Printing/Production

For nearly 65 years, the Miles Kimball Company has provided consumers with gifts, gadgets and other novelty items designed to make everyday life a little easier and more enjoyable. Now, thanks to digital technology and workflow solutions implemented over the last two years, the Oshkosh, WI-based cataloger has eased its own daily burden by streamlining its production operations. Prepress services, such as scanning and color separations—which had been outsourced previously—are now performed in house. In addition, Miles Kimball has established its own on-site digital photography studio. Certainly each of these tasks required a great deal of effort; however, for the cataloger, the technology

Digital photography is maturing into its own image capture specialty. but novice beware: to succeed, you need to do more than just point and shoot. Photographs are the principal marketing tools of the retail catalog. The better the quality of the photograph—that is, its ability to express adequately the details and essence of the item—the higher the chance of customer satisfaction. Achieving enticing product shots traditionally requires a multi-step process, which includes: initial, instant film shots to test composition and lighting; the actual photo shoot; sending the film for development; waiting; checking the transparencies for accuracy; then re-shooting or digitally manipulating anything that comes