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| Digital Dots' Specialist Features 2010 |
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Setting Workflow free
The Danish softproof- and workflow system vendor WebProof has taken a rather radical stance by offering its workflow solution WebFlow for free. By Paul Lindström |
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Video killed the radio star
Welcome to the second half of our Creative Suite 5 review. In this part we're going to venture into new territory with a look at some of the video production tools, but first it's time to dive into Flash. By Nessan Cleary |
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Webs & Tides (93)
The two most important trends we have followed in recent years were screaming loud and clear at IPEX: Workflow efficiency and resultant process automation, and Web-to-print technologies, evidence of which was everywhere at IPEX. By Laurel Brunner |
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Tantalisingly close (92)
Right from the start IPEX 2010 was billed as being an inkjet show, with the promise of seeing production versions of the high speed inkjet printers that were shown in prototype form at the last Drupa. By Nessan Cleary |
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Colour Management and Proofing (91)
While you might think that colour management should be a mature and stable technology by now, 17 years after the creation of the International Color Consortium (ICC), IPEX proved that there is still a lot of activity and progress in the field. By Paul Lindström |
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Full of purpose or completely pointless? (90)
For the Chinese the number eight is considered lucky. For many members of TC130 Working Group 3 beavering away on ISO 12647 part 8, the number eight is the bane of their lives. By Laurel Brunner |
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Five easy pieces (89)
As Adobe prepares to unleash the fifth generation of its Creative Suite, we take a look at five perennial favourites from this collection. By Nessan Cleary |
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Colour Veterans (88)
Founded way back in 1984, GMG can look back and realise that it has been around as long as the desktop publishing phenomena and personal computers. By Paul Lindström |
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Gorgeous Digital (87)
The latest glut of pre-IPEX press conferences and releases is further confirmation that traditional print industry giants no longer dominate the news agenda. By Laurel Brunner |
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IPEX Coming into View (86)
IPEX has its origins in the Great Exhibition of 1851. That show lasted six months, during which period 6.2 million people came to gawp at 13,000 industrial exhibits from around the world. By Laurel Brunner |
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King of the hill (85)
Web2print was in its infancy when ROI set up shop, but as the concept has grown, so ROI has developed beyond just selling software. By Nessan Cleary |
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E-eek Books (84)
An electronic book (e-book) is a book that gets published electronically. By Laurel Brunner |
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Spectral readings, part 2 (83)
In our introduction to this test, published in October 2009, we outlined some of the challenges for making spectral measurements. By Paul Lindström |
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Kings of Iron? (82)
Last summer when Manroland and Heidelberg were rumoured to be merging, the general consensus was that, given the dire market conditions, this was a good thing. By Laurel Brunner |
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| Digital Dots' Specialist Features 2009 |
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Down in the woods today (81)
Several years of co-operation between manufacturer and customer resulted in an almost custom tailored high volume printer for full colour transactional print from Fuji Xerox. By Paul Lindström |
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Another leap forward (80)
The Peoples’ Republic of China was gearing up to celebrate its 60-year anniversary as ISO’s committee for graphic technology standards met recently in Beijing. By Laurel Brunner |
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In the soup (78)
Greater automation is essential in allowing printers to cope with larger numbers of short run fast turnaround jobs, and the key to that automation lies in improving workflow processes. By Nessan Cleary |
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Certified – but how? (77)
We have repeatedly written about quality assurance, not least about print certification according to the ISO standard 12647. By Paul Lindström |
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Full Stream Ahead (76)
When Kodak’s Stream technology was previewed as the Concept press at Drupa last year, it was, to be honest, hard to get really gee’d up about it. By Laurel Brunner |
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Seeing is believing (75)
EFI recently announced that its proofing system Colorproof XF has now reached its fourth generation, and come a long way since it was acquired from Best Color in 2002. By Paul Lindström |
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The superwide perspective (74)
At the beginning of May we went to Fespa in Amsterdam and underwent a curious and very stimulating experience: an annual trade show that was absolutely alive with excitement. By Laurel Brunner |
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Tinkerbell Taking Flight (73)
