The Total Package

Understanding digital workflow concepts, power and capabilities is essential for success for progressive package printers.

By Marie Ranoia Alonso

Digital prepress environments are fast moving into the realm of the package printer. This is not news. What is news is the robust capabilities of the growing field of digital workflow enablers, the emergence of PDF and PostScript 3 and their impact on the way digitally savvy package printers do business—not to mention the digital workflow power, now more than ever before, of packaging's front end.

So much technology, in so little time.

Or is it?

For several years, packaging's graphically complex and deadline challenged prepress component has been taking small steps into the world of digital workflow. Automation was the key, with functions from checking and optimizing to interactive trapping to digital step-and-repeat capturing the attention of packaging's prepress managers. Today, technology providers the likes of BARCO Graphics, Professional Computer Corp. (PCC) and Agfa Div., Bayer Corp. compete for market share along with other automated workflow efforts from vendors including Heidelberg Prepress and Creo Products.

What does the market now hold? That question raises more inquiries, when the topic is digital workflow solutions.

How are digital workflow solutions allowing for all-digital prepress workflow virtually from creation to platemaking?

What new powerful editing and layout assembly tools are catching the attention of competitive package printers?

What sophisticated step-and-repeat functions are now commonplace in aggressive prepress environments?

How are comprehensive color management tools incorporated in digital workflow solutions?

What role is preflighting taking in the emergence of new digital workflow solutions?

What new steps are being made in local and remote digital color proofing, via complex digital workflows?

How are digital workflow tools enhancing productivity?

For the answers, an examination of current digital workflow products is in order.

BARCO Graphics offers the FastLane packaging prepress system for full, completely customized workflow automation. Components include PackLine and PS-Fix for interactive optimizing and assembly of incoming data, ColorTone for color processing, and trapping proof, a replacement of the print proof. QuickStep is BARCO's digital step-and-repeat tool. After FastLane, digital content is sent down the workflow route to an imagesetter or platesetter (such as BARCO's Cyrel Digital Imager), where direct digital output to film or offset plate takes place. BARCO's Kaleidoscope Plus color management and digital proofing completes the CTP framework.

File management, batch functions such as trapping, archival, and backup are just a few of the functions handled by a 'true client server architecture,' freeing workstations for billable work. Object referencing—using 'pointers' to indicate placement of large files or several copies of the same package or label—reduces network traffic by using only a few kilobytes of 'reference' information. BARCO Graphics' FastRIP family of products rely on a common RIP interpreter. Since RIPing is done on-the-fly, time spent waiting for other systems to post-process a job is eliminated.

Ian Hole, BARCO Graphics market manager, Packaging and Labels, advises the use of a complete digital prepress system to maximize productivity in an automated environment.

"Workflow can only be achieved most efficiently and effectively from A-Z if the whole system is digital—a complete solution, delivering the full possibility of digital functionality," Hole contends. "Graphics are getting far more complex and will continue to do so—complex designs, stepping demands, production parameters—and this requires the full run of a digital workflow, with automated step-and-repeat, color correction and rich functionality specially designed to handle the richer files of packaging prepress departments. At the output end, sophisticated screening techniques to optimize a particular printing process with speed and predictability are employed."

Workflow throughput

At Agfa Div., Bayer Corp., the answer to digital workflows resides in the Apogee workflow. While many package printers equate their imagesetter's speed with productivity, overall throughput is determined well before the file is RIPed and plotted.

To maximize throughput, Agfa developed Apogee, a prepress system based on Adobe's PDF format. Apogee combines job management and tracking capabilities with PDF's tightly structured object file format to maximize prepress productivity. Apogee, which can drive any Agfa imagesetter or platesetter family comprises three main components: Apogee PDF Pilot Production Manager; Apogee PDF RIP; and, Apogee PrintDrive Output Manager. Still, Apogee integrates with other solutions.

"PDF is the digital master—a single file format that can produce the same reliable content in print, on the digital press, digital proof, Internet, CD-ROM and beyond," contends Sheila Nysko, U.S. marketing packaging segment manager for Agfa.

At Heidelberg, PackPilot is a complete prepress solution for labels and packaging environments, running on Power Macintosh, and emphasizing Heidelberg's commitment to open system platforms. Comprised of ArtPro (trapping, stripping), LinoColor (image retouching) and PrintOpen (color management) technologies, PackPilot is an integral part of the Heidelberg Packaging solution. PackPilot features PostScript import translated on-the-fly, import of Illustrator files in its native format, vectorizing with dust recognition and straightening, and interactive and automatic trapping which is visible and editable on a monitor or digital proof. Coloring options include changing colors of an imported file, vignettes, CMYK conversion and Pantone capability, as well as step-and-repeat and tabular or automatic nesting functionality. PackPilot can deliver output on any PostScript device.

