Software - Web-to-print

What's happening in the world of digital halftone proofing? With new devices from Creo, Polaroid, Presstek, Screen and other technology innovators deep into beta testing and beyond, a number of commercial printers and prepress firms are taking note of the growing digital halftone proofing market. While digital halftone proofing may not be for everyone, it is proving itself a viable technology for consideration in digital environments, such as direct-to-plate prepress departments. In this focus on the emergence of digital halftone proofing, Printing Impressions offers a resource for your firm's continued evaluation of this color proofing movement. United Lithograph, of Somerville, MA,

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

The fourth installment of Printing Impressions' year-long CIP3 focus profiles the prepress and press projections of Heidelberg—the founding father of the CIP3 consortium. Now, with Delta Technology's PressGate from Heidelberg Prepress serving as a CIP3 enabling tool for the German press maker, the megasupplier is moving closer to automating the print production process from prepress through postpress. If one company needed to embody the objectives of the CIP3 movement—establish and implement a seamless digital workflow from prepress to postpress—it was Heidelberg. The founder of the CIP3 initiative, Heidelberg is the new name in prepress production, as well as an established goliath in the pressroom and

Your company is going through change—change that requires training—training that requires manuals. So you print out documentation that describes the new procedures and policies. Unfortunately, the moment you distribute the manuals, they become obsolete. Certain documentation in certain departments demands additions. What do you do? Painstakingly track down the erroneous manuals, fix them, then send them back? Yeah, right. "Nobody ever chases down and updates the 100 copies that were distributed," notes Gerry Thornton, director of information services at Lehigh Press in Cherry Hill, NJ. Now, picture this scenario. Instead of printing and distributing manuals, you post all of the pages electronically in

When do you think about your server? Probably not until something goes wrong. When the network is running smoothly, jobs are being routed seamlessly from prepress station to prepress station and performance is consistent— despite the large volume of digital data. The server may be the central player in a prepress environment, but, for all intents and purposes, it's an invisible man—until a network crash demands immediate attention. "Getting the best service from your server inevitably leads to a discussion about performance, because the primary objective in a production environment is to keep the [prep] work moving and the presses running," asserts

Digital asset management, an enabling technology, is pushing today's commercial printers into the role of tomorrow's information managers. Digital asset management. Unarguably, when these three words are strung together, whether on a trade show floor or at a business luncheon, commercial printers take notice. Grover Daniels II, president of Boston-based Daniels Printing, has a theory on this phenomenon. "The printer is the conduit for the delivery of content, whether the delivery vehicle is print or digital in nature," he professes. Daniels, a fourth-generation commercial printer, prefers to describe his family business as a full-service information provider that will comprise three interrelated business units: commercial

The third installment of Printing Impressions' year-long examination of CIP3 puts the spotlight on Screen (USA) and the relationship between Taiga SPACE and CIP3's PPF, and examines the CIP3 perspective of one very satisfied Screen technology user. Ask George Fiel what is so significant about CIP3, and, after arching his eyebrows slightly and looking you squarely in the eye—as if to pose the question: "What planet have you been living on?"—he will give you an answer that is insightful, if not virtually celebratory in nature. So, George, what do you think of CIP3? Go ahead, let us have it. "CIP3 will be universally adopted—it is, without question,

Preflighting is gaining momentum. You see it absorbed into comprehensive workflow solutions by major prepress vendors; you read about its growing compatibility with PDF, PostScript and other file formats; and you hear about the latest upgrades in preflighting tools, ranging from preview enhancements to the actual repair of bad fonts and colors within a file. What's the catalyst for all this? Mary Sommerset, senior product manager for preflighting at Extensis, makes the following observation: "Ask prepress operators what the single most useful thing a software company can do for them and the answer, a majority of the time, will be to help their customers

Catalog printers, pay close attention: XML—an enhancement of HTML or a redefined, simplified version of SGML, depending on how you view it—is one document manipulation language you need to know, and know well. XML will be your friend. Why? Extensible Markup Language (XML) allows users to define their own structure and tags, completely tailored to a particular document. XML is considered a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)—the 20-year-old, far too complex, yet far too vital to lose an ounce of respect for—document language. HTML is an application of SGML. For commercial printers, notably high-end catalog printers that repurpose wares onto glitzy

More than a few observers have noted a pause in the adoption of new digital media by printing companies. They claim that a surprising number are hesitant to install ISDN or T-1 lines, acquire Internet capability, and develop FTP sites, Web pages and e-mail. I've seen no data to support the notion that there is a slowdown in the pace of adoption, but if true, the reluctance should surprise no one. Prepress HellMany printers were burned by their entry into digital prepress during the 1980s and early in this decade. They went through what a printer in Oklahoma memorably described to me as "prepress