Some years ago I had a managing editor who demanded to know why a certain assignment’s photos weren’t in color… as she stood there looking at the B/W negs on the light table.
Over the years I’ve worked with a number of J-School grads who might have made better idiots than journalists because they have brought me greyscale art and wanted it reproduced in the paper as a color image. They get a blank look when I say that “Sure, it’ll be a CMYK file, but still in black and white.” :dubious:
Our paper recently bought an new multi-million dollar press and we were going through the nightmare of trying to cross-calibrate the press, our pre-press monitors and all of the photography monitors so that what we see on screen during the correction/toning process is accurately reproduced in print. To help this along, we print a neutral grey bar along the bottom of each color page to help the press gang adjust their inks. Invariably we get the call from the pressroom that we photogs have been toning all of our photos wrong, that we don’t know what we’re doing and that henceforth ALL PHOTOS WILL BE TONED BY THE PRESSROOM.
Pissed off , we all gather in the conference room for a Come-to-Jesus meeting with everyone involved in the process. Harsh words are hurled, insults thrown and integrities are questioned. When it was pointed out that the problem couldn’t possibly be our fault, the press gang went ape-shit. And then someone pointed to the printed grey bar for the last several days of production… instead of it being a lovely 18% grey, it was kind of purplish-brown and dark. Point made and the newsroom for the win. FWIW, the press still prints off color and the press gang insists that it is our fault!:smack:
