I've worked with those, Frank, and, like everything else, they come reasonably close, but they arent exact either -- ana s you point out, they're sometimes very tedious to work with, especially if you're working with paper stock that has texturing built into it. They're approximations of the paper colour only, with guess work as to the actual material used to make the paper, which is yet another factor that determines how the ink will lay on the surface.

All of these things are great strides forward from when I started in this industry in the early 80s, no doubt about it. But let's not pretend that we're 100% of the way there. We're not. It's like computer-based type -- folks love to talk about how it's so much better than metal-based settings... and yes, it is. But technology has made us sloppy about typesetting: we believe the computer will do all the kerning and letterspacing for us, when in fact it doesnt, not that much anyway. It still leaves ugly gaps that you have to manually correct, if you're so inclined... which most people arent. So we lose a little bit of type artistry in the process of making things technologically easier -- and no one really misses it, because only folks who really look at type will see the differences.

Well, same with monitor calibration and making it look exactly like what you see on the screen. It's a close match, but it loses out in all the little details that influence things during the actual printing process. But because those are, for the most part, unimportant in most people's eyes, we're willing to give it a bye and say, "Hey, it matches!"... even when it doesnt -- not if you're being completely critical about it.

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