Opening New Doors

The reciprocal nature of prepress and printing advances may be even more evident in the offset realm. There, a new digital data exchange format, CIP3, has literally closed the manufacturing loop. Companies such as Heidelberg, Komori, KBA-Planeta, and MAN Roland are building presses that can "talk" to prepress systems. First implementations involve using stepped and repeated image data to estimate ink consumption and automatically set and adjust fountain keys.