DIGITAL digest
Successful deployment can create other issues. TanaSeybert’s accounting department was thrown for a loop by customers paying for orders with credit cards before the work was produced, she reported. “We took the money upfront, but then ended up generating an invoice marked ‘paid’ after the fact to send to our own accounting department.”
On the same topic, Steven Ebanks, partner in Orlando-based Xerographic Digital Printing, added that the training and support customers invest in deploying a system for use by remote employees, agents or dealers gives them a vested interest in continuing to do business with the printer. “It makes it harder for them to leave,” he observed.
SWOP to Get Makeover
ALEXANDRIA, VA—The parties behind SWOP (Specifications for Web Offset Publications) have unveiled a strategy to modernize the specification and the accompanying certification program to meet today’s publication printing requirements.
“Our industry has changed since SWOP first developed its specifications,” notes Jim Mikol, senior vice president of technology, Leo Burnett USA, and member of the SWOP Advisory Committee. “We now demand tighter tolerances and greater assurance of a close visual match from proof to printed publication.”
Another challenge for SWOP is to address the industry shift to virtual proofing workflows. “We believe that in less than three years, hard-copy proofing will be obsolete,” asserts Elaine Fry, another committee member and director of manufacturing and production at Forbes magazine. “We need to develop specifications and best practices to ensure that monitor proofing can reliably and confidently match the visual appearance of an image on-press.”
In addition, the IDEAlliance has announced that SWOP will adopt the new G7 calibration, printing and proofing process control methods that grew out of the R&D efforts of its GRACoL Committee. G7 defines gray balance and target neutral print density curves for three-color gray and black as the primary method for color control.
