Online proofing may seem strangely familiar, but it is very different from the old soft proofing tools
Sometimes you just can’t get a song out of your head, and when I sat down to write this post I had the chorus from this 1971 classic repeating at full volume.
If you tell anyone over the age of 35 about this great new tool called “online proofing”, they’ll tell you that they’ve seen it all before, only it used to be called “soft proofing”, and it didn’t work then, so why should work now?
Well myths are there to be debunked, so let’s be clear on why the new “online proofing” tools are very different from the old “soft proofing” tools that tried, but failed, to get traction ten years ago.
To read the full analysis, see ”What is online proofing?” on our website. For those of you with work to do, here is a summary:
Is online proofing the same as traditional soft proofing?
In a word “no”. Soft proofing tools were used in print production and attempted to be the digital equivalent of hardcopy contract proofs. Online proofing covers a much wider range of media types and is used far earlier in the creative process.
What were the problems with traditional soft proofing?
Soft proofing had technical challenges that were expensive to overcome. Very few organisations implemented soft proofing fully due to cost, complexity and user resistance. Eventually, improvements in colour management through the production process, and changes in media usage started to eliminate the need for soft proofing.
So what is online proofing and why has it become mainstream?
Online proofing is lower cost and easier to use than soft proofing ever was. Almost universal access to fast Internet and better browsers has made online proofing practical. People have become used to great consumer applications and expect similar easy-to-use applications in the workplace.
How is online proofing different?
Online proofing can be easily used across all media types. It can also be used from the very earliest stages of a creative project, all the way through to production. It is cheap to deploy and cheap to run. It is increasingly available on mobile devices, reflecting the way that people want to work.
Check out “What is online proofing?” in full on our website.
