Heidelberg

The latest digital imposition tools are object-independent, page rotating, PDF imposing signature refiners—automating even further the territory once governed by the meticulous manual stripper. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Manual stripping. One day—perhaps today—the task of manual stripping will seem as foreign a concept to the seasoned graphic arts professional as does the nearly lost art of photo engraving. Current imposition tools perform a flexible and varied set of clever tasks: Digitally imposing signatures that can be output on a variety of PostScript-compatible devices, from the digital press to a platesetter to an imagesetter; Rotating and viewing any object on any signature; Creating complete, precise impositions in

Lake County Press, a $38 million sheetfed printer, pulled beta duty for Prinergy—a new Adobe PDF, PostScript Extreme digital workflow. The results? BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The mission statement of Lake County Press, a three-decade-old, $38 million high-end commercial printer based in Waukegan, IL, says it all: Lake County Press (LCP) is committed to the pursuit of excellence and fairness, and will fulfill its customers' graphic communication needs by being an innovative resource relying on the expertise of dedicated, highly skilled employees, utilizing the finest equipment and the latest technology. The latest technology. Most recently, LCP served as a beta site for Prinergy, the new workflow

With automation reaching or nearing its peak, manufacturers look for ways to bring prepress and the pressroom closer together. BY ERIK CAGLE Want to see all of the neat, new sheetfed offset press models that will be unveiled at DRUPA 2000? If the answer is yes, go renew your passport because we're not going to show you. Sorry, we'd show you if we could, but Germany will be the place to be next May, as the printing industry's top manufacturers will use the exhibition to wage a battle of one-upsmanship in the sheetfed press division. Building the better mousetrap is becoming increasingly more difficult;

MONTATAIRE, FRANCE—Heidelberg Web Systems welcomed more than 150 printers from Europe and the United States to its European headquarters here recently for a one-day program centered around the company's new Sunday 4000 press system. Included in the program were presentations on market trends as well as live demonstrations of the Sunday 4000 press. Printers were divided according to country in order to facilitate communication and to focus on market requirements in individual countries. The Sunday 4000, the first 48-page Sunday Press, is designed for printing high pagination jobs for a wide range of run lengths, officials told the group. It has a top rated speed

Next-generation power workstations (HINT: like Apple's new G4) are catapulting prepress productivity to new heights—with help from the ever-omnipotent server. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO More power. More memory. More speed. More storage. More flexibility. More performance. What prepress professionals wouldn't want more in the way of productivity from their power workstations? After all, the key word is power, isn't it? Otherwise, it's just a workstation—and doesn't that sound boring? Up until the recent Seybold San Francisco show, the two most power-packed power workstations gaining graphic arts attention were Apple's 400MHz Power Macintosh G3 and SGI's Intel-powered 320 and 540 visual workstations, which sport a

Prinergy can scale its client/server architecture to increase system throughput in small-to-large commercial printing operations. The objective: Add software and hardware components until the workflow is keeping up with the pace of CTP. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Client/server technology has been implemented in many industries. Whether booking reservations for air travel or making a last-minute stop at an ATM, both are direct links to some form of client/server architecture designed to improve speed and performance. Now, prepress is following suit. Yes, client/server architecture—a term just vague enough to encompass a variety of digital workflow solutions that link users at their desktops to the servers processing their files—is

What's the latest technological perks to thermal platesetting? What is the hot news on thermal consumables? What recent thermal purchases are fueling CTP? What's the current talk on thermal? Here are hot bytes on the hottest developments. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Thermal innovator Creo Products and Heidelberg Prepress report the installation of the 1,000th CTP system at Holland, MI-based Steketee-Van Huis. SVH recently took delivery of its new Trendsetter Spectrum 3244 digital halftone proofing system. The installation of the thermal Spectrum marks the 1,000th digital CTP system implemented by Creo and Heidelberg. Of the 1,000 installs, roughly 900 have been thermal. At Steketee-Van Huis, the Trendsetter Spectrum

Riding high on its belief of embracing technological innovation, The Hennegan Company, a four-generation heatset web and sheetfed commercial printer founded in 1886, meets modern-day quality demands by leaping into thermal CTP and cutting-edge digital proofing. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Sixty minutes. That may not sound like much time, but when those 60 minutes are spent, in seclusion, dissecting a select grouping of printed samples produced at the century old Florence, KY-based Hennegan Company, now in its fourth generation, each minute amounts to time very well spent. It only takes one hour of concentrated scrutiny to detect the meticulous care that must

Whether drum or flatbed, today's high-tech scanning systems are allowing prepress departments to do more, create more—even charge more. Here's a look at some of the new technologies and creative techniques empowering prepress with high-voltage scans. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The scanning market, like those of its prepress counterparts, is continuing to evolve, especially the flatbed component. Interesting, though, how much hype is concentrated around the kings of digital output, such as the thermal platesetter—arguably the most hyped digital output device ever to hit electronic prepress. But what of the content creator—the device that enables color images to be digitized, manipulated, then output?

At Seybold San Francisco, Creo and Heidelberg are launching Prinergy—a page-based workflow solution that leverages Adobe Extreme technology to create customized PDF job tickets and process plans. What's so electric about Prinergy? The first joint-venture development for Creo and Heidelberg, Prinergy brings Adobe into the alliance by offering an end-to-end workflow solution based not only on PDF, but also Extreme. Prinergy is one extreme workflow management system that integrates, organizes and automates the individual tasks in prepress. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Prinergy, a page-based workflow solution being launched this month at Seybold San Francisco by Creo and Heidelberg Prepress, elevates Adobe's PDF file format and