With PostScript 3, PDF and PostScript Extreme delivering on their promises to facilitate faster print production, visionaries at Adobe are casting their view to PDF refinements—and uncovering the next great print production performer. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The introduction of PostScript placed Adobe Systems at the center of a growing web of desktop publishing solution providers. With the launch of Adobe's PostScript Extreme architecture and the rise of PDF, now, more than ever, Adobe is standing at center stage. What are Adobe's star qualities? Originally designed to demonstrate that PostScript could be imaged at or above engine speeds, Adobe PostScript Extreme expanded its
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Gigabit ethernet is fast becoming an industry standard. Do you know what it is? More important, do you know what it can do to bolster the networking power of your most demanding RIP workstation or workgroup server? Better find out—your competition may already be capitalizing on this ethernet craze. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Centralized content. As more and more digitally minded commercial printers exploit the merits of faster desktop publishing workstations and higher performance servers, fast ethernet functionality is becoming the standard connection. But, for truly high performance networking, gigabit ethernet is making some serious strides. What is gigabit ethernet? Put simply, "gigabit" is
Web money-makers push the technological envelope. BY ERIK CAGLE Ask 100 non-computer-technology-related companies why they have a Web site, and 95 will probably respond, "To have a presence on the Internet." Those respondents are in good company. At least 3 million Internet domain names have been registered under .com, .net and .org. Network Solutions, which has registered 75 percent of all domain names worldwide, reported a record 443,000 net new Internet domain names in the second quarter of 1998, up 91 percent from the second quarter 1997 total of 232,000 names and 30 percent from first quarter total of 340,000. Cumulative net registrations
Ever wonder how the best stay ahead of the competition? Just ask the staff at Millet The Printer, a family-owned general commercial printer in Dallas. Millet The Printer enjoys that reputation of striving to be the best. Research, hard work and a variety of jobs led the 65-year-old company to detour from the drum scanner market by purchasing a Cézanne flatbed CCD scanner from Screen (USA) last October. The company hasn't regretted the purchase. "Previously, we didn't have nearly enough scanner capacity for our production needs," says Mike Stoker, prepress manager for Millet. "Our drum scanner alone was not sufficient. We thought flatbed quality
BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Many of the prepress and press manufacturers within the CIP3 consortium are Adobe OEM customers and, as such, rely heavily on Adobe to share its vision on emerging digital workflows with the CIP3 membership, as well as to participate actively within the consortium to make sure that the strategies and technologies defined by CIP3 are supportive of industry trends. At present, all eyes are on Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and its impact on the direction of CIP3's Print Production Format (PPF). Over the past two years, Adobe—the founding force behind the industry's migration to Portable Document Format (PDF) compatibility—led the effort
As visitors enter the lobby of Westland Printers, they're stunned by a riot of color. The commercial custom printer displays samples of its work on two full walls. There's no missing the fact that Westland prints sophisticated multicolor brochures, many of which feature diecut and embossed covers produced on-site. Despite the complexity of the work, when Westland Printers accepts jobs these days, it's with the understanding that they'll be out the door within a week. Typically, the Burtonsville, MD, family-owned printer has between seven and 10 working days to turn a job around. And, points out company President Barbara Westland, that type of delivery is
No longer a boring storage selection, today's RAID solutions are showing RAID, too, can be a glitzy technology with complex, surprising powers. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Since an explosion of digital connectivity, asset management and electronic prepress technologies hit the printing industry like a Hollywood blockbuster comet, terms such as megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes and now even petabytes—all used to describe the size of digital storage needs—have filtered into the printing atmosphere. A logical phenomena. In the ever-dawning age of electronic prepress, functions such as RIPing a massive file, digitally archiving a file, or executing production of that file through applications like OPI and CTP
BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The latest installment of Printing Impressions' year-long report on CIP3 initiatives visits Vancouver, Canada-based thermal imaging innovator Creo Products, recently awarded a GATF InterTech Award for PrintLink, Creo's digital ink key preset software that boosts operational efficiency by bringing CIP3 into the picture. Beyond its role as a thermal imaging technology innovator, Creo is a member of the CIP3 consortium that developed the industry standard for exchanging information between print production devices. At Creo, CIP3 is PrintLink. How does PrintLink link? PrintLink generates CIP3-compliant Print Production Format (PPF) files during platemaking that define ink coverage on a plate precisely. PrintLink delivers these files via
BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Asset management is a field which, in a few years time, the industry might refer to as one that virtually exploded onto the scene and introduced a surplus of young technology providers and tools to a marketplace that was, in many ways, still figuring out exactly what it wanted to do with its digital assets. There are easily more than 75 asset managers currently positioned firmly in the graphic arts. Some cater specifically to digital assets in a variety of commercial prepress departments, some focus strictly on catalog production, some on manipulation of content in large-scale newspapers and others offer
BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO In this latest installment in Printing Impressions' yearlong CIP3 focus, BARCO Graphics reports on its company's push to digitize ink key settings—even before Heidelberg's spearheading of CIP3—and the attributes of InkPlanner, an option on BARCO's FASTRIP/B. Cutting costs. During press makereadies, valuable production time and paper are often wasted. Likewise, ink is an important cost factor in any commercial printing environment. Control over paper and control over ink are goals of every printer, especially those printing operations pursuing CIP3. An early member of the CIP3 consortium, BARCO Graphics recognized the need for tighter control over all consumables within the production environment. More specifically,