Mood Indigo - Mike McNamee ponders on the changing world of book-making

The Hewlett Packard Indigo system can now be considered mature technology even though HP are still making improvements. Indigo presses now output an estimated three out of four photobooks in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It was quite striking at Focus-on-Imaging that a number of companies were showing bookmaking equipment for short-run books, along with the usual mix of suppliers who effectively provide short run books, normally called ‘wedding albums’ – there is no shorter run than one-off! So who makes up this estimated €370 million European business in photobooks? Well they are widely spread and the wedding album sector is but a small part of the mix. In the same way that colour film processing volume was always dominated by the public ‘holiday snappers’ photobooks are making inroads in this sector. This is not to leave out the professionals; by way of example, we noted when in Dubai last year that ‘wedding’ albums were very prominent. In the Muslim culture the women preserve their modesty by the wearing of the veil. However they do not use wall portraiture in those parts of the house where outside visitors are likely to be present – they preserve their modesty by keeping their family ‘snaps’ in albums. Suddenly you see why albums are sold in such large numbers in the region! Photobooks are thus opening opportunities for professional photographers as well as threatening others.

The output from an Indigo is 4,000 full colour sheets per hour, delivering up to 1.5 million copies per month – this is BIG business. By far the biggest increase in the photographic sector is the supply of photobooks from the high street/webprovider outlets typified by, for example, Truprint, Snapfish and Max Spielman. Photobooks are predicted to account for 33% of the revenue of the photoprint market in Western Europe according to a report by Understanding and Solutions Ltd. This is good business for the labs, but unlikely to improve the lot of the jobbing photographer – Joe Public is unlikely to discern the difference between the self-designed, webuploaded offering they make themselves and the higher-end products. In terms of technical quality, there might not be much difference anyway, especially if the product comes off the same equipment. This is also true of comparing prints made on an ASDA Fuji Frontier machine and a Frontier standing in a traditional photographic laboratory – it’s the same machine and it does an identical job! The major difference between the premium album-makers and the lower end photobook-makers is in the binding, covering, colour-quality and presentation. In order to leapfrog the public consumer making their own photobooks, the professional has to offer discernable difference in the quality of the images, output and the design of the pages.

Indigo printing is different to other ink-on-paper systems. Developed originally as the E-1000 in 1993, the system still relies on the use of ink suspended in an Imaging Oil and the particles are pushed or pulled into the right place with electrostatic attraction generated by lasers. This gives the versatility of the photocopier, with the speed of offset litho, the main difference being the complete absence of plates. The plate is replaced by the Photo Imaging Cylinder which is wiped clean every revolution of the system. The new Indigo 5500 is offered with four, five, six or seven inking stations. Adding inks beyond the standard cmyk set increases the gamut and/or the smoothness of tone. Light magenta and light cyan have been added as the preferred options for portrait and wedding album work. The Indigo 5500 recently won the DIMA Digital Printer Shootout in the digital press category. While the early Indigo systems struggled to match photographic output for quality, this is no longer true and prestigious companies such as Graphistudios mix silverphotographic and Indigo output in their lists, at exactly the same price. Talking to long-term users of Indigo-printed album products, confirms that it is only photographers who notice the tell-tale rosettes of the dot structure, the punters do not care a jot!

The technology also offers the possibility of each page being unique, the so called ‘variable data printing’ (VDP) which perhaps addresses the individual recipient by name. Yophoto quoted the example to us of industrial clients who call off staff-handbooks, one at a time, for new company-starters, which are personalised, but also flexible should legislation, department names, etc change between two output runs.

Indigo printing and its rival short-run technologies offer many options for self-publishing. The boundaries are those set by the photographer’s imagination and by the current cost. For example, a photographer might create a book of images that were shot as progress records for an architect. The sums involved and the prestige of completing a large project are such that the architectural practice might welcome a large-format glossy book for their reception area, with smaller books handed out as thank-you gifts to collaborating sub-contractors. Yophoto will create you a traditionally hand-stitched photobook in A4 size of 40 pages with a linen hardback for £40. They can also provide premium, leather-bound versions for the board of directors! While other vendors are competitive in price, there is generally a page limit of 40 pages which rules them out as a means of creating a technical, instructional book, but they are well-placed to provide portfolios. The background to Yophoto’s parent company is business printing and so they have a more sophisticated workflow, with many options for binding and page count. They can, for example, RIP pdf files containing mixed text and graphics (such as we create for Professional Imagemaker) – some of the more consumeroriented vendors cannot provide this service, limited only to JPEG file-input.

