During last year’s printing workshop, I found that we got stuck in too much detail about the technology. Monitor calibration for instance, is a big topic that can consume you for days. Colour spaces were often confusing for most, and then there was the issue of rendering intent. Why do you have to choose the rendering intent in the print driver, even though it’s been set in the proofing set up? Some folks got confused between proofing settings and printing settings and couldn’t understand why they are different, and have different purposes.

Then there was the aspect of sharpening, and paper profiles. Yet another large topic that one can get lost in for days, if not years.

But it had to be covered. You need to know this stuff if you want to get good at printing.

I’ve got to prepare some notes for this years workshop. So participatns have something to refer to when they get lost. Rather than getting stuck going over the same material, I need to crystallise the information so I can keep the workshop on track, and those that find some parts confusing have notes to refer to.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ve been working on the content of this workshop for the past few months and I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that it would suit an e-book as well.

It’s a massive topic. And I felt a sense of dissatisfaction from some workshop participants - how do you learn about printing in a week? You can’t. It’s like trying to learn about composition in a week. You can’t. All you can do is point people in the right direction and try to cut out some of the crap. Cut down the chances of them going down the wrong avenues and getting lost down them for years.

So I think there is room for a stripped down information pack that cuts through a lot of the information out there, and tries to simplify it down to what you just need to know to get up and running. So that’s what I hope to do with this new e-book that is currently in development.

Stay tuned.