Heidelberg

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The seventh installment of Printing Impressions' ongoing focus on CIP3 visits ScriptWorks RIP manufacturer Harlequin, an early member of the CIP3 consortium. Currently in the final stages of beta testing a plug-in for CIP3's Print Production Format (PPF), Harlequin is working with its team of leading prepress OEMs to navigate the cutting edge of CIP3 developments. FACT: NO longer are components of a prepress environment expected to work as an independent module of a commercial printing operation. Instead, the electronic prepress department is called upon, more and more, to function as the first leg of an advanced digital journey that ends

CTP allows Quad/Graphics to break conventions—and break free from conventional plates. BY JERRY JANDA Quad/Graphics has set its eyes on the future, looking into the next century with 20/20 vision. Make that 20/20/20 vision. The company has vowed to reduce customers' cycle times by 20 percent each year for the next three years. This lofty goal has set Quad on a difficult path leading into the 21st century. Fortunately, the company's commitment to computer-to-plate (CTP) technology promises to make the trip less arduous. Call the journey "2001: A Plate Odyssey." Computer-to-plate meshes well with Quad's three-year plan. By removing steps from the prepress process,

Selling printing has always been a challenge, but never more so than today. Not only is there significant competition in every market segment, but arcane issues such as gamut limitations and color reproduction can make the press sheet seem like a compromise compared to the proof. COMPANY PROFILEName: McCord PrintingLocation: DallasEmployees: 90Annual Sales: $13 millionKey Markets: Advertising agencies, corporate work.One commercial printer has found a solution to this problem: going direct-to-plate. McCord Printing installed an Agfa Galileo computer-to-plate (CTP) system. "We no longer have to sell 'down' from the proof or tell the customer that's as close as we can get to the proof," explains Mickey

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The mere mention of color management and the status of color consistency in today's graphic arts industry rarely results in a black-and-white discussion. Color delivery in the entire design and production phase, from digital camera to high-end scanner to digital proofer or on-demand printer, is mission-one critical. What better way to get a read on today's color concerns than to poll the minds of the industry? The question Printing Impressions posed was simple, but comprehensive: Where are we today in color management and color manipulation and what do we, as an industry, need to do to improve our color

BY CHERYL A. ADAMS Suicide. That's what industry experts said Norm Friedman was committing by investing in a startup printing operation back in 1992. The economy was depressed, the commercial printing market was overly saturated and competition was so fierce, several local printers had already gone out of business. Opening new doors when others were closing theirs would surely be death by design. Fortunately for Quantum Color, the bank didn't see it that way. Company ProfileName: Quantum ColorLocation: Morton Grove, ILEmployees: 150Annual Sales: $28 millionKey Markets: Advertising agencies, design firms, corporationsThe new company's loan was approved and, a year later, the gamble paid off

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Handling the sheer volume of scans seems to be a more daunting, more demanding task. It isn't solely the imagination of your prepress manager. Lucky for the prepress manager, scanning has been brought to an all-time level of ease, thanks to a robust product market laden with devices that boast built-in gradation curves, preset color look-up tables and expanded capabilities to digitize reflective and transmissive art at an impressive array of scanning depths and optical densities. From the AgfaScan T-5000 from Agfa Div., Bayer Corp., to the vertical-drum Tango from Heidelberg Prepress to the Fuji C-550 or the EverSmart

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The sixth installment of Printing Impressions' yearlong focus on CIP3 activities turns to Agfa Div., Bayer Corp., and the prepress innovator's introduction of CIP3-compliant architecture within its Apogee PDF-based Workflow Production System. Apogee PrintDrive, a multi-page buffer for more than one RIP, is the newest member of Agfa's family of RIPs—and its most innovative workflow enhancement, to date, from a CIP3 standpoint. Currently, Agfa, one of the founding members of the CIP3 consortium, is working closely with MAN Roland and other press manufacturers to define and refine the digital links between prepress and press. Apogee, which comprises the Apogee

For the third year, Printing Impressions has compiled a ranking of the top color on-demand print providers in the nation. The 1998 edition features a few changes. In the past, difficulty in obtaining accurate on-demand sales figures made it more practical to list the top companies alphabetically, without individual ranks. But increased on-demand printing revenues for digital color press users have made an actual Top 50 ranking possible for the first time. This year, rankings were determined by self-reported on-demand sales figures. While there are other companies who would qualify for this listing, we could only include those who responded to our survey. 1)

For SPG Graphics, the signs couldn't be any clearer. Customers wanted quicker turnarounds, but they weren't about to sacrifice quality—or cash—for speed. Their expectations pointed SPG to one sole destination: digital printing. "It was inevitable," explains Beth Coleman-Stout, marketing and digital business manager for the Indianapolis-based company. "Customers were going to continue to expect jobs faster, but they weren't going to change their expectations from a color or quality standpoint." SPG found that color digital printing could meet these demanding expectations for small-quantity runs better than conventional offset. "We felt strongly that we had to get into digital in some way, shape and form,"

SOUTH WINDSOR, CT—Normally, it's the printer side of the business that makes most of the news. But in recent weeks, the noise has been coming from the supplier side. Here's an overview of the changes in the supplier landscape in the past weeks: * Gerber Scientific has agreed to sell its Gerber Systems unit to BARCO Graphics, the U.S. arm of BARCO of Belgium, for an undisclosed cash payment and royalties on future sales of certain products. Gerber Systems had sales of approximately $45 million in fiscal year 1997, but had been incurring losses in the CTP business recently, Gerber officials say. Gerber's Graphic Arts