Heidelberg

Selling printing has always been a challenge, but never more so than today. Not only is there significant competition in every market segment, but arcane issues such as gamut limitations and color reproduction can make the press sheet seem like a compromise compared to the proof. COMPANY PROFILEName: McCord PrintingLocation: DallasEmployees: 90Annual Sales: $13 millionKey Markets: Advertising agencies, corporate work.One commercial printer has found a solution to this problem: going direct-to-plate. McCord Printing installed an Agfa Galileo computer-to-plate (CTP) system. "We no longer have to sell 'down' from the proof or tell the customer that's as close as we can get to the proof," explains Mickey

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO As the platesetter market matures, more fully automated and semiautomated devices, perhaps more than the market can sustain, are redefining the role of platemaking to meet the demands of the CTP environment. Thermal imaging technology, functionality to support Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript 3 availability now join reliability and throughput as inherent traits of many of today's new platesetter launches. To prepare for new platesetter launches on the horizon later this year, Printing Impressions offers a portfolio of devices and checks in with the technology providers poised to take them to market. Whether plug-and-play platesetting solutions, thermal

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The mere mention of color management and the status of color consistency in today's graphic arts industry rarely results in a black-and-white discussion. Color delivery in the entire design and production phase, from digital camera to high-end scanner to digital proofer or on-demand printer, is mission-one critical. What better way to get a read on today's color concerns than to poll the minds of the industry? The question Printing Impressions posed was simple, but comprehensive: Where are we today in color management and color manipulation and what do we, as an industry, need to do to improve our color

BY CHERYL A. ADAMS Suicide. That's what industry experts said Norm Friedman was committing by investing in a startup printing operation back in 1992. The economy was depressed, the commercial printing market was overly saturated and competition was so fierce, several local printers had already gone out of business. Opening new doors when others were closing theirs would surely be death by design. Fortunately for Quantum Color, the bank didn't see it that way. Company ProfileName: Quantum ColorLocation: Morton Grove, ILEmployees: 150Annual Sales: $28 millionKey Markets: Advertising agencies, design firms, corporationsThe new company's loan was approved and, a year later, the gamble paid off

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Handling the sheer volume of scans seems to be a more daunting, more demanding task. It isn't solely the imagination of your prepress manager. Lucky for the prepress manager, scanning has been brought to an all-time level of ease, thanks to a robust product market laden with devices that boast built-in gradation curves, preset color look-up tables and expanded capabilities to digitize reflective and transmissive art at an impressive array of scanning depths and optical densities. From the AgfaScan T-5000 from Agfa Div., Bayer Corp., to the vertical-drum Tango from Heidelberg Prepress to the Fuji C-550 or the EverSmart

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The sixth installment of Printing Impressions' yearlong focus on CIP3 activities turns to Agfa Div., Bayer Corp., and the prepress innovator's introduction of CIP3-compliant architecture within its Apogee PDF-based Workflow Production System. Apogee PrintDrive, a multi-page buffer for more than one RIP, is the newest member of Agfa's family of RIPs—and its most innovative workflow enhancement, to date, from a CIP3 standpoint. Currently, Agfa, one of the founding members of the CIP3 consortium, is working closely with MAN Roland and other press manufacturers to define and refine the digital links between prepress and press. Apogee, which comprises the Apogee

For the third year, Printing Impressions has compiled a ranking of the top color on-demand print providers in the nation. The 1998 edition features a few changes. In the past, difficulty in obtaining accurate on-demand sales figures made it more practical to list the top companies alphabetically, without individual ranks. But increased on-demand printing revenues for digital color press users have made an actual Top 50 ranking possible for the first time. This year, rankings were determined by self-reported on-demand sales figures. While there are other companies who would qualify for this listing, we could only include those who responded to our survey. 1)

For SPG Graphics, the signs couldn't be any clearer. Customers wanted quicker turnarounds, but they weren't about to sacrifice quality—or cash—for speed. Their expectations pointed SPG to one sole destination: digital printing. "It was inevitable," explains Beth Coleman-Stout, marketing and digital business manager for the Indianapolis-based company. "Customers were going to continue to expect jobs faster, but they weren't going to change their expectations from a color or quality standpoint." SPG found that color digital printing could meet these demanding expectations for small-quantity runs better than conventional offset. "We felt strongly that we had to get into digital in some way, shape and form,"

SOUTH WINDSOR, CT—Normally, it's the printer side of the business that makes most of the news. But in recent weeks, the noise has been coming from the supplier side. Here's an overview of the changes in the supplier landscape in the past weeks: * Gerber Scientific has agreed to sell its Gerber Systems unit to BARCO Graphics, the U.S. arm of BARCO of Belgium, for an undisclosed cash payment and royalties on future sales of certain products. Gerber Systems had sales of approximately $45 million in fiscal year 1997, but had been incurring losses in the CTP business recently, Gerber officials say. Gerber's Graphic Arts

Environmentally speaking, what's hot in inks? The EPA—hot on the trail of compliance offenders. But commercial printers cited for noncompliance need not join the much-dreaded "Environmental 4-H Club"—hazardous (as in waste), havoc (as in scrambling for compliance), helpless (the feeling of ineffective scrambling) and hell-to-pay (the cost of noncompliance). With hundreds of Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) listed by the EPA—and even more listed at the state level—it's easy to see why printers are feeling suffocated by the growing compliance haze. This controversial issue, like the color of polluted air, is gray, on the best of days. "The first line