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Trading in hard-copy proofs and moving to screen-based proofing, or 'soft proofing', has been well documented through its infancy and formative years. It has previously found favour with newspapers and magazine publishers, but could now be set to break into other markets.

An example of this coming of age can be seen within print management firm HH Associates. Two years ago, the company didn’t offer the service. Now some 30-40% of clients use it and the figure is growing. All the RFIs [requests for information] we do now ask for soft proofing, says HH Associates technical services director Kevin Dunckley. In procurement and marketing, there’s awareness that it’s the way things are going.

Dunckley reckons that within a year, nearer to 70-80% of the firm’s clients will use soft proofing and there’s nothing to stop the rest of them switching over, other than the time taken to demonstrate the benefits and to train them on how the systems work.

Accuracy and accountability

Soft proofing is not in itself new. Products such as RealTimeProof have been around for a decade, while many firms still use more ad-hoc methods, such as emailing PDFs. While that offers flexibility and time and cost savings, it has also led to the loss of one of the most important facets of proofing – control.

When I arrived at HH, there were too many PDFs flying around by email. There was no audit trail and files for approval were getting stuck in people’s firewalls because the attachments were too big, says Dunckley. A soft-proofing system gives traceability and transparency. Pinging emails around is not the way.

Steve Emerson, of pre-press and digital distributor TPI, says: The biggest benefit is one that people overlook. Soft proofing is no good in isolation. It’s got to be embedded in business systems.

It’s really important for documents with legal or regulatory content as they may need to be eyeballed by a large number of people.

As examples, he cites those of both his agency customers integrating Dalim Dialogue into their studio systems to handle job booking, planning and budgeting; and corporates tying the system into their marketing resource management systems (MRM), which may lack an approval tracking component.

HH runs two soft-proofing systems to meet different customer needs. One, PDF-based Hhub, is more suited to text-heavy jobs, says Dunckley, while the other is Dalim Dialogue, which is used on brand campaigns where colour is critical.

While increased control is an added benefit of soft proofing, for many applications the crucial thing is colour, measured in ‘delta E’ (dE), with a rating of 1dE as a benchmarked target. There was an argument that a monitor couldn’t show the entire ISO Coated colour gamut, but the latest Eizo and Samsung monitors can now do so – and with a lower delta E than hard-copy proofs, claims Malcolm MacKenzie of colour specialist Targetcolour.

He gives the example of an ICS Remote Director client, which uses the software for monitor proofing in three print sites around the world. It has improved colour accuracy across the sites when working with hard copies from +/-3dE to +/-0.5dE. This means that the biggest discrepancy between sites has been slashed from a possibly problematic 6dE to just 1dE.

MacKenzie argues that monitor technology is now getting so good that contract soft proofing is about to break out from the newspaper and magazine sectors into others, including packaging.

The latest monitors allow you to proof spot colours and provide the ability to show the effect of changing a spot colour in real time, he says.

Benefits all round

But it remains publishers that are in the vanguard, with BBC Magazines and Guardian News & Media (GNM) both high-profile proponents of soft proofing. GNM project manager Dave Kirwan picked ICS Remote Director because it fitted the firm’s needs across editorial, image processing and print divisions, but has yet to start using the system in earnest.

We intend to do it, rather than having done it, Kirwan says.

He believes the first benefits for The Guardian will come at its print sites. It’s easier to view a proof on screen than a book of proofs. It puts it right in front of the minder’s face, he says. And often we’ve had no physical proofs before the press has got into good copy – especially for high-pagination, short-run work.

You might wonder what benefits press-side soft proofing has for the client, but Kirwan says it’s about the time factor. It seems crazy that files can be sent digitally to the print site in the blink of an eye
only for the proofs to have to rumble along behind by courier, and even remote hard-copy proofing has a time penalty with the time taken to output once the files are received.

TPI’s Emerson says: It’s all about speed to market and cost reduction. Soft proofing also breaks down geographic barriers. People are increasingly working across borders and on the move and can’t wait around for hard copies.

In Dunckley’s experience, the time saved could be a day, if not two to three days on more colour-critical campaigns. And he believes other savings may surprise people. Often you’ll find the cost of couriering the proofs is far higher than the cost of the proof itself, he says.

Despite the adoption of soft proofing, no one as yet is talking about totally eliminating hard copies. Most people are finding they can get the best of both worlds with the speed, accountability and cost savings of soft proofing combined with the reassurance of having a hard copy in their hands.

One client that used to do four rounds of proofs on everything – we’ve got that down to two, says Dunckley. We understand that you need a final sign-off with a hard copy, but why not eliminate the first couple of hard copy proofs – that gives you the best of both worlds. n

TOP TIPS

Moving to soft proofing

Culture is crucial Making those that need to pass proofs confident in judging colour on screen is the biggest challenge. Many people don’t trust the technology

Consider colour management Soft proofing relies on accurate colour management at your site and at your suppliers’, with routines for calibration and the correct viewing conditions

Sort out where separation occurs If you want to be confident in your soft proofs, you need to have control over the separation process to ensure the CMYK values you are proofing on screen are what will end up on press

Invest in modern monitors Monitors capable of displaying a stable CMYK reproduction start at around £600. The more you pay, the wider the viewing angle – important if you want more than one person at a time to view the proof on the same screen

Phase your implementation Are your staff and suppliers ready to jump straight to soft proofing, or do you need to move to remote proofing first? Pilot the switch to soft proofing with one project or department first to understand the implications

Source: Paul Sherfield, The Missing Horse Consultancy

CASE STUDY

The Carphone Warehouse

The Carphone Warehouse Ireland’s three-strong in-house studio team produces back-office literature, PoS material and a 56pp buyers’ guide with a print run of 170,000. It uses print management firm HH Associates’ soft proofing and approval system, which is based on Dalim Dialogue.

Time saved on the proofing of our buyers’ guide saves us money and greatly helps accuracy, says The Carphone Warehouse studio manager Neill Kenealy. The mobile phone industry changes prices on a daily basis. Dialogue allows us to follow changes in the market up to the minute our projects go to print.

Artwork is created in Adobe InDesign and the files are uploaded to HH’s Dialogue tool. The studio team then use a web browser to review and make annotations. When a document is closed, an email is generated and sent through to HH for the corrections to be made. Once further corrections are approved by The Carphone Warehouse, the page is released for platemaking.

The clarity of the screen image is far better than any office-based proofing system and there are the added features such as annotation, chat, measuring colours and measuring distance, says Kenealy. At the end of every project we have a history of all the comments made and corrections executed on each page.