[scribus] Ink Coverage Preview differs from Acrobat Pro

["Christoph Schäfer"]

Hi Jonathan,

> Does this mean that if I use the same profile in Scribus and in Acrobat
> that I should get similar results?
> 
> @Christoph - > What are the variables that you are talking about?  I
> understand that there is a whole chain of processing that gets done during
> the printing process, but that is completely invisible to me.  Is there a
> web site that has a tutorial on this that describes the process?
> 
> What I'm trying to achieve is sending a pdf for a circular (flier) to a
> commecial printer and have the confidence that the printed results will
> match my intentions.  This printing company has a "Prinergy" setup that
> does Gray Component Replacement, Sets total ink coverage to 280%, Black
> Start @30%, Black Max @90% and Black Strength @ 50%.  At least that's what
> the printer people told me.  I understand this only in a general sort of
> way, but not really in terms of how it will affect the final product
> (which
> is printed, but I've not seen a hard copy of).
> 
> It could be that I'm worrying needlessly about this.  It just seems to me
> that if I send the printer a pdf that needs less tweaking by their print
> system, then I will be more likely to have the results match my
> intentions.

We are living in the 21st century now, and what you are trying to do looks to me like something you would have tried during the 90's ;). The only thing you need to have is the correct ICC profile from the printing company, because that's where things like specific values for ink coverage are being stored. If you don't operate the printing machine yourself, you should never fiddle with these things manually, *especially* since the printing company uses a Prinergy workflow, which has been created to handle this automatically. If all they can provide to you is a file with the extension *.joboptions instead, open it in a text editor and find out which ICC profile they actually use. Look for something like "/DestinationProfileName (Coated FOGRA27 \050ISO 12647-2:2004\051)" then use a search engine to find the respective profile, if it's not already installed on your computer.

As to not having seen a hard copy, better printing companies will provide a proof, so customers can judge whether the final result meets their intentions. It will also allow for complaints and a right for a re-run of the print if something went wrong.

HTH,

Christoph