Imaging 12 - Fujifilm Graphic Systems

SCANNING case study – Triangle Print, Northcliffe Newspapers Group
Quattro wins scanning Derby
Northcliffe midlands newspapers are using a
Fujifilm Lanovia Quattro scanner for speed
and quality.
“The Fujifilm flatbeds
are as good as our
old drum scanner.”
Paul Kilminster, deputy systems
imaging manager, Triangle Print
28
roducing the Derby Evening Telegraph and the
Nottingham Evening Post city newspapers plus the
P monthly colour magazine Derbyshire Now, with colour
in all three, meant a requirement for both repro quality
and throughput in the editorial production department at
Northcliffe’s Derby Evening Telegraph site.
A Fujifilm Lanovia C-550 scanner installed at the Derbybased
Triangle Print subsidiary in early 1999 for normal
scanning and copydot work had proved itself to be ‘more than
acceptable’ in terms of quality and productivity according to
regional systems imaging manager Nick Preston, so when a
new scanner was needed to replace an older drum unit, it was
logical to look at the new Fujifilm models.
After a demonstration of ColourKit at Ipex 2002 Preston
and his deputy Paul Kilminster confirmed their order for a
Fujifilm Lanovia Quattro scanner. The unit was delivered the
following month and after a swift and trouble-free installation
was up and running.
“We were impressed with the original Lanovia we bought,”
commented Paul Kilminster, “and the Quattro has even better
software in ColourKit and is easier to use. The Fujifilm flatbeds
are as good as our old drum scanner.”
Scanner operators have noticed that in addition to
producing sharper images, the scanning time is significantly
reduced on the Quattro. Although most images are scanned
from colour print – virtually everything is now shot on colour
negative by staff photographers – typically hundreds of
images have to be scanned each day, so the extra productivity
is essential.
Imaging 12 autumn 2002
may have a ‘set paper to white’ option
that will automatically lose the paper
colour but the result might be less visually
pleasing than allowing some tone into the
blank areas.
The dynamic duo –
UCR and GCR
Two acronyms that can strike fear into the
hearts of inexperienced scanner operators
are UCR (under colour removal) and GCR
(grey component replacement). The
former removes cyan, magenta and yellow
from black or heavy shadow areas in order
to limit ink coverage. This is typically used
in newspapers or any other high volume/
high speed printing on thin stock where
drying time is critical.
GCR applies the same principle –
replacing equal proportions of cyan,
magenta and yellow with an equivalent
percentage of black – across the entire
image, again to limit ink usage which
saves both money (black ink is still
cheaper) and drying time.
The good news is that in an ICC-based
colour workflow both these parameters
can be built into the output profile, so for
regular repeating newspaper or catalogue
work it should only be necessary to obtain
the correct profile (see also article on
colour management in this issue, page 22)
and then designers can safely work on the
image within the constraints of the output
process. If you have to produce the
occasional one-off scan for newspaper use
and an ICC profile isn’t available or appropriate,
the target publications should be
able to supply you with UCR/GCR specifications
that can be entered via your
scanning software or in Photoshop and
used to create a suitable CMYK image.
Feeling negative?
Scanning from colour negatives was
always the bugbear of professional repro
houses. Usually drum scanner operators
would prefer to scan from a print, as it
gave them an ‘original’ to match. While
this benefit still applies (and Fujifilm’s
Peter Virgo opines that colour transparency
is still the better medium),
‘intelligent’ scanning of negatives has
come a long way recently towards overcoming
the inherent variability in colour
negative stocks and the effects of
different processing.
Good scanning software should be able
to analyse a negative and produce an
acceptable scan with minimal intervention.
Fujifilm’s ColourKit embodies the negative
scanning expertise from the company’s
professional photographic roots and can
analyse negatives for under- or overexposure,
detect the presence of flesh
tones and adjust colour balance and
density settings accordingly. While it’s
always preferable to have a good reference
to scan to, capabilities like these take
most of the guesswork out of scanning
orphaned negs, leaving only minor tweaks
to be made by eye.
From print to print
Sometimes you’re faced with an original
that’s a screened and printed image, or
perhaps you’re presented with a set of film
separations and told to get on with it.
Don’t panic, once again current software
should cover this. De-screening of printed
originals and copydot scanning of separations
aren’t new ideas by any means, but
what used to be fairly esoteric and special-
SEE YOU SOOM
It’s always best to scan for the specific
output instance, but in today’s multiple
media repurposable environment that’s not
always desirable or even possible. Hence
the evolution of Scan Once Output Many
(SOOM), a scanning workflow that aims to
separate as many output-specific parameters
(image size, colour space, screen/
resolution, etc) from the raw image data as
possible so that the same initial scan can be
used to generate a host of daughter
variants to suit the widest range of output
circumstances, from glossy magazines to
newspapers, brochures to Web sites.
Ideally a SOOM setup will apply all
output-specific calculations, such as
resampling, sharpening, ICC profile-based
colour transformations (including UCR/GCR
and any other reproduction-related colour
correction) when the specific daughter file
is generated, leaving the original data
untouched. Products from different vendors
achieve this to a greater or lesser degree.
Fujifilm’s ColourKit uses a nondestructive
editing technique that stores all
image alterations in a profile, including
scaling, sharpening and even the modulation
transfer function of the scanning
device, which is used in conjunction with
sharpening and scaling routines to produce
optimised results from photomultiplier
(drum) scanners or CCD (flatbed) devices.
However many output-specific images are
generated, the original raw scan data is
preserved to maximise quality.