Una Buena Historia para Contar...

Hola Amigos!

En esta nueva etapa de nuestro ColorBlog, no solamente publicaremos las novedades en Ingles sino que también ahora lo haremos en Español simultáneamente.

Cuando me pidieron que comparta los casos de éxito que lograbamos a través de nuestro trabajo cotidiano, sin lugar a dudas pensé en el que más orgulloso me sentida desde que formo parte de compose. Y es el de uno de los clientes que confió en nosotros y hoy es una de las empresas que cuenta con el mayor flujo de trabajo de periódicos en Latino America. Tampoco puedo olvidarme de nuestro distribuidor en el área que sin su apoyo esto no hubiese sido posible.

Todo comenzó en el mismo momento que decidíamos comenzar a formar Compose Latino America. Alejandro N me comento que tenía todo arreglado para poder vender su primera versión de Express NewsFlow en uno de sus clientes. Cuando comenzamos hablar ninguno de los dos se imaginaría cual sería el destino que alcanzaría este desarrollo.

La colorida peatonal en Oaxaca donde se junta todo el turismo

El Cliente, uno de los periódicos de la ciudad mexicana de Oaxaca nos pidió que asistiéramos en la creación diaria de los periódicos con un flujo de trabajo capas de administrar 2 publicaciones simultáneas. Uno en la misma ciudad y el otro en la Ciudad de San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec. Ambos periódicos se diagraman en Oaxaca, pero el que se hace en esta ciudad se realizaba en CTP y el de San Juan Bautista Tuxtupec en una Filmadora que estaba allá.

La hermosa Iglesia de Oaxaca donde inicia la peatonal hacia el centro de la ciudad

En compose nos gusta decir que lo primero que hacemos es escuchar al cliente, conocer sus necesidades y posteriormente, proponer soluciones. Me acuerdo que Alejandro G, gerente de la firma, me comento como funcionaba su sistema editorial y su problemas diarios al no contar con una solución capas de autoadministrarse sin la necesidad de la intervención de usuario y, por consiguiente, los posibles errores humanos entendible de esta situación.

Uno de los principales puntos que me hizo hincapié era que él necesitaba un sistema de chequeo, aprobación y creación de archivos PDF en linea, capas de mostrar por la web los PDF. Que cada diseñador apruebe sus archivos para luego enviarlos a producción. Además existía la necesidad de comprobar los archivos que venían desde las agencias de publicidad que publicaban en el periódico. Por otro lado, Alfredo, encargado de calidad, estaba muy interesado en contar con una solución de ahorro de tinta y poder calibrar debidamente sus prensas a la Norma ISO 12647.

En cuanto a la parte de producción, Alfredo nos comentaba que los operadores de CTP tenían que ir a buscar los PDF, llevarlos a un software de imposición y luego enviarlos a diferentes entradas, donde tenían que pasar por el RIP para ser enviados a los dos CTP.

Pero su mayor preocupación era poder resolver el problema de fuera de registro que se generaba por el crecimiento de la banda al pasar por la torre de 4/4. Donde no solo crecía en forma vertical sino que además crecía en forma horizontal. Por ultimo, estaba los dos CTP, uno violeta y uno termal, que por orden de gerencia general, debíamos hacerlos funcionar al mismo tiempo para maximizar recurso y generar menor tiempo de espera de entrega de planchas al sector de impresión.

El potente Newsflow mostrando toda su automatización en donde se conjugan velocidad y destreza del mismo

Fue así, que escuchando sus necesidades, que creamos este flujo de trabajo, el mayor desarrollo de compose en periódicos hasta el momento en Latino America. Dividido en 4 áreas, este flujo de trabajo es capas de manejarse automáticamente por una secuencia de letras que determinan todo lo que va a suceder antes y después de pasar por el flujo.

Veamos como funciona:

Vista de las paginas desde la web

Vistas de las paginas desde el Flujo

El motor central de este flujo recae en File Distribute, un sistema que determina cual va a  ser la próxima tarea a realizar, analizando el nombre del archivo. Con poner las letras “HR” o “LR” en el nombre del archivo en una posición determinada, File Distribute envía a todos los PS que llegan al flujo para convertirlos en PDF, y posteriormente, al sistema de prevuelo PitStop, el cual cuenta con dos configuraciones diferentes para PDF a color (HR o High Resolution: Alta Resolución) o PDF blanco y negro (LR o Low Resolution: Baja Resolución). Esto permite que todos los PDF sean revisados, chequeados y corregidos, para certifiquen los requerimientos de la norma PDF X/1, utilizada en la industria gráfica como estándar de creación y configuración de archivos PDF para impresión.

Siguiendo dentro de Newsflow, los PDF entran en el software de ahorro de tinta donde las imagenes son analizadas y transformadas mediante Dynamic Maximum Black, logrando un ahorro equivalente a un 20% del consumo actual de tinta. Aunque esto no es todo, gracias a IS Optimizer el mayor ahorro se noto en el consumo de papel, ya que anteriormente utilizaba 70 kilos por entrada (hacen 4 por día) y pasaron a 10 kilos. Un ahorro de 240 kilos de papel por día, ayudando notablemente a la sustentabilidad y al medio ambiente.

Llegando al final de la primera etapa, los diseñadores abrían sus navegadores de internet y podían acceder al Newsflow donde podían ver sus PDF. De estar todo en condiciones, aprobaban estos PDF para pasar la proxima etapa de la producción. De esta manera se había alcanzado con creces uno de los primeros pedidos de gerencia.

Los diagramadores seleccionan sus paginas desde su estación de trabajo

Continuará...

What ISO12647standarization.com means for printers

Wherever there is manufacturing, there are standards. I can think of many examples to illustrate this. From clothing to food production. If there's to be consistency, predictability, then there needs to be a defined way to manufacture products. These manufacturing definitions are called standards.

