Saving on training is economizing at the wrong end.

However, especially in times when everyone is intent on finding ways to reduce cost, the willingness to invest in training has declined.

By training personnel now it is possible to simplify and optimize the process and that certainly has a positive influence on costs. But what are the training needs in the individual departments?

Ifra has a variety of practical training courses, including “Digital Photography for Daily Newspapers.”
Photo: Ifra

A look at the production processes in today’s newspaper prepress departments quickly shows where aimed training could optimize the production operation.

A good example is image reproduction, where today digital cameras supply the major share of the digital image input. Increasingly better equipment available at continually falling prices is making it a feasible option to outfit everyone, from the journalist to the staff photographer, with the latest camera technology.

Yet without proper training, the images produced might be of inferior quality, thus requiring additional time and money to correct.

Image faults, such as strong compression, overexposure of people, color correction based on a visual display on an uncalibrated monitor or laptop display, are caused by a lack of knowledge on the part of the users.

To help avoid these mistakes, newspapers should make sure users are at least familiar with the basic rules of digital photography. Basic photography training would allow the newspaper to obtain the desired result without investing excessive amounts of time.

New technologies are required to optimize manual and time-consuming processes. However, this also means that personnel must be increasingly integrated into modern processes. Users of latest technologies must learn how to work with them in an efficient and targeted way.

Bettina Jaensch is Ifra’s training manager. She may be reached by e-mail at training@ifra.com