Eastman Kodak

BY CHERYL A. ADAMS Suicide. That's what industry experts said Norm Friedman was committing by investing in a startup printing operation back in 1992. The economy was depressed, the commercial printing market was overly saturated and competition was so fierce, several local printers had already gone out of business. Opening new doors when others were closing theirs would surely be death by design. Fortunately for Quantum Color, the bank didn't see it that way. Company ProfileName: Quantum ColorLocation: Morton Grove, ILEmployees: 150Annual Sales: $28 millionKey Markets: Advertising agencies, design firms, corporationsThe new company's loan was approved and, a year later, the gamble paid off

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Color management systems, woven into digital proofing devices, are trying to deliver—and some argue are now delivering—effective, repeatable digital bluelines. Up-and-coming models for standardization, from commonly used International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles to new initiatives from the General Requirements for Applications in Commercial Offset Lithography (GRACoL), are refining the color delivery potential of the digital proofer. To better gain a proof positive perspective on the performance of color in today's digital proofing environment and what the market has and will soon have to offer, Printing Impressions polled a sampling of technology providers. On a company by company basis,

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Handling the sheer volume of scans seems to be a more daunting, more demanding task. It isn't solely the imagination of your prepress manager. Lucky for the prepress manager, scanning has been brought to an all-time level of ease, thanks to a robust product market laden with devices that boast built-in gradation curves, preset color look-up tables and expanded capabilities to digitize reflective and transmissive art at an impressive array of scanning depths and optical densities. From the AgfaScan T-5000 from Agfa Div., Bayer Corp., to the vertical-drum Tango from Heidelberg Prepress to the Fuji C-550 or the EverSmart

For the third year, Printing Impressions has compiled a ranking of the top color on-demand print providers in the nation. The 1998 edition features a few changes. In the past, difficulty in obtaining accurate on-demand sales figures made it more practical to list the top companies alphabetically, without individual ranks. But increased on-demand printing revenues for digital color press users have made an actual Top 50 ranking possible for the first time. This year, rankings were determined by self-reported on-demand sales figures. While there are other companies who would qualify for this listing, we could only include those who responded to our survey. 1)

Be honest. Did you expect WAM!NET and 4-Sight to merge their telecommunication powers under the same banner at Seybold? WAM!NET's bold and beautiful acquisition of the UK-domestic-turned-global ISDN provider was the big news at Seybold New York. Wasn't it the most logical, likely, and yet somehow unlikely, pairing of corporate intentions, philosophies and technologies? Wasn't it just what the commercial printer has been virtually demanding of these two facilitators of digital file delivery? On perhaps a more important note, wasn't it simply surreal to see all those WAM!NET employees in their funky T-shirts standing peacefully, shoulder to shoulder, with the small army of

Pull up a chair! Welcome to Printing Impressions' round-table discussion of the status, the direction and the promise of thermal computer-to-plate (CTP). Technology providers, ranging from thermal CTP's marketing-savvy pioneer Creo Products—whose campaign with Kodak ignited the industry's thermal frenzy—to an array of other world-class thermal technology suppliers, will debate the merits of thermal CTP today, address the technology's weaknesses on the consumables front and wager predictions for thermal CTP's next 100 days. Where do you think thermal CTP is headed, and when will your organization reap its full, processless potential? Time will tell. For now, let's join the discussion . . . When

They're on their third incarnation, and going strong. It's the Heidelberg Digital Imaging Association (HDIA), formerly the Linotype-Hell Users Group, formerly the Hell Users Group. Comprising users of (former) Hell ChromaCom systems and scanners, (former) Linotype imagesetters and systems, and Heidelberg DI presses, the group appeared vibrant and prosperous at its mid-February annual meeting, held near Heidelberg USA headquarters in Atlanta. With all the troubles that have befallen the Scitex Graphic Arts Users Association in recent years, the HDIA has become the largest and most successful of the remaining graphic arts users groups. Attending (and speaking at) the Atlanta meeting, I thought it immediately apparent

PITTSBURGH—Attendees here at the recent fifth annual Tech Alert conference, sponsored by the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF), witnessed the first detailed study comparing CTP-exposed thermal plates. GATF designed a special digital test image for this test. The image contained vignettes and gray backgrounds to show anomalies such as banding, streaks and inconsistent imaging. There was no real difference among any plates in dot imaging consistency. The Kodak DITP, Fuji LH-P and Fuji LH-N plates had the broadest highlight to shadow dot range of 0.5 percent to 98 percent on the printed samples. The difference among the remaining plates was not appreciable. These same

NASHVILLE, TN—Digital communications company NEC Inc. has acquired a Cranford, NJ-based facility formerly owned by digital prepress provider TSI Graphics. With the addition of this plant—now known as NEC/Cranford—NEC is better positioned to service metro customers and expand services in the greater New York area. Specific details of the agreement were not disclosed. "Our goal is to expand our market share in magazine publishing and to be able to service quick turns for our New York customers," explains NEC Vice President of Technology Ray Flatt. "A large percentage of our business is already coming out of New York City, so we are not an

Be it expanding the performance of a conventional CTP site or capitalizing on thermal CTP, this sampling of digital prepress pioneers runs the gamut. As technologies for improving computer-to-plate performance continue to test the mettle of the most ingenious of today's commercial printers, the question raised seems more a statement of logic than a much-pondered, genuine inquiry. How good is CTP? Whether the direction is a conventional CTP route, with investments in a team of platesetting devices and digital proofers, or a thermal CTP focus capitalizing on the proliferation of thermal plates and growing volume of thermal platesetting devices, one factor seems clear: CTP