What's wrong with most colorist?

[edhopper]

A word to all colorists: What you see on your computer screen is not what is printed. It's radiant vs reflective light. Either re-calibrate your screen to approximated the printed page or figure out how bright to color it so it's not murky when printed.
90% of today's books are too dark. It seems no one in the business understands the basics of printing. Here's some tips, black gains in printing and printed red has black ink as a component.
Half the books I read look like they take place all at night.
I don't know why artist aren't up in arms the way their work is obscured.
The PC is a great tool, but your end product is printed. It has to look good on the page, not just on youe screen.

[dancj]

When Laura Depuy (sp?) was colouring Bryanh Hitch + Mark Waid's JLA, she was really angry because they used cheaper paper than they said they would. She had to adjust her colouring to look righ ton the cheaper paper.

That's pretty smart (and I suspect fairly rare)

[howyadoin]

I'd say this really applies to Captain America these days. I love the book, but goddamn, it's hard to figure out what's going on sometimes.

[Mark Wallace]

A word to all colorists: What you see on your computer screen is not what is printed. It's radiant vs reflective light. Either re-calibrate your screen to approximated the printed page or figure out how bright to color it so it's not murky when printed.
90% of today's books are too dark. It seems no one in the business understands the basics of printing. Here's some tips, black gains in printing and printed red has black ink as a component.
Half the books I read look like they take place all at night.
I don't know why artist aren't up in arms the way their work is obscured.
The PC is a great tool, but your end product is printed. It has to look good on the page, not just on youe screen.
There's a whole science to this; professionals in the printing industry take years to fully learn the craft involved in colour-matching, etc; but, since so much of the computer colouring is done by fanboys-turned-pros-because-they're-buddies-of-the-editors, you can expect that level of quality to be as lacking as the writing skills of most fanboys-turned-writer-because-they're-buddies-of-the-editors.

A "Roy Thomas" comic-colouring syndrome. Who'd have expected that, ten years ago?

[howyadoin]

There's a whole science to this; professionals in the printing industry take years to fully learn the craft involved in colour-matching, etc...The basics of it are pretty simple, though. I learned to colour-correct photos by the numbers in one day.

And if the comics are being laid out in InDesign, you can use the Separations Preview to look at the seps and - more importantly - the ink limits.

[edhopper]

I am a commercial artist and I learned this stuff too.
There should also be an Art Director at the Comic companies to oversee this stuff. But they don't. If you look at all the previews on this and other comics websites it is apparent that the colorist are coloring for the screen and not the printed page.
You would think that after a dozen or so issues of their work coming out murky and dark they would get a clue.

Captain American is one, Daredevil is another.
Gotham Central was about the worst example I've seen.

[Bright-Raven]

There should also be an Art Director at the Comic companies to oversee this stuff. But they don't.

Pardon? Yes, they do have Art Directors at all the major publishers. However, their job is not to bycheck evey last page that comes in for color nuances. They may or may not set the guidelines the editors are supposed to follow and relay to colorists so that the colorists know the variances required between paper stock, printer definitions, and other pertinent information (such information is usually being supplied by the printers specifically and is coordinated accordingly). If that information isn't relayed, is inaccurate, or is ignored at any level, then you're going to get a "garbage in, garbage out" result.

Certainly the colorist should be requesting all such information just to cover their own backsides and to operate within the set parameters. But it's not their sole responsibility to have that information at hand. It's the publisher's responsibility ultimately - they're the ones publishing the book. They ought to know what the hell they want and that ought to have print guides at the right levels so that both the publisher and printer know what the desired results are supposed to be before you go to mass production, y'know! Sheesh!

Are the books too dark? Yes, a lot of them are (Mark Wallace is a bit excessive in his estimation, but certainly an overabundance of titles do suffer from some level of color saturation). But is that solely the colorist's fault, or is that the fault of the entire creative team?

Consider some of the horrendous handcrafted inking and computer inking we have today also. Much of today's art often lacks the proper light and shadow effects in the line art itself - if the penciler was too lazy to do it, then the inker is supposed to compensate. Nowadays, many inkers just slap-dash the work or even digitally ink the work - much of it incomplete or inaccurate - and expect the colorists to create the light sources in computer, often times resulting in false lighting effects that work against the natural line art. This too makes a lot of books too dark, because the colorists are trying to create shadow effects to create the depth perception that the penciler and / or inker should have put in to begin with!

