With more that two million images to process a year, Australia’s Fairfax Media group is gaining consistency and massive savings through an automated workflow which teams two batch processing technologies. Glen St Leon, the group’s quality and imaging manager, says the XML-driven process takes seconds rather than the ten to 15 minutes needed for manual enhancement, and is usually triggered automatically by a layout sub’s action. “What’s more, we’ve found that the results are more consistent – and usually better – than manual enhancement,” he says. “Manual image processing is too slow, very costly and too subjective.” When Fairfax started looking for a way to eliminate repetitive elements of the image handling eight years ago, it started by giving 30 operators ten minutes to optimise the same image... and got 30 different results. “Just about anybody with a digital camera can send in pictures – even the general public with devices such as mobile phones – and indeed, our regional papers rely on this,” he says. At all levels, digital photography has increased the number of images being handled for editorial and advertising purposes, while the growth of multimedia publishing means an image may be reprocessed for a variety of print and online needs. Fairfax currently handles 42,000 images a week across its metropolitan, regional and agricultural publishing divisions at an average of 80 seconds each (including remote sites). St Leon says automated processing not only saves time – the equivalent of more than 3600 hours a week for editorial alone – but creates intangible benefits and business opportunities. Early tests by members of a workgroup led Fairfax to Fotoware’s server-based Colour Factory solution, and a ‘drop folder’ system was introduced in 2004 for ‘The Age’ and the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ and then integrated with Fotoflow image ordering. Typically, smaller images were processed automatically without human intervention, while others were routed to operators. “In some cases this would be initiated by page layout, and in others through ordering systems,” St Leon says. More recently – and with a substantial increase in the number of images to be handled following the 2007 merger of Rural Press into Fairfax – a review of available technology led to the addition of Colour-Science’s Q-Enhancer batch processing image enhancement and ICC profiling to the system. The RGB enhancement software, which includes recognition features – addressing ‘red-eye’ and optimising the appearance of scene content such as grass and sky – now sits in the Fairfax workflow on the Colour Factory virtual servers. “It’s unbelievably how good it is,” St Leon says. Fairfax has two servers each at its Melbourne and Sydney editorial production sites, backed up by disaster recovery servers at the Tullamarine (Victoria) and Chullora (NSW) print sites. Two more servers were provided last year as part of a rollout across the regional and agricultural groups, and Colour Factory has also been integrated into Pongrass and Cyber (Atex) publishing systems for direct processing from the page via XML. “The Colour Factory system is open ended and interfaces with our library and archive system, as well as many production systems,” says St Leon. “All image enhancements are handled by the software, and the system also manages image flow, colour management, image enhancement, quality control and preparation for archiving.” Driving the process are custom-written XML tags which use and supplement the XMP and IPTC data buried in the image file. As well as XML data about the publication, crop size, destination and printing process requirements, there is access to the EXIF metadata captured by digital cameras. As a result, sports pictures can be identified by their shooting programme and high shutter speed, and routed for special treatment. Drop Folders are still used in some cases where the workflow or editorial system can’t interface with Color Factory (or where it would be too costly to change), and where workflow dictates it. Other components in the system are Adobe’s graphic server – which manages the production component of the database – and open source Pentaho business intelligence which helps manage data mining, and provides system reporting, data analysis and data integration. Introduction of the system has brought major savings in operational and staff costs, with operators freed up for retouching and deep-etch work. St Leon says there have also been productivity gains in editorial and opportunities for “just in time” publishing of sports and front page photographs which might not have been possible previously. “We’re getting better quality and better consistency in what we provide for the press, while needing less IT support at local sites.” But he emphasises the importance of quality control at input and output, including standardised printing: “You can’t have this and not pay attention to what’s happening at the press... or ignore the role of photographers. Cameras are now the first point in the process, he says.nngx • Glen St Leon spoke at the SWUG Australia conference in Tamworth in March.