I have two friends that own the local paper. The have approached me to help resolve a six month problem with the quality of their pictures in print. An example is todays front page with an AP picture clear as a bell and the local meeting picture which appears for the most part muddy and unsharp. I have gone throught their work flow from a landscape photographers viewpoint, but nothing seems obvious.
My gut feeling is that there is a embedded profile problem or a print profile conflict such as the one I might run into with my Epson 3800, say premium glossy when printing on luster paper.
Anyone in the news business that might be able to give me some direction to these guys i would appreciate. ( A press pass for all the local college ball games is in the works for me if I look good over their staff. Just a little vested interest for me.)
I worked for a newspaper for some time as a designer and this was always a problem. Is there a way that you can view the problem image next to the AP photo on the same monitor and perhaps make some visual comparisons between them?
Other than that - newspapers are a crap shoot as far as photo print quality - newsprint is just about the worst thing to print on (except maybe napkins!) There was a lot of variation in quality from one sheet to the next in newsprint - dot spread, paper integrity, press operator error etc, can all make it look like crap awful quick.
The obvious question about this "six month" problem would be: "What did you change procedurally about six-months ago?"
My background is printing management but for magazines and books, not newpapers so I'm not familar with the workflow used in newspaper side of the business. More information is needed to be be any help.
For example, what is the workflow for merging text and graphics?
Do they have a color managed workflow?
How are the AP photos supplied and integrated?
How are the local photos handled differently?
I suspect the problem is point where the RGB > CYMK conversion is done. It is done differently for offset printing on separate plates than for an ink-jet printer. In some systems hi-res color subjects are converted from RGB to CYMK per the press/paper profile is used to adjust for dot gain, gray component removal, and other variables then archived on an image server. A low-res version of the file is generated for layout purposes. At the time the plates are generated from the press imposed layouts the meta-data in the low-res "placeholder" layout images is used to crop, position and merge archived hi-res CYMK separated files. But the industry has been moving to an RGB / PDF workflow more like an inkjet where the color is kept in RGB to the point where the CYMK plates are imaged, with color management handled by the plate imager / digital press. So you can imagine how not knowing what workflow / equipment they are using makes it difficult to know where to start looking.
If the AP photos are reproducing OK and the local ones are not then you need to trace the steps backwards to the point where the high-resolution files sent to the imagesetter / platemaker look the same on screen and proof, and then what happens to them step-by-step afterwards to spot any differences. Sometimes overcompensation on press can mask the underlying root cause of the problem. A good place to start the investigation is by talking to the guys running the press. I always did that first because often the guys on the press, who must deal the cards dealt them on the plates, resort to all sorts of tricks of the trade - not always good technically- to deal with the problem.
