Automated Preflight and Photo Toning

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Kansas City, Missouri

Joe McKinnon – Cox Ohio Publishing

Image toning system – BluMunKee

Cox Ohio Situation Analysis

• Complexity– 4 Daily Newspapers

– 5 Weekly Newspapers

– 4,200 images per week

– Multiple image workflows

• Doing the wrong things right– Photographers toning editorial images

– Advertising personnel toning images

– Dedicated personnel toning images

Cox Ohio Situation Analysis

Inconsistent Photo Toning– Over 80 individuals handling images– Another 20 or so photographers– At least 5 different geographic locations– Monitor calibration– Several versions of Photoshop– Variety of Photoshop knowledge

• Keyless Press

Project Goals

• Automation

• Reliability

• Cost

• Ease of use

• Vendor Support

Color Correction Systems

• Photoshop

• Asura

• BluMunKee

• BluMunKee PDF workflow

Equipment

• Installation Date– December 2002

• Hardware– 2 Xservers primary and backup– 2 G5 Mac Pro Towers primary and backup– 3 G5 Mac Pro Towers, (QC stations)– 1 G5 Mac Pro Tower, (PDF workflow)– 1 G5 Mac Pro Tower, (PDF QC station)

• Software– BluMunKee Image Lightning, and Image Thunder– Adobe Photoshop CS2– FileMaker Pro 7– Mac OS X 10.4.7 and Mac OS X 10.4.7 Server

What factors influenced our decision

• Existing relationship with Avail Technologies

• On site support and development – in-house expertise

• The ability to Beta test onsite

• Cost

How Coxohio Utilizes Photo Correction Software

Fully automated editorial workflow– Photographers touch-up photo– Name the photo and drop it into SCC photo

archive– All editorial photos are sent through the

BluMunKee servers, automatically processed, and sent to the DTI data base

How Coxohio Utilizes Photo Correction Software

Operator Assisted Advertising Workflow– Artists drop photos into one of several “drop

folders.”• 12-15 separate folders

– Photos are routed to a QC workstation where an operator will crop and submit the photo to BluMunKee for correction

– Photo comes back to operator, who releases it to DTI

What Do We Use BluMunKee for?

• Color Correction

• Sharpening

• Total Ink Limit

• Transfer curve

• Photo Correction of PDF files

Realized Savings/Improvements

• Reduced staffing

• Consistent Quality

• Control over the process

Real World Performance

Positives• Totally automated on the Editorial side• Still work to be done on the Advertising side• Solid vendor support• Reliable• Ease of use• Individual drop folders• Reporting

Real World Performance

Not-so Positives

• Still need work automating Advertising

• Does not handle bad images well

• Errors are not handled well

• Limited tools to fix challenging photos

Questions