It's Like ‘Totally' Digital

Printers willing to work through a few minor obstacles can reap huge rewards by implementing "total digital workpath" concepts and technologies.

by Terri McConnell

In 1919, three gentlemen put up $500 dollars each to start a new business in downtown Cincinnati. The company—Phototype Engraving—took its name from an amazing new technology for photographing type and etching it into metal printing plates.

During the past 80 years, Phototype Engraving has remarkably remained on the leading edge of packaging printing technology, offering a comprehensive portfolio of services ranging from digital photography, to image asset management, to conventional and photopolymer platemaking, to short-run printing. The company is one of only a handful of color separators to fully embrace the concept of a totally digital workpath. For all its efforts, Phototype has compiled a client list that reads like a "Who's Who" of leading manufacturers: Printpack, Procter & Gamble, Ross Laboratories, Smuckers, Aurora Foods, and Hillshire Farms. In recognition of their pro-active, partnership-based service, Phototype recently received Huntsman Packaging's Key Supplier Award. Of Phototype's total revenues, 75 percent is from packaging accounts.

In this first in a series on digital platemaking, packagePRINTING asked Phototype's Director of Marketing, Chris Deye, and Director of Printing and Plating Technologies, Bill Hounshell, to comment on digital technology's impact on the package printing process and the relationship among print buyer, separator, and converter.

pP: What is the totally digital workpath?

CD: "The concept began 12 years ago when we installed Scitex retouching workstations. The purchase was driven by an end-user who saw the potential for a giant leap in image quality. We made the investment, but then customized the way we used the workstations to control costs.

"Today, with our digital photo studio on the front-end and two recently purchased Barco Graphics Cyrel Digital Imagers (CDI) on the back-end, we have a truly complete, digital workflow. The challenge is to use all this equipment to meet clients' specific needs, while finding efficiencies that reduce costs—or at least keep them constant. That is the totally digital workpath."

To illustrate, Hounshell uses a digital photo studio as an example. "We know in the conceptual stages of brand development, presentation is more important than final color. How does the spoon sit in the cereal bowl? What if the bicycle was green instead of blue?" Using digital photography, electronic image enhancement, and high-speed communications, we can help brand managers, design firms and ad agencies visualize a new campaign before they commit to an expensive photo shoot. This saves money, and speeds the design process."

pP: How has this technology changed the relationship among print buyer, separator, and converter?

BH: "In the packaging industry, brand globalization has had more impact on business relationships than technology. Ten years ago, most of our work came directly from printers. Rarely did any single printer produce all the elements of a product line. As the need for universal brand consistency grew, the print buyer gradually assumed control over the graphic reproduction, or prepress, process. Today, only 50 percent of our work comes from the printers; the other half is bought directly by the end-user."

Deye says that shift has allowed a broader view of the process as a whole, knowing that the end user cannot be satisfied unless the printer is happy, too. With open communication, and by understanding the needs of everyone involved, it's possible to build an optimized specification for the entire print transaction, not just internal processes.

"For example," he offers, "when a separator receives a corrupt disk from a printer, where does he start to sort it out?" Deye says Phototype meets with its printers up front, so in such an event it is prepared to negotiate a unilateral solution instead of holding up progress. "It's like building a house; if all the subcontractors pull together to lay a strong foundation, the rest of the house can go up faster."

Deye adds that this technology and approach has also changed the role of the separator. "Printers and print buyers each look to us to recommend ways to apply it," he says. "We explore how the ‘mechanics' of the process—such as trapping—can be dealt with." By approaching challenges in that manner, the separator also takes on the role of educator—troubleshooting for customers, staying on top of developments, and making recommendations to enhance productivity.

pP: What recommendations are you making?

BH: "First, we encourage them to acquire a solid understanding of the digital process. Those who do can generally establish a more competitive cost structure."

CD: "There's tremendous potential in new file formats and digital communications. We recently worked with one company to shave a full day off turnarounds by delivering PDF files over the internet instead of sending thermal proofs. Minutes after we completed the art, the client viewed the job on his PC and output it to a local proofer.

"We're also working with clients on digital asset management (DAM). This ability to transfer and regulate the flow of information to multiple parties across secure, high-speed channels will have a very positive effect on streamlining the production process, especially with end-users who have stringent approval cycles."

Hounshell says Phototype is also working with printers to implement direct-to-plate technologies. "The advantages of using digitally-imaged flexo plates are pretty well established," he explains: much finer, sharper dots with ‘vertical' side walls; finer reverses with improved press stability; elimination of dust problems and film contacting variables; significantly less and more predictable dot gain—especially in the highlights; and faster and easier press setups." The hope, contends Hounshell, is when Phototype begins utilizing direct-to-sleeve technology, it will also be able ensure perfect register on press every time.

Both Deye and Hounshell say this technology hasn't caught on as fast in the United States as it has in Europe, or as fast as computer-to-offset plate has been adopted. "As in the critical first stages of the application of any new technology," explains Deye, we have some negative perceptions to overcome. One of them is cost."

Despite these obstacles, Phototype has been able to apply the philosophies of the totally digital workpath to drive down the selling price of digitally imaged photopolymer, if not quell the urge to resist it.

"We don't believe it's a matter of whether printers will be able to justify digital plates," says Hounshell, "it's a matter of if they are ready to make the change in the workflow."