Spindrift • July/August, 2009
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News Focus • Opinion Reviews • Technology pin rift Interviews • Ranting S d Psychotherapy • Fun Volume 7, Number 4 • July/August, 2009 ...Bamboozling The Graphic Arts Industry Since April 2003 …we should with joy, pleasance, revel and applause transform In This Issue ourselves… – William Shakespeare, Othello, Act II, scene iii The superwide perspective Earlier this summer, Laurel Brunner visited the Fespa Digital show in Amsterdam to take the Dear Reader, pulse of the wide format inkjet industry. Fespa is rapidly growing in importance as an international Transformation happens suddenly or slowly depending on how trade show, attracting all the major vendors, and quite a few product launches. carefully you watch the scene. In the last few months there has been evidence of both the sudden and the slow for the graphic arts. see page 9 Suppliers bang on excitedly about the digital transformation and yet talk to the average printer and they’re still coming to grips with Automatic for the people it. Even though digital technology is fl owing all around us, from Nessan Cleary looks at some of the solutions prepress production and print, to SMS messaging, most commercial for putting together an automated publishing workfl ow. This has mostly relied on expensive printers around the world are too slow to accept that it’s the future bespoke solutions but there are some off the fabric of their business. shelf systems starting to appear, coupled with a fl exible approach to pricing, making it much easier for smaller publishers to get into this This is obviously not too bright. The industry’s transformation fi eld. is evident everywhere you look, from the paucity of innovation see page 13 news coming from the traditional press community and their dire fi nancials, to the rapid uptake of digital presses in all areas of print. Most of these installations are in sectors other than traditional Seeing is believing commercial printing and new installations of conventional presses Our colour guru Paul Lindström has been putting have declined to almost negligible numbers. Efi ’s Colorproof XF 4.0 through its paces, and been pleasantly surprised at the results, having We are approaching a tipping point; the slow transformation of our managed to produce for the fi rst time a high gamut print that very closely matched the image industry from craft to digital, will be suddenly apparent. Sad news on a monitor. from the traditional suppliers contrasted with ebullience from the see page 17 digital providers who are shouting loud and clear of invention and imagination. Perhaps it’s just a matter of shouting louder? Regular Columns Have a fab summer and we’ll be back in September! News Focus page 2 Laurel, Nessan, Paul and Todd News Analysis page 4 Heroes & Zeros page 5 Boomerangs page 5 Did You Know? page 6 Green Shoots page 8 Crossword page 20 Spindrift • July/August, 2009 its ink business, and will be manufacturing its UV-based News Focus and specialty digital inks at the Jetrion facility in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Fujifi lm Dimatix has launched a new Spectra Polaris Mimaki has introduced a new fl atbed LED UV printer, the printhead. This can deliver ink drop sizes from 15 to JVX 1631. Mimaki claims that it uses around two-thirds 30 picolitres from 512 individually addressable inkjet the power of similar printers, and that the LED bulbs will nozzles at continuous frequencies up to 45 kHz, fi red at last fi ve times longer than standard bulbs. Also, because 8 metres/second velocity with exceptional straightness. the LEDs do not get as hot as normal bulbs the printer can It has a fl exible, fl uid interface allowing single or two- be used with a broader range of heat sensitive materials. colour operation with a broad range of inks, including It boasts eight printheads and is said to be twice as fast as UV-curable inks and aggressive organic solvents, making comparable models. it suitable for a range of commercial and industrial printing applications such as wide-format, label and SunJet, a division of Sun Chemical, has launched a package printing at resolutions to 1000 dpi. new white UV curing ink for use with LED light energy sources. SunJet has produced four colour LED curing ink Presstek will be showing a new model at the Print 09 sets that are designed for use in single pass and scanning show in Chicago to be held in September. The 52DI-AC applications. Adding white to this range of inks will enable is a digital off set press with an integrated aqueous coater a wider range of media types, including non-white and which supports both fl ood and spot coating. Presstek transparent media that can be used in label and graphics will also show a UV waterless inks version. In addition, situations. Presstek will be bundling a Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6501 digital color printer. GMG, together