DIGITAL IMAGERY

PIXEL PROPHET WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It used to be said that a week was a long time in politics, reflecting the temporary nature of policy and personality.

Well in the last twelve months we have come to expect that not a week, but even 24 hours is a lifetime.

Martin Christie scribes… Hopefully in the next few months we will begin to see the gradual ending of this ongoing nightmare, but much like some castaway drifting slowly towards don’t have a delete button, only a waste bin. The very fragile and temporary nature of purely digital information ensures that the often predicted demise of paper is still a very distant prospect, and the versatility an unknown shore, what can we expect when we finally of modern printers opens opportunities to produce much more than simple colour stretch our legs again? It won’t be the same familiar copy. Almost all print shops will have expanded their range of products substantially environment that’s for sure. Whatever the old normal was, to service customer demand, particularly with the flexibility of current inkjet and dyeit has been swept away and left with a vacuum, not only sublimation printers which have been chronicled in these pages over the years. There is for printers but anyone who used to deal with customers no likelihood that these products will suddenly lose popularity. In fact, it is much more directly over the counter. We have all had to adapt in the likely that personalisation possibilities will expand. (See our cover story on pages 20-21 last year, and will have to adapt further in the next. and New Profit Centre on page 28).

The simple prediction that more people will work from While it’s all too easy to spot the decline of outlets in the high street which had begun home ignores the tenuous nature of internet connections, some time before Covid, there is also an alternative promotion to shop local, and particularly on mobile devices, and the reality that it is by further to reduce waste by cutting down on extended deliveries of non-essential goods. no means a perfect means of communication. The fact that Online shopping has encouraged over production of items at the lowest possible cost, during the closure of schools and colleges, a large proportion a real cost hidden under the illusion of ‘free’ delivery, and a massive pile of wastage and of students were attempting to do their course work on unwanted goods. A reaction against this tide could be the growing trend to produce their phones highlights a flaw that we have become all just what you want, when you want it, and as close to home as possible. too aware of in dealings with customers since the devices The challenge for the print shop is going to be to grasp this demand, explore its became almost universal. The assumption of instant potential and be prepared to promote its part in it, rather than sit back and hope for communication and, more importantly, understanding is the best. But as well as the products in the virtual shop window, it’s the specialist a fatal mistake. A small screen ideal for simple tweets and knowledge that goes into their production that also needs to be promoted. This is snaps is hardly suitable for reviewing large documents and not to baffle the customer with science, but flag up that their order will get personal complex artwork. Inevitably errors are overlooked, and the professional attention not just another number in the production line. responsibility is put back on the receiver to second-guess This does rather fly in the face of the popular trend to make things easier to purchase whether information is actually correct. on the internet, but a fair number of people will have had as many bad experiences as

Way back in the last century when I did my first on the good, especially with anything more complicated than basic products. While we are job training as a journalist, there were no user aids to back well aware that every customer equipped with a mobile device has suddenly become up spelling, grammar and common sense. I was drilled to a photographer, designer and artist overnight, that’s not to say that we can’t indulge read what I had written as if being read by someone else. It is these creative juices profitably. It’s partly a matter of being aware of their limitations all too easy to suppose the reader understands because you and being able to compensate, rather than condemn and reject them for them. know what you meant. In the days of manual typewriters and Tippex, there was time for a second look. Now the COLOUR SPACE – A CAUSE OF ISSUES temptation of quickly pressing the send button is all too In recent columns, if regular readers can think back that far, I’ve looked at the great. And when it’s gone, it’s gone. Does anyone ever scroll colour differences between the visual space of the RGB rainbow, against the more through the daisy chain of messages to see if they all make limited range of printed CMYK. Modern printers, especially multi-cartridge inkjets, joined up thinking? Not many customers in my experience. are able to reach many more colour tones than previously possible, but ultimately In fact, it’s often a surprise when they do make sense. Don’t there is a limit. you love it when you reply to a print enquiry whether they You can catch up with QPP issues online if you want to fill in the details, although it’s want it in colour or black and white and you get the retort by no means an in depth analysis rather than it is sufficient to make the reader aware of “yes please”! the important points. And, as I always try in these columns, I present them in a way in

