Scan to file problems at the print shop

We have just discovered something intertesting from our print shop, and I am
curous if anyone else has seen the same thing.
Basically we have a large range a greys that we use for material
representation in elevation, light for concrete, dark for glass, others for
things in between. We print on our HP 1050, then send that out for repo.
When the repo shop does a scan to print, everything looks fine. Not as
smooth as the original, but all the greys are distinct. However, when they
scan to file, all the greys become one dark shade. The result ofcourse
sucks. The shop says that Xerox, Oce, IBM, all the devices have the same
problem, which doesn't make sense, because our $400 scanner can make a tiff
with better fidelity than a $140,000 Oce. According to the print shop, that
is just the reality, which is unacceptable to us. We work really hard to get
our drawings to look good, and a lame tiff conversion algorithm shouldn't
shoot us down.
So, is anyone else seeing this? Have you found a solution? We are looking at
just printing to PDF in house, and having the printshop send those directly
to the device. More of a pain on our end, but if it gets high quality repo
we'll do it.

Best,
Gordon

 

Hey Gordon,

Most the the high speed scanners on the market don't do scans of grey
very well, but some newer types do.

We have a "slow" Ricoh RW-470 unit that can scan the grey (256 shades)
and also a KIP 8000 with a scanner that is a bit faster, with the same
level of grey. Note it might take some work to get the scan levels
corect, but it can be done on these scanners. The KIP goes to TIFF,
PDF, JPEG, etc right from the software.

The PDF idea is good, too, but I have seen some problems keeping
proper greys there, too.

Note also the Oce scanners have a photo mode that helps a lot with the
greys. It is not true greyscale, but the light and dark lines can be
better produced. We use that for many clients and they are happy with
most of the prints/scans.

Hope all works out.....

-Dave