Just got the October MR and Trains today. Does anyone else’s copy of MR look blurred on certain pages, particularly colors, both lettering and photos (not black and white print in other words)?
Dave Nelson
I just got mine today and it looks fine to me!
I just checked mine too. No off colors or smudged printing in mine either. Maybe send an email to Khalmbach with a pic.
It happens in printing. Call MR, and they will send a replacement copy. I assure you printers are far to savy to let very many get through like that.
ROAR
I noticed it the Information Desk column. All the purple colored accent lettering appeared to have a slight grey “drop shadow” effect. This made it looked fuzzy. I thought maybe my glasses were dirty or my eyes really took a turn for the worse! I didn’t notice this elsewhere, but have not yet read everything.
Bob Bochenek
The printing process can use a bunch of different colored filters (4 or 5 of them?) stacked on top of one another. If one is out of alignment, it produces the effect you’re seeing. Often on cereal boxes or newspapers (for example) there is some kind of registration mark that might look like a cross hair or a block of colors…it is what the printers use to line up the colored filters. I am no expert on printing so the process may be different now…I’m pulling from my memory banks of friends’ in high school that had graphic arts classes. Anyone know if this is how printing is still done?
Kalmbach has a great customer service staff, ask for another copy and they will send you one.
Just paged through mine, these days I often don;t even open it up because by the time my paper copy comes, I’ve already finished reading it via my digital copy. Mine looks fine, specifically on the mentioned sections and just randomly checking. It happens, sometimes things are slightly out of registration on the press, and if you saw the video on MRVP where they visit the printing plant, by the time someone sees that soemthing is off, there have been a LOT of copies printed. Just call customer service, they’ll get you another copy. I’ve had issues get ripped up in the main before, always happily replaced.
–Randy
I got mine today and spent my normal 10 minutes looking at it. I did notice my issue has several pages that look blurry.
What I really hate are terrible photos like on page 10 of the Metra F40PH. I’ve also noticed a lot of over-worked photos over the last few years. Makes me miss the old film photos.
It’s pretty plain, just a strip of ballasted track and a simple blue with clouds sky backdrop. What is does have though is horrible DoF, the front is blurry but back where the big Metra logo is, it looks sharp.
–Randy
To those that were discussing the printing process, you are correct. I was a graphic designer for almost 11 years. While my experience was with newsprint, I can’t imagine that it is any different for shiny paper presses like MR uses. It is most likely a 4-color process. (CMYK - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK. As an example, the MEC Green that my railroad breaks down to this formula: C=70, M=45, Y=64, K=28) If any of the plates, which each color has, are out of alignment, the color combination will look blurry. Sometimes, even in the same run, one copy will come out perfect and another will show blur depending on the tolerences of the press, the alignment of the plates and any adjustments that are made by the press people.
In my issue, the Metra loco is so blurry and out of focus, it looks like it has white, gray, and red stripes on the nose. Now, I know next to zero about Metra, but I’m pretty sure that’s not right!
I think you have one of the copies where the registration is off. Stripes look properly red and white in my copy.
I just carefully paged through the first 50 pages of mine, and all the pictures look nice and clear, and I didn’t see any odd text shdowing. The two page spread opening the Mann Creek story is quite nice. If you see oddly shadowed text, and pictures with shifted colors that look like they were trying to be 3D or something - you have one of the defective copies. Unless - they are giving paper only subscribers 3D now and no one told me. [(-D]
–Randy
Given the precise computer controls characteristic of modern print processes and the money we spend as subscribers, one would think that there would be some quality controls which would prevent this from happening. Would you tolerate it if “most” of a production run of canned food was properly protected against germ infiltration in the canning process?
Or be the unlucky one who gets the bad can?
Cedarwoodron
I think sometimes stuff happens. I recently got a newspaper (if you remember what that is) that had a couple pages where two sheets were semi-stuck together. Each sheet was printed on only one side.
We also bought green beans one time where the label was incorrect. We bought whole beans, but the can contained cut beans. We checked some other cans that had the same issue, all of them having the same lot number. Del Monte replaced them them, and gave us coupons for additional cans.
Even if one applied 6-sigma to the printing process, that still allows an error of 3.4 in a million.
Yeah, things happen. And the presses run so fast, there’s an awful lot of copies printed even if the error is detected at the output check - and it probably was, so someone went back and made the required adjustments and continued the run, but in the meantime there were a lot of issues already bound and readied to ship. All you can do about it is notify customer support and get a new copy. Kalmbach people are friendly and ready to help. I can assure you, they are not too happy that people got messed up copies either.
–Randy