So don't lay the blame at any one party's feet. Certainly colorists have a certain amount of responsibility here, but so does everyone else involved in the art from production to printer.

[edhopper]

Bright-Raven,
I worded that poorly, When I said "they don't", I meant the Art Directors don't do their jobs. Not that the companies don't have them.
You first say that Art Directors can't go over every page. (Yes the can, it's called proof-reading and it's what editors are suppose to do) and then you say it's not the colorist responsibility, it's the publisher. It's both
We are not talking about one page's color nuance. We are talking about whole issues and entire series that have problems.
Your right about expectation of the colorist fixing art problems. This always ends up a mess, especially with the digitally inked books.
I think we are in agreement that this is a problem through out the industry that the industry as a whole should address.

[Agentum]

I'm not fond of comics with black around the panels, use the classic white paper instead, and save some black color.

[dancj]

You'd have thought in this day and age that they'd be able to do the compensating in the printing process so that the printed versions look pretty much the same as they do on screen - or even better, get the art package to have a mode were it simulates a particular paper quality and printing process so that they artist can see what is going to print

[Bright-Raven]

Dan:

The technology exists, it's just too costly for the common layperson (i.e. computer colorist) to afford.

Ed:

You first say that Art Directors can't go over every page. (Yes the can, it's called proof-reading and it's what editors are suppose to do)

The A.D. is *not* an editor. The Art Director's job revolves around design work and what art will be selected or created separately for the project campaigns for advertising, the licensing of the characters, packaging for licensed products, and the like.


The responsibilities you're talking about are more the Production Manager or Studio Manager's job.

And again, do you really think any one person is going to review 2,500 to 4,000 pages of materials every month consistently and accurately?

I can't say for certain, but from what I understand, part of the problem may be that the publishers have bypassed the mock up and just send the discs to the printers without a printed version at the proper values to save costs. If a printer has no printed guideline for comparative value, they're going to assume the data is correct on disc and go with it. Businesses are tremendously stupid when it comes to cutting costs and will often remove quality controls to lower production costs, so I wouldn't rule the possibility out.

[edhopper]

Bright raven,
I stand corrected, you are right about the Prod. Manager.
You are also right about everything being done on disk and sent PC to PC.
I don't think the problem is looking at 2500 pages a month. If my complaint was that a few pages were too dark, your statement would apply.
But it is entire runs of issue that have this problem. You would think that after years of books being to dark, some one in the production line would try to fix it.

I have another good example.
If any of you have the new Trials of Shazam book with the incredible Howard Porter art work;
Compare the printed book to the PC images on this page,
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=82534

Click on the images for a lager pic.

It really is a shame that we don't see how wonderful the art is.

[howyadoin]

You'd have thought in this day and age that they'd be able to do the compensating in the printing process so that the printed versions look pretty much the same as they do on screen - or even better, get the art package to have a mode were it simulates a particular paper quality and printing process so that they artist can see what is going to printAll those things are readily available, and included in Adobe Creative Suite - InDesign can show you the individual seps, plus the areas with the highest ink density and whether those areas are too saturated or not. And in Acrobat, you can preview a page and simulate the appearance of the paper you're printing on.

Alternately, colourists could learn to adjust colour the way everyone else in the print industry has been doing it for years - by the numbers. It's a proven method, and it generally works pretty well.

Or, the monitors can be adjusted to reflect how the pages will print. That's not all that complicated, either:

http://www.adcom.bg/Web/Colorvision/MonitorCalibration/SpyderPRO.htm

[howyadoin]

I have another good example.
If any of you have the new Trials of Shazam book with the incredible Howard Porter art work;
Compare the printed book to the PC images on this page,
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=82534

Click on the images for a lager pic.

It really is a shame that we don't see how wonderful the art is.How you're seeing it depends entirely on how your monitor is calibrated, though. I don't have the book, but onscreen it looks great to me.

[Bright-Raven]

Pretty much everything Howy's commented on solutions to the problem are in fact common sense answers. Especially working by the number codes that have been in use by the printers since the dot matrix days.

********

If my complaint was that a few pages were too dark, your statement would apply.
But it is entire runs of issue that have this problem. You would think that after years of books being to dark, some one in the production line would try to fix it.

Let me tell you a little story, Ed.

