War Stories: Press Checks Across America

A “press check” is when you fly to the catalog printing plant, examine the first press sheets off the press, and have the press crew make whatever changes are needed to correct the color.

And the more you think about it, the more puzzling it is that press checks are necessary at all. Aren’t our images scientifically scanned into well-defined color spaces? Don’t we use hugely expensive proofing devices to output proofs with the same dots and ink colors the press will use? Don’t our printers calibrate their inks and presses to the same Specifications for Web Offset Publications (SWOP) standards as our proofing devices? And don’t the color bars atop each proof let the printer confirm that he’s running the same densities as our proofs? With all this science and standardization, why are press checks even necessary?