Using a commercial printer to print Pages prepared documents

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Please however provide samples and details of how you overcame problems such as indexing, low resolution graphics (if you have any), bleeds, photo reproduction, maintaining color consistency without named colors and any general tips and experience that you think useful.

Readers reading carefully are aware of that :

+Publication Date:+
+juin 10 2010+
ISBN/EAN13:
+1449542360 / 9781449542368+
+Page Count:+
276
+Binding Type:+
+US Trade Paper+
+Trim Size:+
+6" x 9"+
Language:
English
Color:
+*_Black and White_*+
+Related Categories:+
+Business & Economics / New Business Enterprises+

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) vendredi 30 juillet 2010 19:17:31

Henrik

I have located the thread you mentioned. It is very long, and I am slowly digesting it.

However I can but agree with Dragon 1's oft repeated mantra: How do you apply any of the vast amount of theoretical matter to Pages! because that is the user's problem.

Peter

There are 3rd party solutions to naming colors in the Color Picker but the inbuilt method is clumsy and of uncertain color space.

Ah, I see. You are using the term 'named colour' in a sense other than the technical sense I had in mind.

1. 'Named colour' can be used of a name in a page description; the name is of a premixed ('spot', non-process) colourant that is drawn on one and only one plate; there is, however, no colourimetric information about the colour that is supposedly specified. As a rule, there is no specification of the printing condition that reproduced the swatch, either.

2. 'Named colour' can be used of a name for R%(variable) G%(variable) B%(variable) where the RGB values in turn reference e.g. an ICC MNTR Monitor or ICC SPAC Colour Space profile with data space RGB; there is, therefore, colourimetric information for the device independent CIE colours defined by the device dependent RGB colourants.

3. 'Named colour' can be used as in 2 above, but without any colourimetry whatsoever. For instance, PostScript-based software that offered colourant pickers and allowed the colourant combinations to be named simply saved out device dependent colourant. Mostly the colourant pickers were CMYK and what was saved out was CMYK device colourant.

Further I can see no evidence that it is a true named variable that can retrospectively change references throughout a document.

Right, but the ability to create a custom name has nothing to do with ICC colour management. The ability to create a custom name can be supported in a non-colour managed context as much as in a colour managed context.

Again, whether the colour you see is the colour your audience sees depends on whether you specify in terms of CIE colourimetry, and on whether the colour devices involved are correctly calibrated and correctly characterised in ICC profiles.

What you call the colour in your application or your system is not the issue. You can call it what you like. The issue is whether the channel values / component values you create a custom name for in fact wire into the ICC colour management model.

You can't determine whether your UI does or does not specify colour by simply looking at the UI. You can look at your UI till your eyes pop out 🙂. It's what gets written into the underlying imaging model that matters.

/hh

How do you apply any of the vast amount of theoretical matter to Pages! because that is the user's problem.

No, the user's problem is how Apple system level services and Apple system PDF support functions, since Apple applications are clients of Apple system level services.

Adobe applications use no Apple system level services and no Microsoft system level services whatsoever, they are completely self-contained.

Following the thread at the turn of 2008, there were threads on the basics of PS and PDF, on the basics of colour specification, and on the basics of ISO 15930.

/hh

Henrik! Watch my finger! Stay focused!

The problem with colors in Pages is that the only way to specify them is via a swatch from the Color Specifier.

This is equivalent to a dab of paint on a painters palette. It may or may not be the same every time you use it and somebody can easily wipe it off with a turps rag when you are out of the room. Also what format it is in seems to be rather vague. The designer needs to know that what they have specified is true greyscale, cmyk or rgb or hex, whatever.

To maintain a consistent specification for a color in DTP you should use a color which has a name (a variable). It can then be applied with confidence and if you decide to change all heads and subheads from blue to red later on, you can do it without having to reapply every single instance.

The Color Picker maybe pretty but is impractical.

It crosses applications which superficially may be a good thing but in practice means you can inadvertently alter another application's or document's swatches.

Also whilst it saves sets of named colors, there seems no way to export and import those for reuse elsewhere.

Peter

The designer needs to know that what they have specified is true greyscale, cmyk or rgb or hex

Greyscale, CMYK (KCMY, YMCK depending on printing process), RGB, Hex are DEVICE DEPENDENT unless and until referenced to CIE colourimetry. They are not COLOUR SPECIFICATIONS. Sorry for the capitalisation, but if you want to learn, you need to pay attention.

To maintain a consistent specification for a color in DTP you should use a color which has a name (a variable).

CIE L*(%variable) a* (%variable) b* (%variable) D50 defines a COLOUR. If you don't like to specify in CIEL a*b D50, you can specify in device colourant percentages using e.g. the ICC device profile class.

What you as user are working with is then e.g. an RGB UI, but through the ICC device profile those RGB variables are referenced to CIE colourimetry.

When you open the Apple ColourPicker, by default you are specifying in sRGB D65 in Mac OS X 10.6 for RGB UK and in ANSI CGATS TR001 (SWOP) for CMYK UI.

Whether you work in CIEL a*b D50, or RGB referenced to CIEL a*b D50, or in CIELCh (lightness, chroma, hue) or some other interface is independent of whether you wish to name this.

It would help you in discussion, if you distinguished between your desire to call a colour by a custom name and the technical terms 'named colours', 'colour specification' and so on that have nothing to do with whether you can or cannot have a custom name in the UI of your software of choice. In technical terms, I can most certainly specify colour (CIE colourimetry), and communicate my colour specifications, whether or not my software of choice lets me set and save a custom name. It's not the name that makes it possible to communicate the colour, its the CIE colourimetry 🙂.

/hh

Henrik

You know perfectly well that we here are working at the desktop level, not the software/technical level and are not using your technical expressions, which only make communicating complex ideas worse.

How I specify my color in Pages demonstrably has an effect.

If I choose a 100% black greyscale, I can check that right through to the pdf and confirm that that is what I get. Clearly my intent, and practice is to have no cmy in that part of the image.

Giving a color swatch a name that can be independently set to various color specifications is extremely important in managing a job. It lets you retrospectively change color schemes without hunting down every single instance to then change it one by one.

Peter

not the software/technical level

It is simply silly to suggest that working with ICC imaging, with Unicode imaging, with PostScript, with PDF, with XPS, with HTML ... does not necessitate technical education, and then come complaining when what one wants to do does not work.

Sorry,
Henrik

btw For anyone else interested in what Henrik is referring to see:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1171879&start=0&tstart=0

P.

Yvan none of those answer the question.

As much as you might like to think they do.

Peter

As the OP made a Black and White book, I feel that color management isn't its concern.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) samedi 31 juillet 2010 10:10:36