The Format of Things to Come

Package printers are just now beginning to see the light at the end of a long tunnel of confusing, and often ill-fitting file formats.

by Terri McConnell

Even dynamite could not have changed the face manufacturing infrastructure of the printing industry more than the advent of desktop publishing and the subsequent adoption of PostScript.

Up to that point, prepress automation was directed by a handful of highly-specialized equipment suppliers who built color electronic prepress systems (CEPS) around laser-powered film output devices. CEPS were, for the most part, closed, proprietary environments—not a big problem as long as the origin and form of printing content were controllable.

But desktop publishing content was meant to be interchangeable and, therefore, it was uncontrollable. As fast as you could say "a Mac in every design studio," CEPS vendors re-engineered their systems to work with PostScript—the only common denominator. In reality, they were "working around" PostScript due to that data format (really a programming language) was never intended to carry imaging information to anything more sophisticated than a low-resolution desktop printer.

PostScript has evolved during the past decade, and other file formats for exchanging digital data have emerged. But the clear front-runner to become a universal standard is Adobe's portable document format (PDF). Neutral to every common computer platform, PDF is an extremely flexible file format that can contain fonts, searchable text, resolution-independent vector graphics (line art), and raster and bitmap images (photos, blends, etc.). PDF files are web-friendly and can be embedded with multi-media elements such as sounds, movies, and web links. They are more pervasive than any data format to date.

PDF files are created by "distilling" designs from such programs as Illustrator and Quark through Adobe's Acrobat software. The result is a compact, WYSIWYG document that can be viewed and printed by anyone with a reasonably configured Mac or PC, and a free Reader application.

According to Michael Jahn, Agfa's officially-titled "PDF Evangelist," "Within a closed environment—say, a single trade shop—each prepress equipment vendor can conduct many creative, time-efficient manipulations using their internal proprietary data format. It's when you have to go outside, into the great unknown, that PDF begins to look really attractive."

Jahn proselytizes tirelessly through seminars, white papers, online news groups, and his own web site, educating the printing industry about PDF and promoting its applications. He readily acknowledges that PDF files—even those from Acrobat 4.0, which supports critical prepress features—aren't bulletproof. Jahn contends that's why powerhouses like Scitex, Agfa, Heidelberg, and Creo have come together to instigate a new derivative standard called exchange for high-end prepress (PDF/X).

"PDF is such a clever format," extolls Jahn, "but we needed to ‘dumb it down' to exchange only prepress information." He adds that PDF/X conformance will ensure all printing-related objects and operators are present in the file. It will also put restrictions on objects that cannot be printed, such as RGB images.

PDF/X, currently under review by the International Standards organization (ISO), will specify

trim and bleed must be represented in the file

a file must be entirely trapped or untrapped, and overprints must conform to PS Level 2 specs

all fonts, font metrics, and encodings must be embedded

all print elements must be embedded with ICC-based color profiles and targeted to a single printing condition

PDF/X is a bold step that demonstrates the packaging printing industry is not going to take another reactionary position to broad-based communication trends. Just last month, PDF products were being demonstrated at nearly every major prepress vendor booth at Seybold in San Francisco: Creo introduced its Prinergy workflow; Agfa demonstrated its Mac-based PDF Normalizer; and the Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publication Association (DDAP) announced Verifier, a PDF preflight program. As Jahn quipped in one of his frequent Internet posts, the prepress industry is onto PDF "like a pit bull on a pork chop."

Computer integrated manufacturing

There's another standardization initiative currently driving print industry automation. The Co-operation for Prepress, Press & Postpress (CIP3) was formed specifically to find ways to link these three distinct phases of the printing process and facilitate the industry's move toward true computer integrated manufacturing (CIM). Organized by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics, the CIP3 initiative currently has 39 member companies representing essential aspects of offset printing. The original idea of the group was to use information available at the prepress stage to electronically prepare files for subsequent printing stages.

According to the Fraunhofer's Stefan Daun, early efforts focused on the development of a standard file format called PPF (print production format) for exchanging data among equipment.

Heidelberg, a driving force behind the concept's deployment, reports since 1995 they have sold CIP3-compliant interfaces to more than 500 customers worldwide. John Dowey, VP sales and marketing, explains how it works with the Speedmaster CP 2000 sheetfed press

"PPF files from prepress are fed into a computer running our CPC 32 interface. The data is converted to the format required by the press and then sent on, either on a solid-state flash memory card, or preferably directly over a network connection. The press operator then pulls up the file, presets the ink keys to the correct profile, and is ready to continue the makeready—with ink profiles that are already perfect." Dowey says by eliminating the plate scanning operation, printers can expect to save four to five minutes per print unit at startup, and reduce turnaround as makeready can begin before plates are in hand.

Eric Hibbs, prepress manager for Sunshine Media in Tucson, says using PPF data from his Scitex InkPro system has had a significant impact on press productivity. "Our company specializes in very short runs of 3,000 or fewer. By sending PPFs to our Akiyama presses, we've cut the total number of pulls to get to color, and have shrunk makereadies enough to squeeze in another job on each press."

To date, the primary beneficiaries of CIP3 activity have been commercial sheetfed offset printers—Dowey estimates that only 10 percent of Heidelberg implementations have been in package printing installations—"But that may be changing very soon," he believes. Says Gallus' Beda Kuenzle, who is responsible for evaluating new business and technology, "CIP3 is interesting for any company making any printing machinery." Gallus, who makes primarily narrow-web presses targeted at the label market, is one of the newest recruits to CIP3.