Graphic Enterprises Inc. introduced its BlackMagic News Extra color management system to the newspaper industry in March 2000.

Black Magic News Extra specifically addresses the automated proofing of high-resolution screened bitmaps before imaging to film or direct-to-plate. It features Real Dot technology for producing quality, accurate color proofs on newsprint to large format ink-jet printers such as Epson and Hewlett Packard. Newspapers can obtain sign-off from advertisers before going to press, thereby avoiding the problems often associated with poor color match on press.

Graphic Enterprises Inc.’s BlackMagic can monitor and pull multiple or different RIPs on the same network, at the same time.
Photo courtesy of GEI

If final pages have changes in text or linguistics for different editions, users can exchange one plate for another and provide a proof. Any plate can be any color using the Virtual Press and user-defined color reference library.

BlackMagic News Extra can also be used for remote proofing. When high resolution screened bitmaps are sent to remote printing plants, BlackMagic automatically sees the files with their naming conventions, stitches individual pages together, applies color management using industry-compliant International Color Consortium profiles and then outputs a proof. The auto-proofing mode enables proofs to be scaled and then nested together in multiples with no manual intervention.

BlackMagic features a server-based core engine with unlimited Java graphic user interface client access, which runs on Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows and Unix platforms. Users log onto any News Extra server on their newspaper’s network to adjust and update ICC profiles and control production. BlackMagic can be configured for load balancing, printing to the first available printer when many printers of the same type are online.

Based on a 600 dots-per-inch output to a HP 1050 printer using a dual 550 MHz Pentium with 356 MB of RAM, a broadsheet newspaper page that is 60 percent image and 40 percent text can be produced in just over three minutes. By using the Fast setting, the same page can be done in approximately 1 minute, 30 seconds. BlackMagic can simultaneously spool, process and print different pages.

Among the users of BlackMagic is The Wall Street Journal, which has been using the system for remote proofing since April.

“We wanted [a proofing solution] that was as accurate as we could get with our printing presses,” said Ann Hirst, national quality assurance manager for advertising services at The Journal. “We’re excited about how close we can achieve repeatability from proofer to proofer and maintain low Delta E. Matching the press as close as possible was a major concern and BlackMagic has really allowed us to achieve that.”

For The Wall Street Journal, the criteria for repeatability is the ISO standard. The paper underwent extensive press tests of BlackMagic at its Orlando, Fla., facility and its Charlotte, N.C., facility.

“We have been very pleased with the numbers. They were all well below the ISO standard,” Hirst said.

The Wall Street Journal currently has 11 proofers in use, with plans to eventually install one at each of its 17 production plants and in all of its advertising service bureaus. “[GEI] is setting up the capability that the calibration and control of the major software will be from Orlando and will be sent to the bureaus, so you don’t have to have experts in every place,” Hirst said. She also said GEI has been very cooperative in terms of training on Black Magic. “We’ve been very satisfied with their eagerness to make this a positive experience.”

The Wall Street Journal production department required a strenuous print test due to the fact that there are Goss Graphic Systems Metro, Newsliner and TKS presses in use at the newspaper.

“We had a variety of different press conditions we needed to test under,” said John Stevens, associate manager of the operations group for ad services in Orlando. “Production gave us [a Delta E standard of] 4 as our goal, and I was able to get everything within 2.5. So everything was significantly closer to the press than what production was looking for.”

Currently there are four proofers running at the advertising center in Orlando, five are running in the graphics group in New York and two more were just installed in the Orlando production plant, which will also serve as The Wall Street Journal’s training facility.

“I’ve taken one of my proofers and called it the master proofer to the press, and as we roll these out into the field, everybody has to match me because we know that’s achievable,” said Stevens, adding that the matching with the color set-ups has been extremely close so far. “We’ve had to do very little tweaking individually. So far they’ve worked out very good.”

Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Engage Inc. recently announced a collaboration to produce electronic tearsheets for advertisers as an alternative to the process of physically sending newspaper copies to advertisers to confirm that ads have run. This technology may also be of benefit in proofing.

“Tearsheets are a pain to deal with. Where we want to go with e-tearsheets in ad services … is for our customers to pull up their own ad and be able to print it out themselves,” Stevens said.

The Globe and Mail in Toronto is also using BlackMagic, and has been in production with it for about three months.

“For quite sometime I’d been looking for a total color proofing solution that could be used in the prepress, editorial and advertising areas [that would] exactly represent what the press would do. I was also looking for a proof to give the pressmen which was fast enough and could be on newsprint,” said Andrew Ritchie, vice president of production for The Globe and Mail. “BlackMagic and the HP proofer — the two technologies together — have met our needs there.”

The Globe and Mail has purchased 10 HP 1050 proofers with two BlackMagic servers for each of its six print plants — one for advertising and one for editorial — and uses them to check color against the proof.

“Once we’re absolutely sure that’s okay, we’re then issuing that as the proof to the print plant,” Ritchie said.

The installations will soon be complete, pending some fine tuning The Globe and Mail is working on at each site.

With BlackMagic, The Globe and Mail has had the advantage of providing a representation of what the press will do for its advertisers. In cases where advertisers aren’t entirely sure what they want in an ad, the newspaper can produce examples of what their press can produce and then let the advertiser know what they need to be using in order to produce that in their ad. Therefore, advertisers have several options in ad design as well as some direction on how to achieve necessary alterations or corrections.

“It fits into a newspaper workflow so therefore, you’re using the raster image processors that you normally use, then BlackMagic produces a very accurate proof of what your press can do after your process,” said Ritchie. “Using the exact workflow is the closest way of actually producing the best results. It produces a form of preflighting as well.”

He said that BlackMagic is also an important step in the transition to computer-to-plate.

“As more newspapers move to CTP, they need these types of proofers at the print site because obviously they’ve got no film to make proofs. That’s another reason we were looking for a centralized proofing solution.”