Of course with regular customers, like any shop, you would which you could also explain to a customer if need be. So having covered some of the tend to know what they wanted, or usually had. When limitations of output — due to the finite colour range of ink — there is one other great working at a distance that relationship is more difficult, and visual mystery which is why there is no such thing as the proper colour despite the fact while being a mind reader is a useful talent in the service that most customers think there is. industry, it’s not infallible or always rightly rewarded. The colours we see are only what our eyes and senses determine them to be. In

On a purely human level, the personal contact is an the same way, the colours on any screen are only what the device has translated the essential part of two-way communication; we are just wired digital information fed to it. And, just as any human eye shows variances, so does any up that way. But it is also so much more efficient because monitor, which is why matching what we see with what we print is such a black art. preferences and problems are so much more easily sorted The human eye can pick out a huge range of colours in changing light conditions one to one than batting back and forth over the airways. On through evolution from a time it was important to spot the difference between a zebra a practical level, as printers, we have to produce hard copy and a tiger in the long grass. that is real and permanent, so we need the sort of definites The digital lens, whether phone, camera or scanner has similar red, green and blue that printing machines demand. Once set in motion, they receptors, but it’s processing capacity at the moment, has a limited colour range in

comparison. The range within which a digital device displays this range is called its colour space, and is determined at creation, or in post processing output. In early digital days — some two decades ago — it was realised there needed to be some industry standard for colour space to have any hope of consistency in reproduction, device to device. So Adobe introduced its 1998 RGB which is still the profile most widely used for professional editing for print.

But although we talk about monitor screens being RGB, many monitors and certainly mobile phones and internet browsers cannot display even the colour range Adobe RGB has, so they have a lesser standard, sRGB. It’s actually the same three colours but they work within a narrower range. They miss out on the subtle tones so the gradient between the hue of one pixel and another is steeper. The colour transition in Adobe RGB is more gradual which makes both editing and more accurate printing easier. It’s not an issue if items are only viewed online because only the experienced eye will be able to spot much colour difference between one browser and another.

However, when it comes to the print stage, the printer has to decide when one colour becomes another, but will struggle if there is no information in the file itself, even if it looks like there is on the screen. The artificially enhanced modern mobile viewers are designed to show life-like movies and games more than the deeper, saturated tones needed for printing.

Most phones now do some form of colour adjustment of display admittedly, but this is more to do with viewing rather than accurate colour management. In any case, does anyone use anything other than the default settings, including those on the camera? And as camera phones have got better, users inevitably wield them at the extremes of their capabilities, in low light or at night for example. However good the capture, the image will have been translated into sRGB for output, as will anything uploaded to social media This might look good on Instagram, and transferred on. but if I’d used the original Adboe RGB Customers tend to file, it would have looked very flat and assume files are all desaturated. If I send this sRGB to print, it won’t have the same dynamic colour as the original photo. Colour space is the the same, but they are not. cause of a lot of issues. Most proper digital cameras are able to shoot in Adobe RGB, and on better ones there is an even wider gamut Pro Photo RGB available. But again, how many owners would know how to select the correct settings, let alone edit and upload without corrupting the colour space? Not that many even amongst those who call themselves photographers in my experience. A lot of the time the customer will be happy as long as the sky is blue and the grass is sort of green. But then there are the times the customer is not happy, and though they may be fewer, tend to take more time in the workplace.

The customer default setting is that they are right and you are wrong, but sometimes you need to do a bit of a reboot of the options without making out they are a complete idiot. This is where tact and diplomacy are also in a salesperson’s CV, but you need to be armed with the sort of the facts I’m detailing here.

We have, I’m sure, often had to reject a print file on the basis of size, in that there are just not enough pixels to stretch to a print. This is the only criteria available to online printers for quality control, and where the intervention of an experienced human eye can make the difference if it is carefully promoted.

In the great scheme of things the personal touch is going to be a unique selling point when people have had enough of keeping their distance from each other.