Millers Blog : Color

Color Experience

Jason Becking — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:27:00 GMT

One of the many things that sets Miller's apart is the number of employees with many years of color experience. We work for you, our customer, to try and customize your preferences to suit you and your customer.

During our rush season this past November and December, I noticed many orders from new customers and I wanted to make sure everyone was familiar with the methods used here to help you receive orders to your satisfaction.
When most of us started our color training, we were working with film. We could adjust color and density and used what we called a Shirley, or a reference print, that had what we considered the normal skin tone and the proper amount of lightness and darkness. We still use a print, or several for reference, but with digital we now have contrast, gamma, and saturation to add to the adjustment process. What is considered normal to one person might be completely wrong for another customer. The subjectivity of our job can be quite difficult at times, but not impossible.

Some might like their images to look as close to a film image as possible, others might want that extra punch you can get with the addition of saturation or contrast. At Miller's we have several different tools to customize your preferences. We can add specific instructions to your account that will apply to every order. Here are some examples I see on a daily basis: slightly lighter/darker than Miller's standard, no extra yellow, add 10% contrast to all color files, just to name a few. You can send in a guide print for us to use on your orders or we can arrange to have one color person assigned to your account. However we can, it is our privilege to serve you!

Thank you,

Nema Velia

Columbia

Color Coordinated

admin — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:17:00 GMT

I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself to our relatively new customers, as well as refresh the memories of those I haven’t talked with recently. I began working for Millers in the 1970’s, part-time while attending college. I probably am one of the last team members still here who was hired by Bill Miller, the founder of this company.

Times have changed just a little since then. We talked for about an hour during the interview, about sports, our families, etc., and very little about the job. He called me at home that weekend, and I began work the following week. In those days, when Miller’s total employee base was less than 20 people, we had few people who specialized in one aspect of the business, and many who wore several different hats. On Mondays, when weekend wedding film came in, we worked in the film processing/proofing area. Throughout the week, we moved to printing, or pre-checking, or final check — whatever needed to be done that day. Fortunately for me, I was able to learn just about every job in the lab. I also learned many valuable lessons from Bill that still hold up in today’s business world. For one, you never compromise on quality. Another, you always do whatever it takes to please the customer.

My job here now is Color Coordinator in the Columbia facility. As other labs make claims about being the leaders in the industry, count on us to do whatever it takes to satisfy your needs. Whether you want a guide print matched, our standard guide print matched, or any other color preference, we’ll try our best to get it right for you. The color team at both facilities is better trained now than in all of the 30+ years that I’ve been around, so we’ll help you satisfy the needs of your own customers.

Thank you!

Nema Velia

Digital Beginnings

admin — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:44:00 GMT

Many of you know that Miller’s was the first Portrait Lab to offer Digital Imaging and many of the peripheral digital products. I was fortunate enough to be in the beginning phases, from learning about the equipment, to working with the engineers in developing the most efficient retouching tools.

In those days commercial labs were the only others offering digital. Most were not doing very many jobs per day and were charging a fortune for them! We scanned negatives, provided a variety of artwork services, then wrote the image to film. Even though it was more efficient than some of our traditional processes, it was still labor intensive by today’s standards. We were producing about 25-30 jobs per day, and we thought we were hot stuff!

Yesterday here in Columbia, we handled 95,558 files, including Service Bureau (Upload Prints), Albums, Digital Proofing, Web Hosting, and Press Products. And that’s not really a large day by today’s standards! It’s been 99 degrees here all week and we’ve had some slight air conditioning trouble, so we were literally hot stuff!! However, the best part is that we produced this amount of work with better than 99% on-time and better than 98% accuracy. We pay attention to these numbers every day and take whatever steps necessary to keep improving. Every team member is involved in producing for you the best possible product, in the most timely manner. Thank you for letting us serve you!

Nema Velia