After testing the new all-digital workflow with a few “randoms” — those pesky images dropped into layouts at the last minute — Baughman was immediately impressed. “Donnelley would get the images, scan them as they came in from hard copy or rip them if they were digital and then post them to the ShareStream website. They’d send an e-mail to let me know things were posted and I’d view them on my Cinema Display.”

The ShareStream application proved to be an intuitive tool to mark up virtual proofs for color correction. “Online, we can use the mouse to circle an area on the Cinema Display to localize corrections. We can give written instructions in the annotation layer — minus red, plus blue, adjust contrast overall, whiten the eyes, subdue the wrinkles, whatever.” Donnelley’s prepress technicians fine-tune the images until they’re fully approved.

And Baughman began saving huge amounts of mileage on his car. And sweat on his brow.

“We quickly became comfortable with the process. Because the Apple Cinema Display was very stable, the color calibration held firm. In no time, we could confidently judge that what we were seeing on the Cinema Display was very, very close to what we’d see in, say, a contract hard proof.”

True Colors

“We quickly became comfortable with the process. Because the Apple Cinema Display was very stable, the color calibration held firm. We could confidently judge that what we were seeing on the Cinema Display was very close to what we’d see in, say, a color hard proof.”

Baughman’s growing confidence was based on 25 years of experience, a deep faith in his own two eyes — and a good deal of corroborating technical evidence. “We use the GretagMacbeth Eye One Professional system to calibrate our Cinema Displays.

“At first we did it weekly and we found that the displays just held their calibration. Now we calibrate monthly, and we still find there’s very little fall-off. These displays are just extremely stable and very accurate in terms of color rendition.”

A Winning Workflow

Today, AARP’s publications rely on Apple color solutions throughout their workflow — from content management to advertising. “Once we were confident in the system,” says Baughman, “we quickly saw that it had wider applications. For example, now we can compose our covers at the last minute. I can color-correct, the art directors and editors can tweak layouts and proofread text, the publisher can make comments — all before we push the button to approve a finalized file.

“On the advertising side, if the ad resource people at the prepress center come across an ad that they think might have a color problem, they’ll just put it up on ShareStream for me. So we can even evaluate and quickly address last-minute advertising issues with this all-digital workflow.

Next page: Less Travel, More Time