Heidelberg

The flood gates are open—digital presses for commercial printers are no longer one size fits all. There are enough devices to tempt the commercial printing community. From the zealous prepress provider to the comprehensive of one-stop printing operations: Specialization is the new mandate for the digital press in on-demand printing, variable or not. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Quick. What is a prime directive of the best of the best commercial printers when it comes to exploring new digital technologies for print? Be receptive to embrace emerging digital printing technologies? Be proactive with contemporary and unique marketing initiatives to promote new digital

Digital prepress houses are recognizing the need to diversify and invest in additional value-added services. Topping the list, for some, is on-demand digital printing. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO In February 1994, William Staar found himself on the cover of Printing Impressions magazine. At that time, Staar was a strategic influence in his family's $7.3 million digital prepress firm. The company, Noral Color, which has since been purchased by a larger graphic arts service provider, was co-founded by Staar's father, Norman Staar. In 1994, William Staar represented a new breed of commercial printing executive. He was powered by the intrinsic desire to modernize. He was

BY ERIK CAGLE Selling paper for the on-demand digital printing environment is even more lucrative than hawking millennium wares. But long after the last can of Spam has been devoured from Y2K survival kits, the market for digital printing grades will be bustling. The growth of digital printing, a process that envelopes entire workflows, has been well-documented, and paper mills and their distributors are continuously jockeying to reap the benefits of this constantly growing niche. Choices abound, calling for a sophisticated and calculated approach to choosing the bread for your digital printing butter. So many choices, so seemingly little difference among them. Robert Hieronymus, market manager

Sandy Alexander has forged a reputation as an upscale, high-end printer, which continues to grow through present investments and future acquisitions. BY ERIK CAGLE Let's face it, Sandy Alexander may not be for everyone when it comes time to choose a commercial printer. Roy Grossman, president of the company, admits as much. The primary reason is as simple as asking this question: Would you go to a five-star restaurant for a burger, fries and cola? "We operate within the 20 percent of the commercial market that's considered high-end color," notes Grossman of the Clifton, NJ-based company, which has a sister plant in St. Petersburg,

Most of us in printing use relational database technology for accounting and production files. Job-cost and general-ledger files we keep in relational tables; transaction processing is what we do. That's cool, but industry is zipping by us, leveraging data to make critical decisions. Printers are living in the days of OLTP: Online Transaction Processing. But the world around us is moving into variants of OLAP: Online Analytical Processing technology. Let me use a personal example to illustrate. I've maintained a database of web printers for nine years. It's a "relational" database consisting of four tables or files. Table One is for companies. Each company

The robotic scanner of yesteryear is long gone. Today's higher optical resolutions, advanced color user interfaces, fully integrated ICC-compatible software and faster scanning speeds are helping the prepress workflow scream. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Does it seem like the scanning market is standing in the conservative corner of digital prepress? Sure, glamorous, big-name PDF workflows are topics of industry discussion and intrinsic analysis, digital halftone proofing and digital platesetting devices duke it out for the time, attention and dollars of prepress executives and print production professionals—but what about the scanning market? Does anything scan-dalous ever happen to these image manipulators? As of

Sioux Falls, SD—In 40 years, Sioux Printing, based here, has seen a lot of changes. Two-color printing was "black and whatever color was in the press," recalls Jon Lewin, Sioux's third-generation owner. In 1959, Sioux employed eight people; now it has 85. And the pressroom, formerly home to a collection of older presses, has been completely remodeled to house two new six-color 40˝ MAN Roland 700 presses, a two-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 press and a two-color Quickmaster 46-2 press. "This is an exciting time for us," says Cathy Krueger, a sales representative for Sioux. "This company is really on the cutting edge. And I've

Is a digital proofer on your shopping list? Which digital proofing devices will you buy this year? What will be the improved range of spot colors accurately produced by these devices? Who's talking stochastic? Find out—today. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Happy new year. Need a new digital proofer? What an interesting time to shop for proofing expertise. (Sorry. No after-Christmas clearance on these items!) Expanding color gamuts, open front ends, new media selections, pigment-based inks, digital halftone and ink-jet devices, multi-setting proofers, spot color surprises—it seems every flavor of digital proofer is pushing to better mimic press conditions, deliver stable, accurate color and provide

Being able to run a 20˝ (or smaller) sheetfed offset press without a broad operator learning curve tops commercial printer demands of press manufacturers. BY ERIK CAGLE Commercial Printers have felt the pinch recently, with the amount of skilled press operators seemingly dwindling each year. Rather than choosing from a long list of prospects to operate their presses, many employers are faced with few options. As a result of the tight employment market, printers seek equipment that doesn't require lengthy operator training sessions—one of several issues facing not only those who buy small-format (20˝ and under) presses, but also those who manufacture them. While

Well, now that we've gotten over the millennium bug, or at least the hangover that accompanies the usual New Year's Eve festivities, we can hopefully focus our attention on the coming year. What will the new year/decade/century/millennium bring? Probably a lot of the same headaches the preceding one(s) bestowed upon us. That is, we can still expect to receive files that are missing fonts, images and other elements that are necessary to print. Of course, pricing and turnaround will continue to be the two legs of the stool expected to flex, while demands on quality remain as rigid as ever. Last year was