"Today's package printer needs an all-in-one workflow package, including image retouching, trapping, text editing, vectorizing, PostScript import, coloring and step-and-repeat," explains Achim Schmidt, manager, packaging and label industry, Heidelberg Prepress.

"The packaging industry is making major jumps to digital workflows, looking to CTP for advanced productivity and efficiency," Schmidt reports. "The way to achieve quicker turnaround is by employing digital workflows. This does not end with a CTP or film device but goes all the way through to the press room and the finishing department communicating prepress data to the press."

Turning to Professional Computer Corp. (PCC), PackFlow, now in version 1.0, addresses specific production needs for various segments of the packaging market, including corrugated, tag and label, folding carton and flexible packaging.

PCC PackFlow is a digital workflow system that automates prepress functions including preflighting, RIPing, trapping, screening, digital proofing and plate separation. PackFlow's core capabilities include a variety of preflighting checks for RGB images, missing fonts and invalid PostScript; specialized step-and-repeat functions which include distortion, rotation, auto-bleed, stagger stepping and auto marks; PCC SuperFast RIP running on a DEC Alpha under Windows NT platform and intelligent trapping and trap editing functionality. Screening capabilities allow for smooth blends and vignettes, with support for PostScript 3 smooth shading and extended gray levels.

"The key challenges in today's digital packaging workflow are configurability and flexibility," reports Dennis Mehta, executive vice president at PCC. "We developed PackFlow to address these issues—PackFlow supports a variety of file formats, including PostScript, EPS, Scitex/Contex native and TIFF/IT, offering multiple workflow options including chooser level RIPing and Hot Folders."

What's the goal of automation?

If Dave Burgess, packaging product manager, Creo Products, is answering, the focus is repeatable manufacturing with reduced turnaround.

Currently, the Creo CTP solution begins with digital workflow tailored for the needs of carton, label or flexible packaging converters. Artwork Systems' ArtPro, marketed by Creo, offers controllable object-based trapping, nested step-and-repeat and spot color facilities on the Macintosh platform. ArtPro's open PostScript output integrates smoothly with Creo's Overture proofing tools and offers wide ranging workflow connectivity to other systems and devices. The newly launched Creo Recorder Interface also permits other packaging workflows, such as those offered by PCC, to connect directly with a Creo Trendsetter.

"Package printers demand workflow controllability to account for the wide variations in their work, as well as high output reliability," Creo's Burgess explains. "Digital workflows provide the packaging environment with repeatable manufacturing tools that, by their very nature, allow for a greater degree of process control and enhanced manufacturing productivity."

Technology Explained

PDF—What You Need To Know

Portable Document Format (PDF). What could be more aptly named? Acrobat lets prepress specialists free the design from the application it was created in, and lets anyone else open it and print it using a free application—Adobe Acrobat Reader.

So then, why are so many package printers so confused about this technology?

It is not that prepress operators are resisting the notion of exchanging color files that will work reliably. Unfortunately, exchanging film is more or less useless, or at best, very cumbersome, as we move toward CTP. Let's face it, outputting film at one location and forcing the receiver to scan film back into data so they can plot it on a CTP device is akin to forcing consumers to squeeze toothpaste out of the tube at the store and try and get it back into another tube at home.

Seriously, Agfa recently took a hard look at many technologies when searching for a file format that was "open." They were seeking one that could represent everything in a design document and that exchanged the file without encumbering the receiver. Agfa knew it needed to keep the file in some format that could be both exchanged reliably and edited, but which one? Tiff/It seemed to have some popular support for "exchange." But as all the design elements and type were no longer represented in such a way that permitted them to be modified or edited (it is a raster image of a page) they had to count it out, too.

Why?

Package printers Agfa interviewed expressed their frustration when mistakes were discovered on-press. Usually, it was something small, something easy to miss—a wrong phone number or some other error. Film was impractical to correct at that stage and Tiff/It presented serious editing limitations.

After examining PostScript 3 and Extreme technologies from Adobe, it was obvious Agfa should use the PDF as its internal file type, as it retained all the advantages of PostScript. Spot colors and CMYK scans could be represented in PDF, and those can be edited. Also, PJTF, or Adobe's Portable Job Ticket Format offers compelling advantages. Where PDF contains the "content" of a design (type, logos & images), PJTF contains the "controls" of how that PDF file will be processed (line screen, dot gain & other device settings). PJTF is applied to PDFs during the rendering process within the Agfa RIP.

Even Agfa competitors can create PJTF files that will process in devices that support Adobe1's PostScript 3 and Extreme technologies.

For the specification, one can go to: www.adobe.com/supportservice/devrelations/PDF/TN/5620.pjtf.pdf. PJTF is based on PDF technology, and designed to bring the same benefits of portability, reliability, and revisability to the device control information that PDF brings to the document content.

—Michael Jahn, Agfa Division, Bayer Corp.