Back in 1995, I worked for my local newspaper as a layout technician and darkroom assistant. I would regularly read through articles as I was pasting them up on the boards to be sent to printer, and without exception I would find countless typographical, grammatical and spelling errors in EVERY article.

Being a PROFESSIONAL, I considered this unacceptable and would always go back to the writers, show them their mistakes and tell them to fix it and bring back the corrected copy. This pissed everyone off - it pissed the writers off because I was showing them up. It pissed the editors off because it showed their negligence and incompetence. It pissed off the Big Bosses because this always slowed production down.

So after five weeks on the job, I was summarily fired. Because I wanted a product worth producing. Because I saw the errors and simply wanted it done right.

So, Ed, do you really think anyone is going to take it upon themselves to "fix" this until the "big bosses" actually have the werewithal to order it done, or do you think they've learned from my experience just to let the product be shit?

[howyadoin]

Back in 1995, I worked for my local newspaper as a layout technician and darkroom assistant. I would regularly read through articles as I was pasting them up on the boards to be sent to printer, and without exception I would find countless typographical, grammatical and spelling errors in EVERY article.

Being a PROFESSIONAL, I considered this unacceptable and would always go back to the writers, show them their mistakes and tell them to fix it and bring back the corrected copy. This pissed everyone off - it pissed the writers off because I was showing them up. It pissed the editors off because it showed their negligence and incompetence. It pissed off the Big Bosses because this always slowed production down.Advertising's the same way. I used to point out grammatical errors that the copywriters should've fixed before the copy even came to me, but finally I stopped. I still fix spelling mistakes - because I'm required to run a spellcheck - but apparently pointing out that one of the Sacred Copywriters made a mistake is a mortal sin.

[edhopper]

Bright Raven and howyadoin,
Boy, are you guys cynical. It's like you think the PTB only care about making money and not putting out the best darn books possible, like they always say they are.:rolleyes:

howyadoin. You're right about different screens, but I guaranty you that no matter what screen you have, when you see the printed book the artwork suffers. Yes the art is amazing, which is more the shame.

The fact that this is an easily solvable problem. And that solutions are readily available only make it more infuriating.

I know my original post is what's wrong with colorist. I guess it should have been ; "What's wrong with today's comic book coloring?" and more importantly, what can be done to make it better?

[howyadoin]

howyadoin. You're right about different screens, but I guaranty you that no matter what screen you have, when you see the printed book the artwork suffers.That's a function of CMYK printing. There's no real way around that - CMYK has a much smaller colour gamut than RGB, as you undoubtedly know.

Unless you wanna print individual pages on inkjet printers. Not exactly cost-efficient for mass production.
I know my original post is what's wrong with colorist. I guess it should have been ; "What's wrong with today's comic book coloring?" and more importantly, what can be done to make it better?In my view the comic industry has always been years behind the rest of the print medium. They were still using letterpress printing years after offset came along, and they've always taken a long time to adjust to different typs of paper.

My guess is, Quebecor's got the technical knowledge (though my dealings with their Vancouver branch make me wonder), but Marvel and DC (etc.) just want things done on the cheap. They're probably going with some half-assed proofing system instead of Matchprints, and they're probably not adjusting things much (if at all) on press.

[Strannik]

Captain American is one, Daredevil is another.
Gotham Central was about the worst example I've seen.

You do realize that Daredevil and Gotham Central were supposed to have darker, muted colors. They are supposed to be urban, gritty and down-to-earth. The brighter colors would ruin it.

I mean, honestly.

Personally, the only time I had problem with color was when I was reading cheap Runaways digests, which were printed on the cheaper, non-glossy papers. The problem has since been corrected, but I got three digests where the colors are pale shadows of the way they appeared in comics.

I think part of the reason why there is so much grumbling is that older fans are used to more basic, brighter colors of yersteryear (pre-emptive apologies if I sound condencending).

[howyadoin]

You do realize that Daredevil and Gotham Central were supposed to have darker, muted colors. They are supposed to be urban, gritty and down-to-earth. The brighter colors would ruin it.

I mean, honestly.I think the colour saturation in Darevil is fine. In Captain America lately, it's a muddy mess that doesn't add anything to the story.

[edhopper]

You do realize that Daredevil and Gotham Central were supposed to have darker, muted colors. They are supposed to be urban, gritty and down-to-earth. The brighter colors would ruin it.

I mean, honestly.


