A Full Plate

Cutting-edge costs

A price break for digital plates doesn't appear to be in sight—a situation that may be at the crux of conservative CTP implementation projections.

"Digital plate prices will remain high due to plate manufacturers' need to recover the R&D costs of new digital technologies," predicts Crawford. "Many printers still view these price points as a barrier to CTP, and continue to adopt full imposition imagesetting as an intermediate step," he says.