How to not proof correctly
Fred doesn't do things right
Okay...here goes my saga of learning how to do
proofs.
The last time I made a picture
destined for printing was back in October. At that time, I printed a same-sized
proof, made adjustments (actually, redrew the whole freaking picture), and
reprinted. Done.
This time, I thought
I'd be clever.
When I started my New
Year's card, I was faced with the wallpaper vs card layout dilemma. After some
initial comments from people regarding just the main image itself, I decided
that I wasn't interested in people using it as a wallpaper, so I made it a card.
However, I didn't know what the dimensions of the photo printout would be. I
went with 1200 x 1600 because that's what my 2 megapixel camera gives me and
photo printouts from that look fine.
I
know this isn't the best idea in the world because printouts are not in that
proportion. But I went with it anyway, and knew the edges would be
cut.
My first proof was just for
margins. Trying to save money, I went with a smaller-than-final print size,
which was 66% cheaper. Holy cow! Big Problem! Lots of edges cut! Must make words
around picture tighter! Other Big Problem! The skin tone barely shows up. My
printing method and my colouring technique are not complementary. I colour
fairly lightly but printing is even lighter, which means I have to colour a lot
darker than I like to print well.
So, I
squinched everything in a bit, recoloured, and tried a full-size
proof.
Ah.
Uh...the
proportions are different. I didn't have to squish so much. And the tone is dark
enough, but now it's streaky...so, I rerecoloured and nudged the words out a
hint so that it looks nicer.
But...(and
here's the kicker) I'm running low on battery, and I go to get my third proof.
It looks pretty nice. The skin tone is better, and pretty consistent, (the
yellow bar on the right is still too faint, but I actually hadn't done anything
about it anyway because it's not important at all), the margins look pretty
nice, and overall, it looks
fine.
Looking
closer...
I see that Dawn's eye lines,
being definitely sketchier than the rest of the picture, really stand out under
scrutiny. And there's a bit of a bleed where I'd coloured out of the lines on
her right sleeve and left shoulder.
But
the big thing is that I misspelled her name, writing "Dawn Foret" instead of
"Dawn Forêt."
Aw,
man.
That's right. I'm still not done
with the New Year's card.
So...with a
proof, we're supposed to look at everything, not just identify the major problem
and fix it. D'oh.
Ah, the obvious
things get me.
I remember once when I
was out printer-shopping and looked closely at a sample printout, to determine
its quality. It didn't look so hot to me. So, I commented on that and the
salesperson told me that people don't usually look so
closely.
At the time, I guess I
believed him, but now...I think it's BS.
:}
Or, at least, in context. When I get
a single photo (these cards are photo-sized), I look closely at it. If I have a
bunch of photos, then no.
One more
thing.
Remember how my battery was low?
Well, I plopped myself down in a stairwell nearby, and started to fix the
picture. Sadly, my battery ran out, causing my compy to go to sleep. It's bad to
let a laptop run down to nil (unless you're trying to calibrate
it!).
Coming home, I find that my max
charge is now 3938 mAh VS 4194 mAH. Goodbye 6% of battery
life.
So, lessons learned. Don't skimp
on proofs, and don't work in stairwells! (Or something.)
Posted: 水 - 12月
21, 2005 at 01:45 午後