The Tinkerbell project, as it was originally code named, was always about more than just the HP Inkjet Web Press (IWP) and is just the start. By Laurel Brunner |
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Efficient magazine production (72)
The Norwegian company PagePlanner Solutions’ PagePlanner magazine production system, fills the gap between large editorial systems and manual magazine production. By Paul Lindström |
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PDF/X-3 – is it any good? (71)
We have repeatedly recommended to printers and publishers that they use the PDF/X-standard, but PDF/X-3 might not secure the printability of the files in the way you would have hoped, after all. By Paul Lindström |
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Alwan: Champions of ISO 12647 (70)
Alwan Color Expertise has established the international KEE Consultants Network to help printers and publishers who want to implement standardisation tools. By Laurel Brunner |
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Net-based team working (69)
The plethora of components in the latest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite can be quite overwhelming. But when it comes to online collaboration, it’s worth looking at Adobe Acrobat Connect. By Paul Lindström |
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Quality Management and ISO 12647 (67)
Print certification according to ISO 12647, the ISO standard that defines print process quality standards, is gaining momentum. By Paul Lindström & Laurel Brunner |
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Written on the label (66)
The market for digital label printing has been growing steadily, as run lengths drop and the digital printers take market share from both litho and flexo printing. By Nessan Cleary |
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Go wild on the Web (65)
A couple of issues back we took a beta copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 for a spin. Since then Adobe has released the final version of CS4. By Nessan Cleary |
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| Digital Dots' Specialist Features to 2008 |
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Wide- approaching full-gamut (64)
Colour image quality is clearly of interest to many people, and the latest 11- and 12-colour printers are at the centre of this interest. Are we now able to reproduce a photo with its entire gamut? By Paul Lindstrom |
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EFI has everything to play for (63)
For the last couple of years EFI has been trying to move away from its Fiery dependency to become a more central player in the commercial printing market. But this has not been without its trials. By Laurel Brunner |
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Larger colour gamut than ever (62)
A large colour gamut and high contrast ratio is not the only criteria for a high-end softproofing monitor. Accurate calibration, uniform colour across the monitor surface and stable colours independent of viewing angle are others. By Paul Lindström |
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Wet but definitely not wild (61)
This year’s Ifra in Amsterdam was about water and about content. The water came pouring down from rainy skies and sloshed about in the city’s endless canals, and was thematic of the show. By Laurel Brunner |
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Xanté Going for Gold (60)
Xanté has maintained its focus on small printing companies, and no small part of this survival has been down to its close relationships with its customer base. By Laurel Brunner |
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CS4: Kitchen sink not included (59)
The first and most obvious thing to say about Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 is that it is quite a large collection of programs. By Nessan Cleary |
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Canon’s Insight Report (58)
This research report looks at trends and opportunities in the printing industry and Canon commissioned it specifically for Drupa. By Laurel Brunner |
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XPS Coming Up on the Inside (57)
When we first heard about XPS we weren’t sure if it could be considered a competitor to PDF or not. That was several years ago, and we have started to lean towards the Yes camp rather than the No. By Laurel Brunner |
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New Ways in Print (56)
With the HP Indigo 7000 digital press and SmartStream Workflow, HP is positioned to provide powerful production management tools for all sectors of the market. By Laurel Brunner |
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Newspaper Business Systems (55)
Just as front end systems for newspaper production have become heavily IT dependent, so have the business systems operating behind the scenes. By Laurel Brunner |
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The inkjet Drupa (54)
There’s little doubt that Drupa 2008 will be dubbed the ‘inkjet’ Drupa and there were several different types of inkjet technology on show. By Nessan Cleary and Paul Lindström |
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It’s all about the Flow (53)
Getting jobs from orgination to fulfilment is all about managing the workflow. Laurel Brunner reports on workflow at Drupa 2008… |
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Transpromo in Action (52)
Judging by the growing hype surrounding the transpromo market, one might think it’s something completely new. But one would be wrong. By Laurel Brunner |
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Certifiable Printing Companies (51)
