DIGITAL PROOFING -- Bouncing a Process Check

An argument can be made that printing standards (such as SWOP and GRaCOL) hold the potential to make color proofs superfluous. Printers simply need to "run to the numbers."

The industry needs to get serious about standards, agrees William Birkett, owner of Precision Color, which is a prepress shop with no in-house printing capabilities. "If we are to treat printing as an industrial process, then we need standards to define what that process should be," he says.