And the expert staff has managed to maintain accurate colour the entire way. According to Production Manager David Sterling, it's all about the proof. Now with the right software and the right setup, you just hit the Enter button. To make sure the magazine gets the most accurate colour possible, Sterling says his staff sometimes proofs files up to four or five times. Literally half our magazine is about making nice pictures.
Sterling says photographs of paintings often present the most trouble for the production staff.
Smithsonian usually receives photographs that have been taken by the art gallery displaying that exhibit. Though photographers always shoot paintings with colour bars, he says, the colour is usually a little off. Sometimes, as in the case of a recent article about the painter Vermeer, the magazine has access to the paintings themselves. For that particular article, we actually sent a colour analyst to the museum with Kodak randoms and marked them up. The Vermeer case is an ideal situation, however, and as anyone who's ever worked in production knows, ideal situations are not the norm.