Ah, yeah I do. But do you realize that there is a difference between a muted color palatte and printed colors so dark that the inked artwork is obscured.
I mean, honestly

[curefreak]

i dont know the technical ins and outs of coloring but im beginning to think that modern day colorists are lazy, why in the world does everything in the comics nowadays have to have the same color? i got so pissed off when i read the young avengers/runaways cross(wich i had a feeling was gonna look like shite but i took the gamble) 95% was in beige wtf is up with that?

[MacQuarrie]

i dont know the technical ins and outs of coloring but im beginning to think that modern day colorists are lazy, why in the world does everything in the comics nowadays have to have the same color? i got so pissed off when i read the young avengers/runaways cross(wich i had a feeling was gonna look like shite but i took the gamble) 95% was in beige wtf is up with that?

What's up with that is that on the screen those beige colors had a lot more variety in them, but when they get to press it all goes away.

Tips:
Always assume when coloring for print that anything over about 85% is goign to go solid, anything under about 10% is going to blow away, anything in betwen is going to be anywhere from 3 to 10% darker than it looks onscreen, and anything with less than about a 10% total difference between any other color is going to look like the same color. These numbers are ballpark figures; depending on the press, paper and linescreen, you may have even narrower gamuts than this.


Work in CMYK mode, not RGB.

Know the physical reality of printing. Running a four-color printing press is an art in its own, basically a half-and-half mix of locomotive and ballet. You can make a lot of microadjustments before you start, but once you get the thing going it's full steam ahead.

As somebody pointed out earlier, using black borders will darken a page. Not only perceptually (it looks darker), but physically (large areas of black ink will saturate the rollers and cause more ink to be put down in adjoining areas). Plan accordingly.

Back in the days before computers, when colors were separated by hand (God, I miss Amberlith), comics had a tight color range: 64 colors, period. You could have 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of each of the four colors, but the total amount of ink put down had to be less than (I think it was) 240%. Might have been 300%, but the paper was so absorbent that there was a lot of bleed and dot gain, so 240 is probably correct. If I were coloring comics, I would lay down all my flats in a palette almost that restrictive and then model from there with the shading and effects. I'd probably go in 20% increments: 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100% of each color, and total coverage of 300%.

[curefreak]

What's up with that is that on the screen those beige colors had a lot more variety in them, but when they get to press it all goes away.

Tips:
Always assume when coloring for print that anything over about 85% is goign to go solid, anything under about 10% is going to blow away, anything in betwen is going to be anywhere from 3 to 10% darker than it looks onscreen, and anything with less than about a 10% total difference between any other color is going to look like the same color. These numbers are ballpark figures; depending on the press, paper and linescreen, you may have even narrower gamuts than this.


Work in CMYK mode, not RGB.

Know the physical reality of printing. Running a four-color printing press is an art in its own, basically a half-and-half mix of locomotive and ballet. You can make a lot of microadjustments before you start, but once you get the thing going it's full steam ahead.

As somebody pointed out earlier, using black borders will darken a page. Not only perceptually (it looks darker), but physically (large areas of black ink will saturate the rollers and cause more ink to be put down in adjoining areas). Plan accordingly.

Back in the days before computers, when colors were separated by hand (God, I miss Amberlith), comics had a tight color range: 64 colors, period. You could have 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of each of the four colors, but the total amount of ink put down had to be less than (I think it was) 240%. Might have been 300%, but the paper was so absorbent that there was a lot of bleed and dot gain, so 240 is probably correct. If I were coloring comics, I would lay down all my flats in a palette almost that restrictive and then model from there with the shading and effects. I'd probably go in 20% increments: 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100% of each color, and total coverage of 300%.
well since i didnt understand a word of that..
the only logical explanation to me for it and considering this is a recent trend is lazy colorists.

[howyadoin]

Back in the days before computers, when colors were separated by hand (God, I miss Amberlith), comics had a tight color range: 64 colors, period. You could have 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of each of the four colors, but the total amount of ink put down had to be less than (I think it was) 240%. Might have been 300%, but the paper was so absorbent that there was a lot of bleed and dot gain, so 240 is probably correct.I'd say 240 is right. That's standard for newsprint.

[MacQuarrie]

well since i didnt understand a word of that..
the only logical explanation to me for it and considering this is a recent trend is lazy colorists.
Not lazy. Ignorant. They don't know the physical limitations of ink on paper, and can't be bothered to find out.

[MacQuarrie]

Which gives me a pretty good idea.