Demands for faster turnaround, less waste and higher quality are encouraging more and more printers to automate prepress processes. By Laurel Brunner |
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GI Solutions Solving Puzzles (50)
Last November Screen installed its Truepress Jet520 digital press at GI Solutions in the UK and the machine is already paying its way. By Laurel Brunner |
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Squaring the triangle (49)
Earlier this year we announced our intention to look at the environmental impact of printing…. By Nessan Cleary |
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Delta E Blues (48)
It has never been easy to communicate colour information, and most of our trials are approximates of variable quality. By Paul Lindström |
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Monitor test 2008 (47)
When LED backlit monitors came to market in force last year, we saw a sudden and definite jump to larger colour gamuts. By Paul Lindström |
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Environmentally aware - Elanders (46)
Elanders' push into environmentally benign production started in the late nineties and several of its production centres have achieved ISO 14001 certification since then. By Paul Lindström |
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The ugly duckling (45)
Kodak has built a concept press using the Stream technology which ultimately promises a similar quality to litho. By Nessan Cleary |
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The Folio Society (44)
The Folio Society’s mandate is to provide members with 'editions of the world's great literature in a format worthy of the contents, at a price within the reach of everyman’. By Laurel Brunner |
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Upping the Ante (43)
Alwan Color Expertise was the first company to present a technology to extend ink management beyond Grey Component Replacement (GCR) and similar techniques. By Paul Lindström |
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The MultiCopy Story (42)
The MultiCopy story is one that reflects with near perfection the nature of the 21st century printing industry. By Laurel Brunner |
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The Owl & Minerva (41)
Laurel Brunner recently visited Fujifilm’s Advanced Research Laboratories in Kanagawa, Japan to learn more about the company’s plans for its future… |
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A Quark’s Tale (40)
In 1981, when Quark was originally founded, the publishing world had no idea of the momentous changes just around the corner; nor did computing, or the printing industry. By Laurel Brunner |
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Advanced proofing – spot colours (39)
Digital Dots has conducted a test of proofing systems, where the test forme contains the normal four process colours, plus six selected spot colours. By Paul Lindstrom |
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Secret agents (38)
The chances are that many people reading this won’t have heard of Global Graphics, though many of us regularly use its technology. So what exactly does Global Graphics do? By Nessan Cleary |
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Consuming Desires (37)
Brand integrity is one of the major issues facing producers and marketers of Fast Moving Consumer Goods, otherwise known as FMCGs. By Laurel Brunner |
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Giant-killer (36)
Inca Digital unveils its latest project, the Onset, aimed fair and square at the screen printing sector. By Nessan Cleary |
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Forward Connections (35)
Last month we visited EFI’s Connect user conference which took place in Las Vegas, a city not known for understated restraint, calm, dignity and gravitas. By Laurel Brunner |
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Kodak Colorflow Technology (34)
Colour management technology should provide the equivalent, if not better, levels of colour processing control to those of traditional, proprietary, high end colour systems. By Laurel Brunner |
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All Roads Lead from Rome (33)
In the last few weeks two major, private industry events occurred in Rome. HP’s Graphic Arts Summit and Xerox’s Forum both followed largely similar three day schedules. By Laurel Brunner |
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Introducing Fujifilm’s XMF (32)
Following its preview at Ipex, Fujifilm has now formally launched its next generation workflow system, XMF. By Laurel Brunner |
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Plate Costs (31)
Plate prices have been rising of late and for printers considering moving to direct-to-plate output, this additional cost consideration can be a bit off-putting. By Laurel Brunner |
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Greyhounds Never Ran So Fleet (30)
What do digital data, racehorses and greyhounds have in common? More than you might think because all three have to be capable of extreme speeds, and be utterly fit for purpose. By Laurel Brunner |
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Closing the Colour Management Loop (28)
Last June in a small hotel in Leeds, deep in the heart of what was once industrial England, an important but largely unnoticed meeting occurred. By Laurel Brunner |
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A to X of PDF (No 25)
Now that Adobe has set up the retirement plan for Postscript, it’s clear that PDF will be the absolute number one file format for electronic file delivery in print publishing. By Paul Lindström |
