No Denying Denial

'You can lead people to knowledge, but you can't make them think'. That's my new favorite quote. I am clueless about who is credited with it. My father used to say, 'you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink'. But this is better.

Certainly, if you are into education you can relate. If you are into prepress for giclée printing it's an even more fitting quote. Your biggest problem is that other people don't even know they have a problem. Actually, maybe that's a good thing... job security of a sort. But I hate seeing the same problems with picture files over and over again. Boring.

People think that when they push the print button the resulting print will be just like what they saw in PhotoShop®. Wrong, for a lot of reasons... enough reasons to fill up a 272-page book (Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée, (ISBN 9780-986575112 available at www.gicleeprepress.com).

There's an information gap. At the most fundamental level, when you finish the picture in PhotoShop® you are half-way there. After that the picture needs to be prepressed for the specific device and media you are outputting to.

Denial is part of the equation too. It is hard for people to admit that their work isn't the best, that it may be lacking in some way. It's the same sort of problem faced by companies like Jenny Craig's... the customer has to admit to a problem. Did you ever try to get an artist to admit to a problem? You get some very interesting answers which usually center around 'creativity' or 'it's what I was looking for'.

The only way to get people to understand is to show side-by-side comparisons. It's something beauticians have done forever... 'before & after'. Prepress artists are like beauticians for pictures, eh? We should take a page out of their book, when it comes to promoting ourselves. What was it Vidal said... 'If you don't look good, I don't look good'. (Hmmmm... maybe that's my favorite quote.)

At my fine arts printing company, Vashon Island Imaging, we get a lot of repeat business for our giclée work from artists and photographers who have come to appreciate our prepress work. We always make it a point to leave a copy of their original file as the bottom layer of the prepressed image file, to show them the before and after. Those who may have started by insisting we print their file are usually surprised to see a visible difference when we produce our own prepressed version. The differences are so easy to see... the prepressed picture will always have a better tone range and 'character'.

There's no denying that people will deny their pictures have problems. All you can do is demo your prepress advantage with a before and after comparison of an entire picture, a half-size print, are at least a good-sized test strip. Don't worry, the cost of that print is an investment in a customer who will likely be back for more of your good service.

To stand apart from the rest, prepress is your key to success. At least, it has been the key to our success at the printing company and the reason I wrote the book. My goal is that all my clients should be so happy with their pictures that they keep on coming back for more and more. If their pictures look good, we look good. And if they know how to do prepress, that saves me time because their pictures will come in 'nearly ready' for great output. That is why I teach digital imaging seminars at Vashon Island Imaging and also tutor people privately for an 'honorarium' of $15 for a two-to-three hour session.

At the digital imaging seminars and tutorials, I work with the client's own pictures and I make it a point for them to bring me their most problematic ones. Then I prepress the picture as they watch while explaining what I am doing and why. The more they know, the less work it is for me to make their giclées to the high standards for which we are known.

If you take your files to a printing company like Vashon Island Imaging then your results are going to be as good as their prepress, or your own. Many printing shops don't do any real prepress at all... they just print what you give them. In those cases you've got to do your own prepress. Do you know how? Be sure to always ask the printing shop about their prepress, what they do and why. If you already know what to look for, you'll have an advantage in that conversation... like speaking French in France. (You can learn about pixel-perfect printing and giclée prepress reading my book.)

Then there are shops like Vashon Island Imaging that are total service shops, where we take care of everything related to giclée art under one roof... (and now also art-quality laser printing, but that's another story). Here we pride ourselves on our printing quality and our quality derives from expert prepress.

Photographers have a similar problem with photo labs. There aren't too many custom printers but there are an awful lot of places that make prints. To find a master photo printer you've got to look far and wide. And so it goes in giclée... it is hard to find a good prepress artist.

You can't deny denial, but you also can't deny that prepress means success when it comes to fine quality giclée and laser printing.