Other providers of photobooks offer additional services. Sim2000, for example, can provide full colour correction, parents and bragging books along with bespoke branding of the albums to the photographer's requirements, including boxed presentation sets.

Current prices do not yet get us into self-publishing territory of technical books or portfolios for sale to the general public (or perhaps delegates if you give lectures). Instructional photography books rarely sell at under £20, but allowing for a profit, you need to make them for nearer £10. The major academic book publishers have, however, cottoned on to the idea and retain less popular books on file, digitally, and then print one-offs, on demand. This is better than holding vast stocks of litho-printed copies and assists in keeping important but unpopular works in print. Prices for esoteric technical works are, however, much closer to £100 than £10.

In his book Print-On-Demand Book Publishing, Morris Rosenthal expands on the costing and trade-offs of self publishing, PoD, versus offset litho (via book publishers and a distributor). In summary, for a modest paperback of 164 pages you need to print 750 copies before litho becomes viable (or at least breaks even), and this is for single colour, paperback. Apparently the average print run from Lightning Books in the USA is 1.8 books so the model seems well geared to ultra short runs. This, though, is not the same as creating a graphics-rich textbook. This is the next step down that the prices must make - taking on-board the approach from the academic press (Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, John Wiley, to name three) but producing full colour, graphics-rich books at the quality demanded by photographers. We asked Yophoto to estimate a cost for the production of a ‘typical’ instructional photographic book. They estimated a £35 unit price for 20-off, £25 for 50-off. This is for a 128-page book, full colour in 175gsm paper with a 300gsm laminated cover, perfect bound and including proofs. This is a cost that would not cause a company accountant to gulp, but does not compete with the typical Amherst Media cover price of such a book – typically £20 (sold on the SWPP website at perhaps £15). The author’s personal take on this is that for books to sell to fellow photographers, the costing are not quite there yet but they are within shouting distance! The world of book-making is certainly changing.

ABOVE: The speed at which the market changes is rapid and ruthless. This is the empty, central processing site of Max Spielmann. Not very long ago it processed film from all over the country and some foreign countries as well. Then the public decided that they wanted to collect their prints as they finished their shopping, not wait for the Post Office to lose them, charge more because they were a funny shape, deliver them by late afternoon as 'first post' a day late, etc. When it was operating, the film ran as an unbroken strip the length of the building and forklift trucks were used to bring the tons of paper to the start of the line. More than anything though, this building is a mausoleum to film.

ABOVE: The Indigo 5500 showing seven colour stations.

Indigo Performance Audit

We subjected the Indigo 3050 6- colour system to the same colour audit procedure that we use on other printing systems. The test print was very clean and neutral and successive prints were indistinguishable. There was slight evidence of banding on the large areas of solid grey. The average error across the Macbeth Chart was 10.1Lab ΔE/4.7ΔE2000. The Dmax was 1.56. Metamerism was higher than the latest generations of inkjet at 3.5 ΔE Lab (D65 to Tungsten A at 50% grey) Highlight and shadow detail was excellent, just holding 252 RGB points in the highlights and differentiating to 15 RGB points in the shadows.

The skin tones were clean, if a little desaturated. The lightness error component of the skin tones was the lowest while the saturation was down by about 10% on optimum.

Overall the error signature was on a par with offset litho onto the same type of paper substrate. The gamut and Dmax are behind the best inkjet-on gloss paper results. Despite any concerns we may have from the colour science standpoint, the punters are paying money for prints made with Indigo technology and that is what really matters.

TOP: Overall the colours were desaturated but the neutrality and hue values were good.

BELOW : Skin tones were accurate on hue and lighness but 10% desaturated.