Help? 4-Color Proofs, SWOP specs, etc.

[Maddie]

Hi,
I submit a client's ads to magazines, and most of them ask for just a TIFF, and a jpeg to double-check that the fonts loaded correctly.

Now I'm submitting one to a magazine with tougher requirements :eek: When they say:
"All supplied color guidance must meet SWOP specifications with 5%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% CMYK control Patches."
Is that a setting in PhotoShop?

They also want a printed proof in the form of:
"Cromalins, Match Prints, Press Proof, Kodak Approvals, CREO Spectrum or Iris Digital Proofs. Advertiser will be billed $100 if no proof is supplied."
Is it cheaper just to pay the 100 bucks? These are all printers I don't have, right?

I've submitted at least 30 ads for this client to a dozen different magazines and never run across this. Sorry if I sound like an idiot! Most of my experience is designing for web. Thank you for any enlightenment :)

[cjoe]

SWOP, is just your colour profile, for colour management, this can be changed by going to Photoshop > Colour settings and setting your CMYK space to SWOP. I have no idea why they need control swatches.
Yes they should be giving a proof to you, and you pay for it, but 100 bucks sounds pretty steep for a proof.
I'm just answering to the best of my knowledge, maybe one of the Prepress guys can give you a better answer.

[D-Frag]

the cmyk control patches, I believe is just a value color swatch bar on the side of the matchprint, thats my best guess.

You can get a match print done at any Kinkos or alphagraphics type shop, but I would fair to say you won't be happy with the output, at least, as well as you could probably do it at home. Matchprint printers are not cheep either, there a couple grand for a decent model.

[urstwile]

Sounds like CYA (cover your ass) to me. I submit lots of ads to fairly high-end magazines, and most require a color proof of some sort. We bill the client for that. So can you.

The pub is trying to make sure that they won't have to deal with a makegood issue (makegood - The rescheduling of an ad or commercial by an advertising media operator when it has been incorrectly printed, broadcast, or distributed or when unavoidably canceled or preempted) if the color of your ad in their publication is not to your liking. Given that it sounds like you've never gotten a high-resolution proof made of your ads before you upload to publications, it's not necessarily a concern of yours. But this pub is covering bases is what it sounds like. Perhaps there's some type of release you could sign saying that you don't hold them responsible, but I've never heard of such a thing.

And yes, unless you work in a pre-press shop, you probably don't have the ability to create those types of proofs yourself.

Just an aside...if you're sending TIFFs to the other publications, fonts wouldn't be an issue, since TIFF is a raster format, so font issues wouldn't exist in that format once you save a file that way.

[Maddie]

Thank you all very much for your replies :)

I set it to SWOP (I always use CMYK, but never checked for SWOP).

I explained to the ad layout guy that we don't have the printers for color proofs. I didn't want to get Kinkos involved, since they aren't known for fine quality here either :rolleyes: It turned out that most of their advertisers don't send color proofs! I guess they talked big in their specs sheet, but then came around to industry norms.

I decided to flatten the tiff to prevent any font issues. It was full resolution size, so it was perfectly clear.

I am sooo relieved to have that one out of here. I got more worried than I needed to because of their picky specs sheet, but they were very nice about it. Thanks for the advice, I don't have anyone to ask over here because I'm the only designer. Everyone assumes I know what I'm doing and I don't want to tell them otherwise!

Maddie