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The colour of money (No 22)
Colour is the beating heart of commercial printing and publishing. Accurate colour both on the screen, on the colour printer, proofer and on press, is what we strive for. By Paul Lindström |
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CTP Cost of Ownership for small to medium sized printers (No 21)
Heidelberg’s announcement of small-format thermal platesetters is interesting, not least because of Suprasetter’s value for money, and is one of many companies making its CTP technology available for small businesses not yet outputting direct to plate. By Laurel Brunner |
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Full circle for operating systems (No 20)
How many people care very much about what operating system their computer uses? We assume there might be some who feel quite strongly about this, but most computer users probably care little, as long as they can do their work. By Paul Lindström |
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Keeping it Under Control (No 18)
Quality assured process control with tools for calibration, profiling and colour accurate proofing are getting closer and closer to the press. By Laurel Brunner |
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Free enterprise (No 17)
Free newspapers are changing the newspaper industry, revitalising it’s business models and changing peoples’ ideas. By Laurel Brunner |
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Demanding Proofing (No 16)
While accurate printing is the main challenge for printers and publishers, when it comes to getting the colours right the step before going to print – proofing and final approvals – is the second biggest challenge. By Paul Lindström |
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Colour Me Maxi (No 13)
Much attention is being paid these days to standards and digital workflow automation, particularly for colour print production. By Laurel Brunner |
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Package deals (No 12)
Published in September 2005, version 1.3 of the JDF specification has revisions to many areas, including some packaging related extensions. But there's much more to it than that. By Laurel Brunner |
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Doing it the E Way (No 10)
There is a widespread anxiety that print management and brokering using digital technologies, will drive many small- and medium-sized printers out of business. By Laurel Brunner |
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JDF in Action (No 8)
Is it just another example of overhyped technology or is JDF really getting under the industry’s skin? Are we putting JDF into action or still just talking about it? By Laurel Brunner |
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CTP in Newspapers (No 7)
The newspaper market could be described as the goose that lays the golden egg for consumables suppliers… |
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Open Wide (No 6)
What do we mean by wide-format output? Is it wide, large, grand, giant, superwide, or what? Is it all just semantics? |
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Advantage Quark (No 4)
It has taken a while (too long some might add), but now Quark XPress 7 has finally been launched and is ready to overwhelm the world in a frenetic flurry of sales. By Paul Lindström |
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CTP advances at Ipex (No 3)
Amidst the excitement of workflow and digital printing engulfing Ipex, it was easy to forget about new CTP developments. By Laurel Brunner |
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| Technology Profiles and Features |
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DuPont Building Bridges
Money, lots of it, is being poured into digital printing research and technologies that will assuredly keep print on the desktop and elsewhere for many years to come. By Laurel Brunner |
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Agfa Graphics: Plate Profile
With its origins in the development of photo products and chemical dyes, Agfa is the oldest player in the plate business… |
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Fuji: Plate Profile
The story of how Fuji got into the plate business is not an easy one to tell. In common with many Japanese companies. By Laurel Brunner |
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Ipagsa: Plate Profile
Placas Catalanas – Something for everyone. Although there are many companies supplying digital plates around the world, there are really only a few dedicated digital plate manufacturers... |
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Kodak: Plate Profile
Since George Eastman first said ‘you press the button, we do the rest’ in 1888, Kodak, headquartered in Rochester, New York, has revolved around imaging consumables and everything required to serve the markets that use them… |
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Presstek Profile
For many years, we have been sceptical about Presstek’s position in the computer to plate (CTP) market, because Presstek’s origins are as a supplier of technologies for direct imaging presses… |
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Process Control and Press Control
Over recent years demands on printers have risen steadily, and while this may not be universally welcome, it has forced onto the printers a higher degree of quality awareness. By Paul Lindström |
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| Colour Management + Colour Proofing |
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Captain Fantastic or Brown Dirt Cowboy?
