By Margie Dana
Daniel Dejan is one of those names I use as a litmus test in this industry. If someone’s not heard of Daniel, it means they are fairly new to the field or not really serious about it.
He has been a constant at our PBI events because he’s the best. Experienced, well read, a natural presenter and always on the cutting edge of design, print and paper technology, he has it all. He’s the North American ETC Print & Creative Manager for Sappi Fine Paper and has over 30 years’ experience.
One of his specialties is Color Management, and I admit that I’m asking a lot of him next month by only giving him 45 minutes to cover it. Oh boy.
Daniel’s one of only 200 G7 experts in the US. Why did he get G7 certified? Simple. He wasn’t pleased with the way that certain things were coming out on press.
One common myth about color management is that people believe the software is going to “take care of it.” Daniel’s response? “You have to know how to MAKE it take care of it.” He explains. “We don’t understand things like profiles, or how to use Photoshop to help us. More than anything, the print industry has changed insomuch that we used densitometry in printing for the longest time. It’s a perfect, in-shop measurement. For example, if I take densitometry readings and store them and call them up again to recreate them, I can get a fairly accurate reprint. But if I turn to a designer and say, “We had magenta up to 2.0, it means nothing.”
We were using the wrong kind of metrics, he added. As print has grown, many people print across the country simultaneously. So now we need a way to speak about color from shop to shop.
G7 came out of this need and changed how “we do what we do.” It put an emphasis on neutral grey and nonchromatic grey, said Daniel.
Another issue he raised was with graphic designers. “I’m horrified by the fact that so few designers work on calibrated monitors. I simply do not understand it. Their monitors aren’t calibrated to standards.
“As soon as I can identify what kind of monitor it is, I can optimize it. In this industry, we need to have a serious conversation about why and how monitors need to be calibrated.”
It’s not as though there aren’t tools available. He mentioned Pantone® and X-Rite, for starters. “If we are going to sell color to our customers, it means quite frankly that we have the tools of color. Most folks who are selling color to their customers don’t even have as much as a 5000 degree Kelvin booth (the optimum light source for viewing printed color). They also don’t have the tools to measure or calibrate color. We have been misled! The best thing that could’ve happened, happened: Pantone was acquired by X-Rite.”
Isn’t color primarily the printer’s responsibility? “We immediately point the finger of blame at the printer, where it’s not his fault,” he replied. “Also, for a long time, print was art. It was a craft. In the early ‘80s Felix Brunner said, ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure.’ If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it.”
Everything changed. Printers have become very exacting. Now we have the tools to help us learn how to measure and articulate color.
This is the conversation I’ve asked Daniel to initiate on September 13th at our show in Chicago. (One day I hope to have him offer a 3-hour masterclass in color management. Are you with me?)
Too many customers rely on their printers and depend on their software to do it all for them. Daniel’s color session will strive to make the audience members more knowledgeable, making them better prepared to talk color and know what the tools are that they should be using.
Finally, he’ll touch on RGB to CMYK conversation and discuss why what we see is not what we get.
Check out his session details on our site and come meet Daniel Dejan face to face in Chicago. Expect to become a Daniel groupie like the rest of us.
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