How difficult would it be to write a set of Photoshop actions that simulate various printing environments? It seems to me that a a set of color adjustments that allow the artist to see an approximation onscreen of what his work will look like on press, that would help avoid a lot of these all-beige murky comics pages.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Not lazy. Ignorant. They don't know the physical limitations of ink on paper, and can't be bothered to find out.

They just aren't running enough tests.

I did a thing recently at work, (I work at tv station) where we re-designed some of our promo spots.
I re-jigged the template and it looked great all through the process of getting it ready.
When it went to air however, I saw that some of the text was really hard to read.
The problem was, I'd been looking at it on tech monitors, which give are set to perfection - everything looks as it should.
It was only when I saw it on a normal tv, that I saw the problem.
(I then went back and re-did everything, giving more spacing to the letters).

I think more colourists need to look at, and think about, the end product and work back from there.

[Mark Wallace]

You'd have thought in this day and age that they'd be able to do the compensating in the printing process so that the printed versions look pretty much the same as they do on screen - or even better, get the art package to have a mode were it simulates a particular paper quality and printing process so that they artist can see what is going to print

That's standard procedure, or should be. All of the most-used graphic apps allow you to create ICC profiles, so that the printed image (on whatever paper) comes out looking exactly like it does on the monitor.

[scratchie]

Not lazy. Ignorant. They don't know the physical limitations of ink on paper, and can't be bothered to find out.Um, is there some reason why they can't be both? If they "can't be bothered to find out" the knowledge they need to do their job correctly, it sounds like they're pretty damn lazy.

[scratchie]

Back in the days before computers, when colors were separated by hand (God, I miss Amberlith), comics had a tight color range: 64 colors, period. I wonder if anyone would like to describe the physical process of doing a color separation in the old days. I've done some very peripheral work in preparing CD graphics for printing, but only during the "modern" era when "color separation" is a menu item in Quark. I'm curious about the actual process used in the pre-computer days.

[Bright-Raven]

Scratchie:

It doesn't make the colorist lazy if they "can't be bothered" to find out that information, because in order to find out that information properly, you have to go to your bosses. You cannot just call up the printer and say, "Hey, I'm the colorist on FONE BONE MAN by Whothehellcares Comics and I need to know how to set up my computer so that I'm in sync with your needs."

THAT is the job of the editor and production manager to get straight and inform the colorist of - WITHOUT the colorist having to ask for it!

GOT IT?!

[Bright-Raven]

Oversimplification time:

The person doing the separations had a color guide of the page at normal comics page size that was usually done by the colorist by hand in watercolors and / or markers, with the proper number codes for each color indexed and marked in the borders of the page, or on a separate sheet of paper paper clipped to the color guide.

This color guide was always used to match the print films so that you didn't get too dark or light, as it was presumed the color guide was a more or less "finalized" print look.

Then, the color separation person would shoot multiple films of the line art and fill the colors in four color tone - Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black, otherwise known as CMYK format. In order to merge the colors to create other shades / tones, the color separations worker follows the color codes and fills in each film to its appropriate level of each of those four colors and then overlays the levels so that they blend properly. The processor would have to balance all of their chemicals in processing correctly at each level, or there would be bleed over and other color mistakes. Correcting these errors was very expensive, which is why in newsprint comics you would find the mistakes because it wasn't worth the money to the comics publishers to have it fixed when comics were 35 to 75 cents a copy.

All of this process was done by hand in dot-matrix where someone actually filled in each little dot while looking through a magnifying lens, or they were done with cameras. Today, everything is done by scanners and computer programs so as to eliminate the "human error" - i.e. to eliminate jobs, quite frankly.

Scanners, despite much growth in the technology over the past 25 years, will never give you the same quality as good photography does. This creates some issues with art at times. This is why the painted comic books, like the ones Alex Ross does as a rule, are often still camera shot and those books are usually far more expensive as a result, as camera print processing is now a rarity to what it used to be.

[howyadoin]

You cannot just call up the printer and say, "Hey, I'm the colorist on FONE BONE MAN by Whothehellcares Comics and I need to know how to set up my computer so that I'm in sync with your needs."You can't? Quebecor must be different than any other print house I've ever worked with, then.

