Consumables-General - Plates

The color management process hinges on consistency and the interoperability of print job components. By Jessica Millward, Associate Editor Call it the ultimate communicator. Your typical color management system (CMS) is charged with translating the appearance of color from origination source to monitor to proof. And this is no rough translation. Nuance means everything in the realm of color—the difference between sun-ripened yellow and burnt orange. The ongoing evolution of printing from art to science has initiated the systemization of color management. The challenge for CMS originators now is to keep the lines of communication open between themselves, their customers, and even their competitors.

Stephen Miller, CreoScitex package printing applications specialist, reveals how 2001 may be a banner prepress year. by Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor This month CreoScitex is set to launch one of the most ambitious packaging prepress systems based on the PDF file format. On the eve of lift-off, we asked Stephen Miller, one of Prinergy Powerpack's senior astronauts, to give us his perspective on where this new technology will take us. pP: You've been in the industry during our most important technological growth period. What events have had the greatest impact on packaging productivity? SM: Well, it all began with inexpensive desktop systems. The price

Using the speed and accessibility of the Internet, digital data transmission lessens the foibles of file transfer. by Diane L. Moore, Contributing Editor The days when package printers could depend on slow modems, out-dated computers, and sometimes less-than-reliable FTP sites to send and receive customer files are over. And the very idea of sending ZIP and JAZZ cartridges back and forth from printer to customer? No longer an option. In today's high speed world, sending files via the Internet has become the norm—no longer the exception. In just the past three years, printers have seen the decline in ISDN, T1, and T100 connections—replaced

With the Facilities Management approach to customer service, prepress providers and printers can forge mutually beneficial cohabitation arrangements. By Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor What's the best way to serve your customer? Up close and personal. That's the concept behind Facilities Management. It's a business model that extends service to the point of dedicating your own resources to meet your customer's needs—often by relocating them to your customer's site. According to Kevin Karstedt, a New York-based graphics industry workflow consultant, Facilities Management (FM) plays out in our industry in several ways. • Printers and converters provide FM services to consumer product companies (CPCs) by

A growing number of online packaging-oriented forums and resources can help printers' "prepress" routines along. By Terri McConnell One morning several years ago, I logged on to my computer to check my e-mail and found nearly a dozen messages from an address I didn't recognize. I opened the first one a little hesitantly, having just recovered from a particularly nasty e-mail-borne virus. Two lines into the message, I knew I had been infected again—this time with a bug known as a "listserv," and it has changed my quiet, coffee-assisted, o'dark thirty routine forever. For those of you lucky enough to still have immunity against

Digital technology, working with conventional processes or on its own, is making package personalization a more tangible marketing tactic. by Terri McConnell The label and packaging industries were among the first to harness the power of digital technology for variable data printing. Employing ion deposition and inkjet print heads driven by computerized controllers, we've been marking products with bar codes, expiration dates, security codes, and sequential numbers for a long time. But we may have only scratched the surface of the potential offered by the latest crop of digital printing solutions. In its most highly evolved form, variable data printing is the science of

Flexo printers can achieve outstanding results using patented screening techniques and imagesetter calibration. By Terri McConnell Flexo packaging printers have long been fighting the war on dot gain. Depending on the process variables (dot shape, plate material, substrate, inks, etc.), a 2 percent screen dot on a conventional film or plate could gain to around 15 percent on press. If not adequately compensated for, this characteristic can severely limit flexo's ability to reproduce a full, rich color gamut with brilliant, detailed highlights and clean open reverse areas. The new photopolymer computer-to-plate technologies have certainly put an edge on flexo quality by conquering the dot

The digital-versus-analog debate continues. By Terri McConnell Terri, I read your column last month about [color management] and was wondering if you were going to highlight the difficulties we have with digital proofing in the packaging industry. These "difficulties" specifically pertain to spot colors and the use of modified process. With flexo, gravure, and limited offset packaging, we still have a hard time finding a quality digital proofing device that can reproduce good color when mixing the spot colors together with four-color process... . The world of digital proofing would be so much better if there were products [and] materials [available now] to

A primer on the foundations of color communication. By Terri McConnell In the ideal world…the brand manager for a new line of lunch-box juices envisions his Citrus Cooler eight-pack carton: a brilliant, sun-ripened orange on a soft, butter-yellow field with the Florida Fun logo emblazoned in warm, metallic gold. The designer, working from the manager's creative brief, mocks up the package using his favorite DTP programs, and e-mails the concept to the manager as a PDF file. The manager views the PDF on his PC monitor, and sends a note back: "Perfect! Let's see a prototype on Tuesday." The designer forwards the PDF to

What tricks can help printers handle trapping's complexities? By Terri McConnell An in-house prepress and plating operation can provide more precise control over image reproduction and can significantly reduce turnaround times, while offering tremendous flexibility for coping with last-minute remakes and inevitable scheduling changes. Some printers are electing to bring only the final "output" phase of the process in-house. They still rely on trade shops or color separators to perform all the magic required to transform a desktop packaging design into a plate-ready electronic job file that can be fed into a computer-controlled imaging device. And it is magic; design files supplied by the