AI?generated image created using ChatGPT and Google Nano Banana

Recently, I’ve been thinking about change I didn’t notice while it was happening. But it started with a moment most of you know by heart. The job is on press, and you carry it to the light booth to check it. You set it beside the reference you were given, the thing you agreed to match, and the color is faithful to the proof. The detail holds. The metrics are spot on. Nothing has slipped past the limits agreed to before the run began.

By every measure anyone agreed to use, the work is in spec and the client signs off.  It took the printing industry a long time to develop the standards, tools, and processes needed to make it standard practice rather than an exception for four-color process and spot color work. That was not luck, it was a reasoned collaborative process.