The Saga Continues

NOTE: I should probobly note that the Company deals almost exclusively in packaging. The few things they handle that aren't packages are related to selling or promoting those packages. That I know of, at least... this company has other locations that do work for some of the same (and some different) clients.

Still posting notes from my week of observing the various departments. Today we will take a look at color, where the coolest people are. The department currently houses three guys, the youngest probobly about 30, who are dirty, funny, and underappreciated. It seems almost everyone at this facility feels unloved and underappreciated, because they all have the hardest or most unthankful or most important job. Its a trend I 've noticed , having had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall in each department.

Color Department:

These are the Photoshop guys. They've got awesome computers: 21" Apple flatpanel screens, the latest Apple G5s with 3 GB of RAM and dual 2 GHz processors. These computers are sexy, if one were to look at technology in that way. And I do, sometimes. Also, they use the latest version of OS X, but it seems to be giving them some network trouble. Network transfer is very slow, which is aggravating due to their having to frequently save files that are 100s of megabytes big. I wonder how competent the IT people are at this plant, as this is the only plant (that they know of) to encounter this problem. [[GEEK MODE ON]] I think it may be the different filesystem being used on the server, but I can't be sure. If its windows-based (like IIS), then they probobly have a bad SAMBA setup. Even if what I just said is completely wrong, I'll still bet its a bad setup for connecting to a non-UNIX server, since OS X is based on BSD. When I was not doing anything that day, I remember wishing I could Google their problem and try to fix it for them. Hahaha, the intern who thinks he knows everything. I'm sure the IT people are very good at what they do, and I was just in know-it-all mode.[[END GEEK MODE]] The network used to the company with people that do "real work" (i.e., actually editing the files) is gigabit ethernet. If you were in my GC 310 class, that means they use category 5e cabling to hook up their computers. For those of you that weren't, that means anywhere from 10-100 times as fast as what you are probobly connected to on a LAN on-campus or at home. Also, backups to the server are performed nightly.

Most of the packaging they work on now is just large Photoshop files, with logos, ingredients, and instructional information later placed in with Illustrator by the Assembly (Barco) Department. For days, people were talking about "CTs," which turn out to basically be these picture files that the Color group works on. The CTs are what they have to adjust colors for (as they are typically the important parts of the package, if not the whole package) and sometimes trap. I had never seen (or even really thought about) trapping in Photoshop before this, but I am told this is what the Color department spends most of their time on now. It was fascinating to watch them work, and it was amazing to see how much work goes in to trapping, for instance, a carton of orange juice. One of the Color guys, Bob, said he would spend about 8 hours on one carton: masking, contracting/expanding selections, smudging, cloning, correcting color. And he had three or four to do.

Instead of saving as EPS files (it was interesting to note that they worked over the network-- I just realised now that it would be easier for them to save to desktop and then upload the file once it is done, like we do in lab; I may ask them about it tommorow), they use DCS files, which are apparently much like EPS files. In fact, I just looked it up:

DCS stands for Desktop Colour Separation. It is a file format that is based on the EPS file format. In fact, you could regard DCS files as a collection of EPS files.

The Company uses these files so that they can have more than just CMYK colors (channels). Cyan, magenta, and yellow are hardly ever used, but close fascimilies are substituted.

Besides trapping, the Color department spends alot of time trying to "fix" what designers thought would be cool, but in reality is difficult at best to print. Many jobs have large amounts of color that are hard or impossible to print with the available colors (anywhere from 4-11 print units are available, depending on the printer) Gradients for flexo and dry offset* jobs are the bane of their existances, and are still used very frequently by designers. Color also works on adding more shape and depth to CTs, especially for items like food or people's faces. Nobody wants to eat a piece of pie that looks like it has stamped-out play-doh for filling. So, in addition to doing difficult but relatively straightforward work like trapping, the Color department also gets to take the occasional creative liberty in making a file more pleasant, or even making some things from scratch, which is apparently where the most fun and rewarding part is.

I think I enjoyed the Color department most of all the departments. I may revisit my experience there in the future.

* I had never heard of dry offset before coming to work here. I will talk more about it later.

Some Photoshop tricks I learned from the Color boys:

• When working with masks and layers, if you want to add that layer's image area to a mask, go to Select>Load Selection


• Quick Masking is your friend in PS trapping-- almost all selection is done using masks, and the magnetic lasso... Much time is spent at 1600% zoom


• When you want to trap a selection, go to Selection>Contract, then contract by X number of pixels to get thousandths of an inch. I believe they used 6 pixels for .0015", but I havent done the math yet to see what resolution they were working at

Wow... thats way more than I had in my little notebook. Sorry for the length: I hope somebody learned something. I guess I remembered alot that I had only hinted at in my notes. In any event, feel free to post cool computer or Photoshop-related tidbits you may have learned recently. I think I learned more in that one morning in Color than I did in any one month, ever.