Elton John has given much to the world including a somewhat underrated song called Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. It’s unlikely that Sir Elton planned it, but this song title rather aptly summarises where the graphics industry is with colour management. By Laurel Brunner |
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Calibration, Profiling & Device Management
It’s quite obvious that colour management can enhance the publishing production process, but putting it into practice isn’t simple because it’s all about process control… |
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Collaborative Proofing
Managing a stream of different PDF files, all with notes and comments, from different proof readers is far from an ideal situation, but it is the reality for many proofing workflows. By Paul Lindström |
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Colour Proofing Basics
Direct to plate workflows imaging digital plates is reality for well over 30 per cent of the worldwide printing industry and growing rapidly… |
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Managing Colour in the Workflow
It’s tempting to think digital colour workflow management is something new, but it’s existed since the early days of digital prepress… |
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New Horizons for Colour Management
For the most part, the ICC’s work and that of technology developers is pretty much done: the technological infrastructure is in place and process requirements understood… |
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Softly Softly
Since our review of collaborative softproofing systems in April, some additional systems have come onto the market. By Paul Lindström |
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| Computer-to-Plate |
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Computer-to-plate imaging Pros & Cons
Given the widespread adoption of computer-to-plate production and the many success stories, it is surprising that discussions as to the pros and cons of imaging technologies are still so passionate… |
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CTP Plates Overview
Computer-to-plate production is no longer just a possibility for the printing industry, it’s a proven reality with over 26,000 of these engines estimated to be in use worldwide… |
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Developments in CTP Output
In the early days of computer-to-plate production, developers, manufacturers and users had a lot to learn about getting good results from direct to plate systems… |
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Getting into Computer-to-Plate Production
Although we hear a tremendous lot of noise about computer to plate (CTP) production, it is still by no means the predominant output choice throughout the worldwide printing industry… |
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Managing Investment into CTP
For most users the primary reason for investing in computer to plate (CTP) is the need for production improvement… |
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| Digital Printing + Direct Imaging Presses |
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Diamond Class
The press release announcing the Xeikon Diamond Award winners said: ‘Valeri Art, Republic of Kazakhstan, public transport monthly tickets.’ By Laurel Brunner |
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Digital Imaging Presses
For many years we have had a slightly sceptical attitude to DI presses, tending instead to pay more attention to developments in digital presses capable of variable data… |
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Direct Imaging Presses
The idea of a building a CTP system into a printing press always seemed to us slightly absurd. Why have a press waiting while imaging plates?… |
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Variable Data Printing
Over the past few years, digital print has reached a point where it matches, and sometimes even surpasses, offset quality… |
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| JDF - The Job Definition Format |
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Bleeding JDF?
We have always tried to practise what we preach, but with JDF we weren’t quite sure how to live up to that ideal… |
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Destination Automate
All this fuss over JDF in many ways misses the point. JDF is the means, but not the end; it’s the data format, but not the process… |
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JDF: Just Don’t Forget (As if......!)
Not only have we been waiting for many months to see the sun shine: ever since Drupa last year we’ve been waiting to see the first blooms on JDF’s fragile branches. Fragile what? Well, maybe not fragile but definitely vulnerable. By Laurel Brunner |
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What Is JDF?
Even though it’s only a data format, the Job Definition Format (JDF), has caused more crackle in the market than we’ve seen for years… |
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| Preproduction Data Management & Quality Control |
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Control Freaks
There are many technology developers working on graphics production quality assurance tools… |
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Living on the Digital Edge
Have you ever sat at a dinner party and tried to explain what you do? For most people it’s no big deal, they buy, they sell, they make or build stuff, they fix things or people, or they move money about… |
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Preflight Reinvented
Everything changes and everything stays the same. We know less, forget more and need to keep track of truckloads of extra stuff, even though much of it is a complete mystery to us. By Laurel Brunner |
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The Future for Postscript and PDF
Early preflighting technologies were introduced to solve problems in Postscript language processing, but preproduction data management is no longer just about sorting out bad Postscript… |
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What’s Inside a RIP, and Why Should We Care?
Most designers are happily unaware that the documents they produce on their computers, and see developing on screen as they work, need to be properly processed before they can be output on paper… |
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