Many years of working with graphic designers and photographers gives a real sense of what’s desirable or disturbing and we try to take care of things before proofing. This saves money and makes you look good.

We typically correct for blown-out highlights, incorrect white balance, color casts, facial blemishes, black eyes, red eyes, yellow teeth, insufficient tone along edges of picture boxes or behind reverse type, insufficient bleeds, etc. and whatever else is apparent. We always set full range highlight/shadows, evaluate and set neutrals, flesh and other “known” colors, adjust contrast of interest objects, even out uneven exposure conditions, diminish grain in low-light shots, convert to CMYK by most appropriate method, and overall plus local sharpening, etc. You get back trouble-free electronic files.

Key to our process is using a special soft-proofing technique while working up each image in a carefully planned series of small quality enhancement steps.

With digital imaging changing so rapidly, it is important to keep up with the best methods and techniques for image handling. Constant learning is necessary to stay ahead. We are steadfast in our color studies, and you will always reap the benefits.

All clients are encouraged to book their projects with a quick, easy-to-use online Job Request page. Use it to quickly arrange expert optimization of one image or a hundred, and be done and back to your own work in seconds.

When possible, all clients are urged to supply printing job specs and a page layout document (QuarkXPress or InDesign) from which cropping/scaling/sharpening/text legibility and other info can be obtained. Neatly ganged random CMYK proofs using your picture boxes are prepared for approval when quality is foremost.

Ours is a traditional prepress background; we’re thoroughly comfortable editing in RGB or CMYK color spaces—our big concern is how press ink looks on paper. However, it’s clear that the best color comes from files where all major editing is done in RGB, so at Colorprep we always work in a custom proprietary RGB color space as long as feasible before converting to CMYK separations. Occasional final tweaks done in CMYK. You’ll see the advantage on press.