with X-Rite, is running a scrapping Nazdar Inks and Coatings is to make solvent inks for campaign for older i1 spectrophotometers. Customers EFI Vutek, albeit using EFI’s current formulations. Nazdar with a revision A or B i1 can return them to GMG and has worked with EFI before, but this extended partnership buy a replacement for €699. X-Rite recommends having between EFI and Nazdar comes along with word that EFI i1s that are used daily recertifi ed every 12 months, though expects to cease ink manufacturing at its Meredith, New replacing older models with more modern versions may Hampshire, facility as part of its ongoing consolidation of be more cost eff ective. Enfocus has announced version 9 of its Pitstop Pro Spindrift ISSN 1741-9859 and Pitstop Server, due to ship in September this year, A very special newsletter for Graphic Arts, Prepress, Printing & Publishing Professionals, published ten times a year by: with a free upgrade for customers who buy Pitstop now. The new version has a more intuitive interface and a Digital Dots Ltd redesigned global change engine that allows users to more The Clock Tower • Southover • Spring Lane Burwash • East Sussex • TN19 7JB • UK readily apply a wider range of Global Changes to long Tel: (44) (0)1435 883565 PDF documents. It includes new design layout tools to Subscriptions: visualize existing page boxes and safety zones, and apply Spindrift is a digital only publication, distributed in Adobe .pdf proper page boxes and printer marks. It also has a brand- format. A ten issue subscription costs €190 and can be obtained new preset manager to manage prefl ight profi les, Action by going to www.digitaldots.org and subscribing. Discount multiple subs are also available. Lists, Global Changes, workspaces and design layouts, in a consistent manner. Publisher – Laurel Brunner – [email protected] Editor-In-Chief – Nessan Cleary – [email protected] Technical Editor – Paul Lindström – [email protected] Enfocus has also released update 7 for its Switch 08 Production/Websites – Todd Brunner – [email protected] Subscriptions – Helen Moderski – [email protected] solutions for automating repetitive tasks. This bring new confi gurators, including web-to-print with Flo Suite from © Digital Dots Ltd • www.digitaldots.org 2 Spindrift • July/August, 2009 Digital Media Partners, soft proofi ng through Remote print production. Steve Miller, Kodak’s Product Manager, Director from Integrated Color Solutions, and colour Packaging Workfl ow, comments: “As companies strive management from Basic Colour with its Ghost colour to reduce the impact of packaging on the environment, server. the use of structural design software to facilitate product redesign and prototyping is growing.” Extensis has launched version 9 of its Portfolio Server asset management program, which presumably means Ctrl software has launched its CtrlLayers plug-in for that the desktop version 9 isn’t far behind. Portfolio Server managing layers within InDesign CS3 and 4. This lets 9 has a new Web Client, based on Adobe Flex technology, users import layers from other documents, and create to allow users to catalog, search, edit, batch convert, new documents from layers. automate tasks and manage assets from anywhere at anytime. Together with the optional NetPublish Infoprint has launched a transpromo toolkit for com- component for publishing assets to the Web, this provides mercial printers which includes a ROI calculator to help a mechanism for organizations to easily share all types of printers calculate the potential fi nancial savings resulting rich media assets to internal and external teams. from replacing separate direct mail and statement docu- ments with a single, personalised transpromo document. Extensis has also released Universal Type Server 2.0, a It also includes before and after transpromo samples and server-based font management solution. It’s available in general marketing advice. two versions: Professional for workgroups of any size and Lite for teams of up to ten concurrent users. Fujifi lm has released v2.1 of its XMF workfl ow. This now supports the most recent HP Indigo digital printers, as well Callas Software has announced v4.3 of its pdfToolbox as boasting improvements to its JDF-based imposition for utility. This includes the ability to create a single PDF adding custom marks and proof control strips. from the diff erent layers or layer views within the PDF. So in a multi-language print job, you can not only create Fujifi lm has also started shipping a high-speed thermal and view the various language versions, but even get a plate for newspapers, the Brillia LH-NN2, which it fi rst PDF for every version with a single click. It also includes announced at Ifra last year. It runs with 830nm lasers, and improvements to the imposition for creating slug lines, is suitable for up to 300,000 impressions with a sensitivity and updates of Device Link profi les for producing more of 70mJ/cm2.