Gulf News launches advanced colour management scheme for agencies

Gulf News and its associate publications yesterday announced the introduction of a new colour management and digital workflow system for advertising material.

Once again setting new standards for the region's publishing media, the company is using the benefits of the internet to provide its advertising customers improved e-business services that offer convenience of delivery, quicker turnaround and better quality.

At a workshop on Colour Management and Reproduction for the advertising industry, Gulf News unveiled a new digital workflow to allow online delivery and automated pre-flight approval and certification of all advertising material for all publications with One Vision Asura.

While the system will automatically correct minor errors, in case of major errors, advertisers will be notified by means of an e-mail that will highlight the corrections required.

Once these issues are rectified, advertisers will be able to post the artwork into the system and it will be accepted for publication.

Stressing the importance of colour management to ensure predictable and consistent colour quality, Gulf News has provided output profiles for advertising artwork and made available documentation on the steps customers can take to implement the process on their end.

"The elimination of film will provide the advantage of faster turnaround, Sublima 150 lpi to 180 lpi in the newspaper and Sublima 200 lpi to 300 lpi in magazines, colour management, overall improvement in quality and online approval," said Dean Du Toit, production manager of Al Nisr Publishing LLC and Al Nisr Media FZ LLC.

"We've established all our profiles not only for the newspaper but for all our presses, and we have implemented Sublima on all magazines and third party publications," he added.

Edward Capaldi, Head of Information Technology, said the company was upgrading its existing FTP site to offer customer better quality and secure service.

"From the mid-July, 2005, customers will have their own dedicated space on the FTP server thus ensuring complete security of their data," he said.

The company has also set up two web addresses to allow customers to obtain further details and information.

Questions on colour management can be addressed to colourmanagement@gulfnews.com and queries on preflighting, online delivery and quality assurance can be sent to asura@gulfnews.com