During the past year and a half, Newsday has expanded its overall color management and proofing solution to include GretagMacbeth’s ProfileMaker Pro color management software and a SpectroScan spectrophotometer, as well as another BestColor CMS for its magazine workflow.

Newsday (Monday – Friday, 576,692; Saturday, 417,949; Sunday, 663,220) already had in place five Xerox DocuColor 12 copier/printers driven by Splash G620 color servers, now made by Electronics for Imaging Inc. These devices are used for all newsprint proofing.

A Newsday features section is very close on 
color reproduction from proof (bottom, right) 
to press (top, left).

“We print more color than most other newspapers,” said Ron Chiavaro, director of prepress and quality assurance at Newsday. “We needed a proofing system that would quickly and accurately predict what we would see on press, so we could be confident that we were making the correct color decisions early in the process.”

The Long Island, N.Y.-based newspaper, owned by Tribune Co., typically produces an edition that contains between 50 and 60 color pages a day. Before the latest proofing system was installed, Newsday was still judging color proofs by eye, evaluating multiple proofs and adjusting curves on the Splash server to match the press sheets.

“We did that hundreds of times, and were very happy with the results, but we could see that there was more to accomplish in the way of quality,” Chiavaro said.

In 1994, Chiavaro instituted graybars to take the subjective measurement of color out of the pressroom and to ensure consistent printing across all 10 presses.

Newsday uses the GretagMacbeth SpectroScan 
to measure proof and press targets.

Then Newsday installed the first Splash/Xerox proofing solution, which was a great improvement, but Newsday wanted to further introduce a scientific element to the process. During this stage of the system’s evolution, James Kober, imaging manager at Newsday, instituted the use of International Color Consortium profiles and implemented the use of Delta E measurements, which measure the difference of the colors coming off the proofs and the colors coming off the presses.

“Our utilization of color management tools and ICC profiles have enhanced what was a great system into what we consider the best system available,” Chiavaro said.

Shortly following the installation of the upgraded Splash/Xerox proofing solution, Newsday purchased the ProfileMaker Pro color management software from GretagMacbeth, along with a SpectroScan spectrophotometer.

“We control color by measuring it,” Kober said of the SpectroScan and ProfileMaker Pro software.

Newsday uses the ProfileMaker Pro software to perform the comparisons of the measurements that come off the presses and the measurements that come off the proofers.

The implementation of the Gretag-Macbeth CMS and the Splash/Xerox solution brought Newsday’s Delta E down to 6 from a Delta E of 9.

After custom profiles were created for each DC12 copier, and some work was done with Richard Falk, the chief color scientist at what was then Splash Technology Inc., the Delta E dropped to 3.5.

“When we measure Delta E, we are measuring a sample that has been printed at the exact solid densities that we run here and comparing that to a measurement of a calibrated proof,” said Kober. “A Delta E of 3.5 is extraordinary. A Delta E of 6 for commercial printing applications is considered very good.”

BestColor in commercial

On the commercial side, Newsday is using a color management system from BestColor and printing proofs on Canon printers. Newsday produces several monthly magazines, as well as books and special sections of the paper, and has always used a film-generated DuPont Waterproof, which cost about $35 per page.

“We went through a labor reduction in that area and we needed to find a digital proofing solution that would allow us to produce a lot of proofs in a short period of time without the labor,” said Chiavaro. “We bought a system that cost us a total of $25,000 and the proof costs us about $2.50 apiece. This year alone, we are going to save upwards of $150,000 in materials.”