB workflows
for photographers and photo labs. ICC profiles and Photoshop at last
make RGB the most practical workflow, even if the end result will be printed in CMYK.
If you want to know why, download my RGB_Arguments.
Experience
with soft proofing
From my first day of scanning back in 1968 I was dismayed by the awkward
user interface. How was I supposed to visualize the end result just by looking at numbers
on a dial? Why couldn't I see the effect of each control on a color TV, I
thought. (Silly idea.)
In the 1980’s I installed literally hundreds of color scanners
in USA Today and other US newspapers, where the average color experience was
nil. To simplify training and operation I persuaded ITEK (now ICG) to attach
a video monitor to the scanner, which showed the operator what we now call a "soft proof". The monitor could be calibrated (with difficulty)
to simulate any press, which turned scanner operation into a visual
process, infinitely easier and faster than before. For this ITEK won
the coveted Queen’s Award to Industry.
To make it easier to compare the monitor image to an actual proof
I persuaded Fred McCurdy at GTI to rig
up a dimmable D-50 viewing booth that would fit alongside the monitor. He
complained that he'd never sell more than one, but today the GTI
SOFV-1e, is a best seller and absolutely essential for effective
soft proofing. To see how it's used, download my Soft
Proofing Tips.
HiFi
Color - making lithography more like photography
A passionate love of photography lured me into this industry, but
when I saw my own photographs printed by offset, I was appalled.
“What happened to the reds?” I asked. But the old-time journeymen
couldn’t tell me why my saturated Kodachrome colors (in New Zealand they
were colours) looked so drab on press.
I soon decided it was due to weak inks, or low ink
density, and began a life-long quest for richer, more saturated printing.
In 1983 I developed an automated touch plate system for ITEK scanners (using $9 worth
of Radio Shack parts) called the "5th Color Control", which dramatically
improved deeply saturated colors. Later I persuaded DuPont
to develop HyperColor, a HiFi color software system based on the
5th Color Control.
To see how you can imitate the HyperColor effect using an ordinary 4-color ICC profile, download my HiFi_notes.
How I got hooked on color management
When Apple’s ColorSync 2.0 made automated color management viable in 1995, the first profiling software was awful, but I knew one day it would revolutionize the prepress world. So I formed Hutcheson Consulting (and later HutchColor, LLC) to help traditional users take advantage of this new technology. I worked with pioneers Franz Herbert & Dan Caldwell (then at ColorBlind, now with ICS) till their software was as good as any high-end drum scanner. Then I took it to real-world graphic arts printers and separators to see if they could break it.
At first color management was met with skepticism and fear, especially by traditional pre-press separators, but today the technology is universally accepted as a cost-effective tool. Resistance still exists amongst die-hard traditionalists, however, and I love watching crusty old CMYK scanner operators and dot etchers discover that RGB workflows and ICC profiles are not a threat at all, but simply a better and more fun way of doing the same old things.
My involvement with print standards
One of the eternal frustrations amongst publishers, agencies, and other print buyers, is the uncertainty about what a job will look like when it hits the press. The proof is one thing, but will the press match it? This frustration translates into lost press time and reduced profits, as the printer tries to 'chase the proof' to satisfy the client.
The root of the problem, until recently, was the lack of any true 'standard' of how a good press sheet should look. True, the US printing industry had SWOP (Specifications for Web Offset Publications) and GRACoL (General Requirements and Applications for Commercial Offset Lithography), but these were only 'specifications' with tolerances too loose for ICC-savvy users. Even the official ISO 12647 international printing standard (on which SWOP and GRACoL were, and still are, based) failed to define the actual printed "appearance" of a typical press adequately enough for today's users.
Without a standard of press appearance, there was no stable target for a proofing system to imitate. Conventional laminate-based color proofing systems like KPG MatchPrint, Fuji ColorArt, Agfa PressMatch and DuPont WaterProof all made beautiful presentation prints, but (a) they didn't match each other, and (b) each only approximated the appearance of a particular press. With the advent of ICC color management, however, any proofing system could be made to match virtually any 'target' press, but the question remained, what should that target be?
