Fiddling With Proofs

This morning I had to leave my sketching and do some of the jobs I was talking about last time, fiddling around with some of my finished images in Photoshop. It's a bit boring, but it's so good to be able to be in control, right the way through.

You may remember that the Dragon's Dinner proofs were not quite right (see Dragon-Proof!). They're not dreadful, but the colour balance is a bit off. Apparently they've added extra rhodamine (a bright pinky red) to make the dragon's red 'zing' more, but it's made other colours a bit dull and caused a visual anomalies with this cave illustration, where little bits of incidental magenta mark-making are jumping forward from the background.

So I've been trying to adjust certain things subtly. It's hard because what I see on-screen looks fine, it's just that it looks different on the printed proof beside me.

Most of the book will be adjusted at the printers. Remember I said that very occasionally a second proof is done? It seems this is one such occasion. The publisher feels we need to see the colour corrections before we go to print, which is reassuring.