Most of these functions are not of interest to photographers unless they get involved in design work, and while we appreciate many of our readers handle their own print production, we won't cover these aspects of PM6.
Instead, we're going to look at a those new features which are of critical importance to photographers - mainly the incorporation of the Kodak Precision Color Management System, which enables the program to color-separate pages with placed RGB images. It also provides overall management of the appearance of colors on the computer screen, and as printed on various desktop and repro systems.
The intention is that all these should match - the colors seen on the screen should be very close to the original picture and to the results produced, for example, on our Kodak ColorEase dye sublimation proofer, a 3M Matchprint EuroScale proof, and the litho printed page.
There are one or two problems, mainly to do with the CMS's failure to equate solid blacks in photographs with a solid black on screen. The simulation of saturated colors is if anything too accurate, toning down the brilliant range of an RGB cathode-ray tube so that the maximum possible printed red on the page is shown on-screen as a foul-looking ruddy brown. If you can try it on your computer, on an RGB 0-255 scale it was R187, G62, B45.
Normally, setting up a solid red - R 255, G0, B0 - in RGB is assumed to be equal to specifying a solid printer's red, 100Y plus 100M. When we did this with a G1.8 6500K monitor source profile assigned to the RGB color, we got 93Y plus 9M.
We specified the two colors as described above - CMYK Red, set up as a CMYK color using EuroScale as the source profile; and RGB Red, set up using a Colortron calibrated profile for our Hitachi monitor.
The strange result of this was that CMYK Red, using 100 percent of both Y and M inks, is shown on screen and in proofs as a weaker, more diluted color than RGB Red which only uses 93Y 99M.
It was not possible to define a CMS RGB color to produce a solid Y + M red. This also means that no red present in an RGB photo scan could be rendered as a Y + M solid.
The Kodak CMS, in fitting the RGB color space of a scan to the CMYK color of litho printing, discards a small but critical range of saturated and near-saturated ink percentages. As a result, it loses some of the 'punch' which a good reproduction needs. It is not difficult to devise a separation set-up in Photoshop which retains a greater range.
With these reservations, we can confirm that the Kodak color management within PageMaker works as well as EfiColor within XPress. The user does not have the control over the level of black ink generation which XPress provides, and Adobe charges 99 pounds for a set of further EuroScale profiles whose sole purpose is to do so. When comparing the programs price-wise this should be taken into account. Compatibility with other CMSs is promised in PM6 literature but we were not able to test this claim.
XPress with EfiColor already has the JPEG function but PM6 offers a superior on-screen display and compatibility with a wider range of JPEG sources. It is possible, for example, to shoot directly on a Fujix/Nikon camera and use the JPEG without any Photoshop work. Assuming that CMS source profiles will become available for most digital cameras, direct color repro should be possible from files sent via ISDN, modem or Internet.
The Photo-CD import and separation functions are of most use to those who can leave juke-box collections of multiple CDs on line, as the CD disk is needed by PageMaker when the time comes to print out. You can save a separated copy file, but this removes the advantage of not having to store 25 megabytes of data for a full page picture. PM6 needs no hard disk space to work from a loaded Photo-CD, and only has to read 4.5Mb of data during the printing process.
Editing and correction functions are limited, and we found that Kodak CMS used with Photo-CD produced rather poor results compared to careful import and correction in Photoshop.
PM6 is a major upgrade to PM5 and a bargain at under �400 street-price. It has always been easier to learn and faster to use than XPress, but lacked features for free-form ad layout design. It now has these - and more - and with Kodak color management should be a first choice of DTP program for photographers getting into this field. - David & Shirley Kilpatrick