[Bright-Raven]

Howy:

One couldn't do it when my mother worked at one of the printing plants that the comics publishers used in Illinois back in the mid 80s. That sort of request was supposed to come from the publisher / client directly - if your name wasn't on the client's docket, then procedure meant they didn't talk to you. So you either got ignored, or they had to call the client on the docket for confirmation to discuss the project with you. Either way, not necessarily the result you were looking for.

When I worked with Arrow Comics, procedure seemed to be that the guy in charge of production handled all of this and only he made the calls to Quecebor or whomever the publisher was using at the time, not the other artists involved. (However, to be fair Arrow was only doing their covers in color so it shouldn't have been a problem for the guy to handle that workload.)

I don't know how much things have changed in the last two to four years, or how different companies set up their procedures. I just have my own personal experience and knowledge from my one parent's experiences in the printing business.

[howyadoin]

Howy:

One couldn't do it when my mother worked at one of the printing plants that the comics publishers used in Illinois back in the mid 80s. That sort of request was supposed to come from the publisher / client directly - if your name wasn't on the client's docket, then procedure meant they didn't talk to you. So you either got ignored, or they had to call the client on the docket for confirmation to discuss the project with you. Either way, not necessarily the result you were looking for.

When I worked with Arrow Comics, procedure seemed to be that the guy in charge of production handled all of this and only he made the calls to Quecebor or whomever the publisher was using at the time, not the other artists involved. (However, to be fair Arrow was only doing their covers in color so it shouldn't have been a problem for the guy to handle that workload.)

I don't know how much things have changed in the last two to four years, or how different companies set up their procedures. I just have my own personal experience and knowledge from my one parent's experiences in the printing business.Weird. Most of the print houses I deal with have monitor profiles and such that you can download from their websites, and are more than willing to discuss technical stuff with people. It's in their own best interests, after all.

That's really telling when it comes to Quebecor, though. I've dealt with their Vancouver office in the past and found them to be very unprofessional. I thought maybe that was just a local thing, but maybe it's indicative of bigger and more widespread problems.

[edhopper]

I like the conversation between Bright Raven and howyadoin. Obviously two pros. It just goes to show that with a minimal of effort this could be done.
I suppose that a loud chorus from the fan base might (just might) prompt some action.

[howyadoin]

How difficult would it be to write a set of Photoshop actions that simulate various printing environments?Well, you'd still need a properly-calibrated monitor, or the simulation wouldn't be much use.

But, you can use the Separations Preview in InDesign to check ink limits, and although it's a bit of a workaround, you can always generate a high-res PDF and use the Output Preview in Acrobat to simulate how it'll print.

[Bright-Raven]

Howy:

Quebecor has multiple divisions and press plants throughout North America, South America, Asia, and Europe. Several of their printing plants specialize in different types of production. So if your product somehow winds up at the wrong printing plant, there can be problems. Usually they tell the comics publishers to deliver their product to the right speciality house, though. (And last I was told, they aren't the same plants for pamphlets and GNs - that may or may not be the case now.)

As for their personnel, I've never had a problem with the few people I've talked to over the years, but I never dealt with their technical people, so I really cannot say.

Most of the print houses I deal with have monitor profiles and such that you can download from their websites, and are more than willing to discuss technical stuff with people. It's in their own best interests, after all.

Yup. I've seen some that do, others that don't. Just depends on the house and their workload.

[Bright-Raven]

Ed:

You can complain about it all you want. The general consensus amongst the colorists I've talked to is that the monitors are calibrated right and they've been told there is an expected color shift gradation from monitor to the page within acceptable guides.

Supposedly the editor or production manager is reviewing the proofs from the printer before the books go into mass production, and if there are any problems that are considered that bad, then it is addressed.

A few of them also told me it depends on which printing house prints the books whether the results are too dark, or too yellow, or grainy. But the colorists don't seem to really know if there's a problem unless they're called before a mass print run, or after the books are on the shelves. They adapt as they can, but when you're working weeks to months in advance, sometimes the balances don't show for several issues.

[edhopper]

Ed:
The general consensus amongst the colorists I've talked to is that the monitors are calibrated right and they've been told there is an expected color shift gradation from monitor to the page within acceptable guides.

And Brownie was doing a heck of a job. Seriously, I'm sure everyone in the production process says they work within the right parameters to make the books look right, but they aren't. You see this if you, ah, let's see....LOOK AT THE DAMN COMICS!
They can say they are technically doing the right corrections. But, they are producing murky, dark comics. The evidence is right before our eyes and they should fix it.
As shown here by pros such as you and howyadoin, fixing it is not that complicated. They may not get every comic right, but they are striking out now.

