The Dish on Plates

Pamela Arnold, product manager at NAPP Systems, believes digital plate usage will come around based on several key industry motivators: "There are several elements driving the movement toward digital: environmental—the need to reduce silver in a plant; existing electronic technology—more customers are able to produce their own art and are not capable of transferring it to film; and globalization—the desire for international corporations to streamline the workflow with single-location graphics production," she comments. "At this time, however, the cost of the equipment still exceeds the payback for most printers and the real future is in direct-to-plate rather than computer-to-plate."