In 2003 I was asked by three major New York ad agencies to define that very target. What they wanted was a precise visual definition of 'standard appearance' for proofing and printing. One agency, Foote-Cone-Belding (now DRAFTFCB), decided to fund some research. In partnership with three local printers, Sandy Alexander, AGT and Applied Printing Technologies, we started an unofficial testing group, irreverently called The Manhattan Project, with the goal of creating a set of 'print appearance' standards with less ambiguity than the GRACoL and SWOP specifications.
Our first test was to produce a simulated TR001 proof at all four sites using a custom gray scale calibration method I'd been using for years, called "Press2Proof" that differed considerably from traditional dot-gain-based methods, plus standard ICC color management. All the proofs matched each other very closely, and FCB quickly approved the existing TR001 characterization data as their standard for publication proofing and printing. But when we tried the same experiment with GRACoL's newly-released DTR004 data, the results fell short of good commercial printing. So Sandy Alexander offered to host a trial press run to see if we could come up with some better data.
To avoid conflicting standards,we invited the GRACoL committee to participate, and the test evolved into a combined Manhattan Project/ GRACoL press run. A key goal was to test my unconventional Press2Proof method (now known by the IDEAlliance tradename 'G7™'). The Sandy run showed that Press2Proof controlled the visual appearance of a sheet much better, while still satisfying the basic intent of GRACoL. For my sins IDEAlliance made me chair of their GRACoL committee and the two projects were blended into one.
Everyone agreed the Sandy run produced better looking data than TR004, but the run was a compromise between Manhattan Project and GRACoL goals. We knew we could do better if we aimed at just one goal. To that end, in 2005 and 2006 GRACoL conducted additional press runs at a variety of commercial printers across the USA. The purpose of these runs was to research and develop an unambiguous description of how good CtP (Computer-to-Plate)-based commercial printing appears on a number 1 coated sheet. The second purpose was to simplify and document the Press2Proof method so anyone could accurately replicate that appearance on a press or proofing system.
The SWOP committee, seeing the success we were having, decided to adopt the same approach, and soon SWOP was merged with IDEAlliance as a sister group to GRACoL.
The main results of all this work were three new 'print appearance' specifications -
GRACoL2006_Coated1
SWOP2006_Coated3
SWOP2006_Coated5
- which
represent good CtP-based printing on coated number 1, 3, and 5 sheets. The data are currently (Sept 2007) under review by CGATS for eventual adoption as ISO standards. These and all future IDEAlliance characterization data sets will share, through a common G7 'backbone', some common visual characteristics with each other, like gray balance and neutral tonality, while still adhering to the existing ISO 12647 standards.
Other groups, notably the FTA (Flexographic Technical Association) are looking at adopting G7 too.
The main benefit of this 'shared appearance' philosophy is that a CMYK file created for one press type, but printed on another (by accident or design) should look as close as possible to the original intent WITHOUT any curve edits or ICC profile-based corrections. If all new US and foreign print appearance standards shared this concept, it would simplify and improve file exchange between different press types (commercial, publication, newsprint, flexo, etc.), no matter where they are.
In the past this goal was impractical due to the differences between negative and positive film-based plates and proofs, but thanks to today's almost universal use of CtP plate-making and digital proofing, virtually any imaging device can be 'forced' to conform to pre-set standards of gray balance and tonality using the G7 calibration method. By achieving this conformance with simple RIP (Raster Image Processor) curves, two of the most fundamental visual parameters, gray balance and neutral tonality, can be normalized at a sub-ICC profile level. If every press shared these characteristics, (a) a single 'standard' ICC profile could serve each print class, (b) the need for custom press profiling would be greatly reduced, and (c) pre-press and proofing workflows would be greatly simplified and less prone to error.
The challenges of print standardization are not trivial, given the enormous number of variables in offset printing and the many different interpretations of 'good' print appearance. But no matter how difficult and politically-challenging these tasks may be, there is an urgent need to undertake them. As one of the few industries on Earth without meaningful standards, today’s print production methods are often frustrating and inefficient. Any effort to define a universally-acceptable specification of print appearance is a vital step towards improving quality, efficiency and predictability for everyone, from creative design and photography, through pre-press and proofing, to plate-making and the press itself.
To learn more about SWOP, GRACoL, or G7, go to www.idealliance.org. Better still, join IDEAlliance. The work we are doing today will benefit everyone, but it also has to stand the test of time. The more individuals and companies involved at this stage, the better.