[Bright-Raven]

Ed:

The point I'm making is that the colorists are not going to go back on their editors. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. If the editor says the color shifts are within acceptable parameters, then even if the colorist doesn't agree (and there are plenty of times they don't), then it's still the editor's call. All they can do is try to adjust on their current or next assignment. But even so - if you don't know which plant your work is going to, you can't be certain to match that plant's parameters, either. As I said earlier, different formats and papers end up at different plants, and there's rush jobs and other factors at the printers that the colorist simply cannot be held accountable for.

Personally, I think it's stupid not to have their print color guides with the discs to send to the printers, and I think that's the major flaw in the process here, as the color guides are the answer - the printer adjusts to match the approved color guides, and then there should be no problems. But that seems to be considered an "old school" and out of date practice which has been eliminated to stay on the cheap and supposedly save time. How much time are you expending to freakin' print out your files to determine your color shifts? An hour? Two? Given how late books ship because of other people's crap, certainly you don't try to make up for the slack on this end. Oh wait. Yeah, they do. Because colorists are considered "computer jockeys" and not real artists, even in the medium. Just like inkers are "tracers". :rolleyes:

Nowdays it seems they just send the disc, let the printer print out off the disc and send the prints to the editor, who may request changes before mass production. Or at least that's how it was explained to me by different colorists.

But if that saves them $X, I don't think it's really going to matter to the corporations whether you like it or don't. Remember the character properties are what matter to them, not the books. Marvel and DC would probably just as soon kill their publishing divisions altogether if they could just put films and tv series out regularly.

[edhopper]

I'm in pretty much agreement with you BR. Maybe I should have named this thread "What's wrong with Production Managers when it comes to color?:)

As much as they claim to "care about the product", the people who produce these books can't be bothered to get it right. It's all about the property, not the books.

[MacQuarrie]

I wonder if anyone would like to describe the physical process of doing a color separation in the old days. I've done some very peripheral work in preparing CD graphics for printing, but only during the "modern" era when "color separation" is a menu item in Quark. I'm curious about the actual process used in the pre-computer days.
Here's how it used to be done...

Step one: The camera guy would shoot negatives of the comic pages at 66% of art size, resulting in film at actual comic book size of each page.

Step two: A person called a stripper would put each page on a light table in a darkened room, set up in sheets of 16 pages at a time. He or she would then lay a sheet of Rubylith or Amberlith (Amberlith is orange, rubylith is red; it's a peelable layer of color on a sheet of clear acetate.) The stripper would use an X-acto or swivel knife to cut stencils in the "Ruby" where the color goes. There would be a sheet for each tint of each color, in other words 16 sheets per flat. The ruby would be peeled away in the places where the color goes and left as a mask everywhere else. The stripper would punch each sheet with special holes that matched up to metal pins so that they all aligned properly.

Step three: the platemaker would register each sheet of Ruby one by one, inserting a "Ben Day screen" between the plate and the Ruby. A Ben Day Screen is a negative film of a dot pattern. These were available in 5% increments and in a variety of line screens. Comics used the 65-line screens in 25%, 50%, and 75% shades and at different angles. So the platemaker would put, for example, the Cyan plate into place, then lay the 100C Ruby on it, and expose the plate. Then he would remove the 100C Ruby and put down the 75%/45° Benday and the 75C Ruby, and expose that, then the 50C and then the 25C. Then that plate woudl be processed and the platemaker would do the same with the Magenta, Yellow and Black plates. When he was done, he would have four printing plates, each with four different tints of screen on them.

Step four: the plates are put on the press and aligned to each other, then the press is loaded with ink and run. It's a web press, so dozens of copies are printed in a few seconds. Registration and ink saturation is checked, and if all is well, the job is printed.

Stripping took hours and hours. You could always recognize a stripepr because they were all hunched over, stoop-shouldered, pale-skinned and had lousy eyes. It wasn't an easy job, and I only did it for a short while. The best thing about the desktop revolution is that it made stripping go away.

[howyadoin]

Stripping took hours and hours. You could always recognize a stripepr because they were all hunched over, stoop-shouldered, pale-skinned and had lousy eyes. It wasn't an easy job, and I only did it for a short while. The best thing about the desktop revolution is that it made stripping go away.Amen to that. I did a bit of it in college, and then on the job for about 6 months, and that was that.

