Shoot The Cake, And Eat It Too
Going digital
After being in the business for many years and currently with numerous magazines under their belt, and about 12 cookbooks produced annually, Reiman is moving toward a 100-percent digital workflow.
Why now? "Because it now works," says Sloane. "We tested it for many years; we just never were happy with the quality."
Currently, Reiman uses a CT/LW Scitex workflow on a Mac using a central server-based type of architecture and a PSM Scitex RIP. All proofing is done in house on two Kodak PS Approval proofers.
"All magazines and books have been printed CTP for a number of years," says Sloane, "and the conversion to digital photography will finish our move to an all-digital workflow."
Reiman brings in freelancers only at crunch times. Otherwise, all photography is done in house by staff photographers. The photo studio has two working Sinars, says Sloane; the third one serves as backup.
"Right now, we're still shooting primarily to a transparency," he continues, noting that all scanning is done on one of their Crosfield scanners. "We are currently working on our conversion to digital photography. We recently bought two Sinar digital systems, and we're just getting into the fine-tuning of the digital process. For example, we shot our fall catalog 100 percent digitally this year."
Each year, Reiman produces two catalogs, called "Country Store." The company takes the direct-marketing approach when it comes to producing catalogs, and a wait-and-see approach when it comes to cross-publishing and cross-promotion involving the Internet.
"Our audience is a little older and may be not quite as prone to online shopping as somebody else's customers would be," Sloane explains.
All image and data archiving is done in house on an Oracle-based database called FlexstorDB that can be searched using a standard Web browser. Since some editors work from home, it's important they also have access to the database. All data is kept on the server in the prepress department, Sloane adds.
