WOA 50th ANNIVERSARY -- Turning up The Heat

"I'm not ruling out (on-press imaging) developments in the future, but the numbers (costs, ROI) are not close to right yet," he concludes.

Ringman sees the advantage of the technology in general, but questions its placement on-press. "Digital imaging, in all of its technological forms, increases print quality by eliminating variables in the image composition," he says. "But a large web offset press may have more than 16 printing couples, so the economics would make it impractical to add the number of imaging systems required.