It did really help me grasp the concept of colour separations, though.

[scratchie]

Yikes. What a chore. So it sounds like nobody ever literally colored the inked artwork (i.e. with a paintbrush or magic marker), is that correct? Did the colorist actually apply color to anything, or just indicate which colors went where?

[MacQuarrie]

Yikes. What a chore. So it sounds like nobody ever literally colored the inked artwork (i.e. with a paintbrush or magic marker), is that correct? Did the colorist actually apply color to anything, or just indicate which colors went where?
The colorist (sometimes AKA "the writer's girlfriend") would take comic-sized copies ("stats") of the pages and color them with Dr. Martin's Bleed-Proof Dyes (wonderful things to be sure; try 'em in an airbrush!), then indicate the color callouts, either in the margins or on a tissue overlay. Superman's costume would be tagged with the red parts marked 100M/100Y, the yellow 100Y, and the blue 100C/50M, for example. Every bit of color on every page had to be similarly tagged so that the poor soul with the swivel knife would know what to peel off.

ADVENTURES IN TEDIUM!

[MacQuarrie]

Scratchie:

It doesn't make the colorist lazy if they "can't be bothered" to find out that information, because in order to find out that information properly, you have to go to your bosses. You cannot just call up the printer and say, "Hey, I'm the colorist on FONE BONE MAN by Whothehellcares Comics and I need to know how to set up my computer so that I'm in sync with your needs."

THAT is the job of the editor and production manager to get straight and inform the colorist of - WITHOUT the colorist having to ask for it!

GOT IT?!
That wasn't what I was talking about. The skills needed can't be gleaned from a phone call to the printer. It takes a bit of effort. As in, actually looking at the printed comic and comparing it to what's on your screen; reading a lot of back issues of Step-by-Step (it's changed its name since then, but it used to be the best magazine for this sort of real-world stuff back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), Before & After and Impressions magazines; and learning about the way ink hits paper and what happens when it does.

[edhopper]

The skills needed can't be gleaned from a phone call to the printer. It takes a bit of effort. As in, actually looking at the printed comic and comparing it to what's on your screen; reading a lot of back issues of Step-by-Step (it's changed its name since then, but it used to be the best magazine for this sort of real-world stuff back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), Before & After and Impressions magazines; and learning about the way ink hits paper and what happens when it does.

So basically the colorists need to...learn they're craft!! Gosh, what a concept. A person in a profession needs to understand the technical aspects of the work they do.
It so much easier to make things look pretty on the Computer screen and not be bothered how the final printed product looks.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Scratchie:

It doesn't make the colorist lazy if they "can't be bothered" to find out that information, because in order to find out that information properly, you have to go to your bosses. You cannot just call up the printer and say, "Hey, I'm the colorist on FONE BONE MAN by Whothehellcares Comics and I need to know how to set up my computer so that I'm in sync with your needs."

THAT is the job of the editor and production manager to get straight and inform the colorist of - WITHOUT the colorist having to ask for it!

GOT IT?!

Here's a trick I do with TV stuff, when I need really specific information.
Figure out who in the organistation would know, and ring them.
Don't talk to the person in charge of the contract, or their salesman or whoever else - get put through to the guy who actually does it, they're happier if you do it right, and they aren't going to make any mistakes - which always happens if the info is second hand.
People who are doing technical work will always give out this info, regardless of any possibility.
In that sense, giving the colourist a free pass is wrong.
Any freelancer worth their salt knows that the boss isn't always going to be right, and it's up to them to get as much specific information they can before they start.
So a colourist saying 'I didn't know, the editor didn't tell me' is ridiculous.
(especially as the big prob I've had with outsiders doing work related to mine, is that they don't ask/listen to which format/specs are required and just do their own thing instead.)

[howyadoin]

Here's a trick I do with TV stuff, when I need really specific information.
Figure out who in the organistation would know, and ring them.
Don't talk to the person in charge of the contract, or their salesman or whoever else - get put through to the guy who actually does it, they're happier if you do it right, and they aren't going to make any mistakes - which always happens if the info is second hand.Bingo. I like to call this "talking to a grownup", 'cause if you're in sales or you're an account rep, then chances are pretty good that you have less technical knowledge than a little kid.

Not so coincidentally, this was the crux of the problems we had when dealing with Quebecor.