Automation in Color Workflows

摘要

Due to the increased use of color in digital printing environments and ongoing digitization in the traditional print markets, digital color is becoming ever more important. Color however is about emotion, which seems to conflict with the emotionless automatic transformation of color spaces to which color handling is often reduced in this digitization process. Furthermore we observe that the control of output moves upstream from the operators to the pre-press and even to the creative people responsible for the design. Considering the above, it is ever more important to enable a good communication along the complete production process. In order to get a good translation of the designers' wishes to the output device we have investigated all steps in the evolving color workflows. This paper discusses the different steps encountered in color workflows of professional environments and the trends in automation, which are introduced to support an efficient handling of these steps. Topics include hybrid workflows, Color Management, automatic document assembly and overall process control.