As many of you already know, the Signature Group editor in Workbench can import a variety of imposition signatures. However, we have encountered some files which contain impositions that are not as accurate as the numeric precision which is used in the file. This inaccuracy varies and and can often result in imported signature pages not grouping into grids, or grouped pages that are unable to be paired.

To compensate for that, the ability to round numeric values has been added to the importing of signatures. The precision in this rounding varies depending on how you import your signatures.
Note: Blackmagic stores all dimensions and positions in inches. So rounding precision is in reference to values in inches.

Importing with Selective Import Off

When Selective Import is off, dimensions and positions in the signatures are rounded to 4 decimal places before and after an attempt to group pages into grids.

Importing with Selective Import On

When Selective Import is on, the Signature Import Filter dialog is presented to let you decide which signatures you would like to import, with the option to perform a number of operations on them when importing. The Inclusive check box you see here deals with the rounding precision when importing.

• 
  When Inclusive is on, values are rounded to 3 decimal places before and after grouping.

• 
  When Inclusive is off, no rounding is performed at all.

Rounding can work for or against us, and Inclusive is certainly no guarantee that the pages will group and pair. Excessive rounding can actually result in pages not grouping or grouped pages not pairing when, for example, the inherent inaccuracy of the file is magnified, rather than reduced, by the rounding.

If pages are not grouping or pairing when importing, try the different options outlined above. If nothing seems to help, here’s a check list to go through. First, I would set the display unit of the Serendipity Client to points to increase the precision displayed. Also bear in mind that the Signature Editor only displays values to 4 decimal places.

Page Grouping Check List

• For pages to be grouped in a row, they have to have the same y position.
• For pages to be grouped in a column, they have to have the same x position.
• For pages to be grouped at all, they have to have the same dimensions.

Page Pairing Check List

• For pages in a grid to be paired vertically, there must be an even number of rows.
• For pages in a grid to be paired horizontally, there must be an even number of columns.
• For pages in a grid to be paired, head directions of adjacent pages (pages to be paired) have to be the same.
• For pages in a grid to be paired, every second row gap (pair vertically) or column gap (pair horizontally) must have the same dimension. In strict pairing (by using the Pair Pages button instead of the Pair Vertically or Pair Horizontally button) there must be no gap between pages you want to pair.

We will be looking into more intelligent methods for inaccuracy compensation for future versions of the Serendipity Client, but for now at least you know what goes on behind the scene.

Serendipity Blackmagic and Megarip have always included a monitor calibration app to ensure colour accurate softproofing. The one step that was missing was verification of the state of the monitor calibration. Currently in development is a new app called Calcheck which addresses this issue. The concept is very simple. Users use the workbench to create a Calcheck chart from either an icc profile or by manually entering Lab values for patches that describe the process they are trying to proof. Generally one would pick a profile for their printing press and then the Calcheck generator would create a patch set which uniformly covers the target gamut. Below is a screen shot of the workbench app showing some patches I generated for ISO 12647-7. As you can see from the image above, each patch can have its own Δe tolerance which is used to decide whether a particular patch passes or fails. Patches can also be labeled as cyan, magenta, yellow, black or paper so that they can be identified as such in any generated report. By default, the generator sets the cyan, magenta, yellow, black and paper Δe tolerances to 3.0 and all other patches to 6.0. The maximum allowed average is automatically set to 3.0 and the maximum Δe is set to 6.0. You can even pick which Δe formula is used for determine tolerances. Currently supported formulas are Δe, CIE 94 and CIE 2000. Once the monitor has been calibrated, this chart can be use to check the calibration. I recently chose 3 monitors that we have here at our Sydney office and proceeded to check how well they proof the ISO 12647-7 printing process. ISO 12647-7 is a printing colourspace which makes it quite hard for monitors to achieve as there are some areas which are outside a monitor’s gamut. The 3 monitors chosen were, in alphabetical order, an Apple 30 inch display, an EIZO ColorEdge CG241W and a Sony SDM X73. The Sony is not really meant for proofing as it is just a simple 17 inch desktop display, however it was included so comparisons can be properly made. Results for ISO 12647-7

Below are screenshots of the 3 monitors in the Calcheck app after having checked the monitor against the ISO 12647-7 patch set. Image below is the Calcheck results for the Apple 30 inch display. Image below is the Calcheck results for the EIZO ColorEdge CG241W Image below is the Calcheck results for the Sony SDM X73 17 inch LCD. As I mentioned earlier, ISO 12647-7 is quite touch to reproduce so for the sake of completeness I decided to generate some patches for the ISO newsprint standard and test the Apple and EIZO displays. Newsprint has a much smaller gamut so it should be easier to pass a Calcheck. Results for ISO newsprint

Below are screenshots of the 2 monitors in the Calcheck app after having checked the monitor against the ISO newsprint patch set. Image below is the Calcheck results for the Apple 30 inch display. Image below is the Calcheck results for the EIZO ColorEdge CG241W These tests are in no way conclusive as we only tested one of each monitor which is not a statistically significant sample. Once the feature is released we will be able to collect more data and provide more accurate results. The Calcheck feature will be included in version 3.5 of Serendipity Blackmagic and version 4.5 of Serendipity Megarip. Expect them to be available sometime towards the end of October 2007. Note: clicking on any of the images in this post will provide you with a higher resolution version of that image.

Did you know that both Serendipity Blackmagic and Serendipity Megarip have a Web server built in. This allows you to access the information about the server and the jobs processing from your own web browser providing you have a network connection to the server. It does not allow any user interaction with the jobs but does allow you track the progress.

Accessing the web server is simply a matter of entering the servers IP address or name (where Blackmagic or Megarip is installed) followed by a colon and then the port number of 8080

e.g.

Alternatively with a DNS server

Once connected you have access to server information.

Click on queues to see the Queues configured.

You can click on Show all queues to list every queue of select an individual one. For example the imaging queue may display jobs currently processing.

Select log file to get the latest server log information. This can then be printed or saved which can help support if you have problems. Select a different period to fetch back.

You can also access the support site which has a lot of useful information including pre-configured databases, manuals and release note and other helpful information.

Note: An internet connection is required to view the support section.

Technorati Tags: Serendipity Blackmagic, Serendipity Megarip, server, Web Server