At Graphexpo 2010, KEE consultants showed their ISO12647 Standardization initiative. On this video, Dave Hunter explains what ISO12647standarization.com means for printers.

The future of commercial printing industry will depend on its ability to adapt to the new market realities. Very soon, working to standards will become a requirement for all printers seeking clients beyond their neighborhood, as is the case for most manufacturing and production industries.
More than 400 printers are currently compliant to PSO/ISO 12647 and dozens are joining the list every month worldwide.

For more information e-mail me or visit iso12647standardization.com

Printing Labels across the Pond

This week I've been in our UK office. I've learning about the iSys Apex 1290 digital label printer. A machine designed to print photo quality images along with variable data on a variety of media products, which include tag stock up to 12 point in thickness, adhesive label stock and various synthetic medias.

The Apex 1290 digital label printer is driven by Express Label Print, a nifty software solution from Compose. Express Label Print or ELP, can handle a multitude of different stocks and optimizes label layouts to reduce media waste. You can print on pre cut media or also import your CF2 die cut files for the best possible layout.
You can add variable data to your print jobs on the Apex 1290 digital label printer with Compose Variprint.

Below is a video of the Apex 1290 digital label printer in action:

On this trip I've also visited customers to talk about press calibration and the advantage of having presses and proofers matching common specifications and standards. I've also taken the opportunity to learn from my European colleagues about their experience with ISO 12647-2.



Simon, Tom and me at BHF in Dartford responding to our customer's questions.

Tonight I'll have pint thinking not thinking about the flight back to California.

Contact me if you have any questions about the Apex 1290 or anything else that catches your eye on this blog.

Introducing File Distribute

Automation is the Holy Grail of a prepress production environment. We all wish we had a system where a file is dropped on a folder and after a few seconds the job could be processed according to the specs we had in mind. Workflow solutions are supposed to help with this. But many times we find a myriad of hot folders, each one with a distinct function. Many hot folder setups vary from others just slightly. Configuring a workflow for a company that has 2 CTP devices, 4 line screen setups, 2 proofing setups, 3 plates sizes, etc. can get complicated very quickly. You get the idea. It gets very complicated, very, very quickly.
Wouldn't it be nice if the workflow could look at the file name and know what to do? Well, Express Workflow is smart and just knows. It's that smart.

Introducing File Distribute

File distribute is a EWF module that routes jobs according to it's file name. All you have to do is add to the PDF file name what you want done to the job and EWF will take care of the rest. Best of all, you get to decide what file naming convention works for best for you. The workflow below uses the File Distribute module three times to get the job done. The first thing it does is route the file to the appropriate PitStop Server module depending if the job is for our digital press, grayscale or color. If the file is color, the next routing module will decide if the job is going on coated or uncoated paper on press. Depending on this the file will get sent to the IS Optimizer module that will apply the right dot gain and the total ink coverage the job should have depending on the paper it will be printed on. The next module routes the job to the proofing RIP or the final output RIP. If the job is set to the final output RIP modules, after the job is ripped the EWF Plate Selector module analyzes the plate size and routes the job to the appropriate input folder of our CTP device.

For example, if we want a color job, named "ABC.PDF" to go on coated paper at 175 lpi on our Komori press. All we need to do is change our job name to "ABD-C-C-175.pdf" and EWF will process this job according to to these instructions.



File Distribute is one of over 50 modules available on EWF 3. To activate File Distribute on your EWF or to learn more about it, contact Compose or your Compose dealer. If you have an earlier version of EWF, now it's the time to upgrade. Support rates for configuring your workflow will apply. Click on the image below to see it larger.

Calibrating a Fast Press

This month I got to calibrate a very fast narrow web press. This press can print at 700' per minute. Getting the color right quickly is paramount. Failing to do so, implies an incredible amount of wasted paper. A clear issue was that the press was plugging values over 80%, specially on the black channel. To calibrate the press I used our Ink Optimizer product. Basically I created an ICC of the press by averaging measurements from several press sheets. This to allow for press variations.
The paper being used on press was type 1. The press' CMYK Lab values were within the GRACoL ICC profile and ISO tolerances. However, the RGB values were quite off. I configured our Ink Optimizer to have GRACoL was the input color space (profile). As for output, I used the ICC I created for the customer. This makes all jobs, processed by our ink optimizer and printed on the customer's press, to look like they were printed on a G7 calibrated sheet feed press.
The results were very impressive, no more plugged shadows. Colors were bright and crisp. We printed a sample job that uses well known images and they matched the GRACoL samples I had with me. The customer was very happy, so was I.
Have you though about calibrating your press? Give us a call and we'll help you get there.

G7 Press Calibration. It makes sense

I'd like to start this blog talking about press calibration. This was originally sent out as an e-mail to our mailing list recipients. If you'd like to be part of our mailing list, please click on the link located within the side bar.

Let's get to it: We recently got certified by IDEAlliance as G7 Experts. What this means is that we can visit, calibrate and certify our customers as G7 Master Printers on site.

The G in G7 stands for grayscale and the 7 for the seven colors it uses as reference: CMYK + RGB. RGB are the ink traps, and getting their color right is just as important as getting the right color on the CMYs.

There are many myths around G7. Many think that special inks are needed to be able to print within the GRACoL Specs. The fact is that inks are an ISO standard (ISO 2846-1) so it does not matter which litho ink you are using; if you are using quality ink, it's more than likely your ink is within the standard. What does matter is the amount of ink needed to produce the expected color: this is what will vary per ink manufacturer.

Is it G7 or GRACoL? It's easy to get confused with so many acronyms and classifications out there: GRACoL, GRACoL 2007 and G7. I'll try to make things simple: GRACoL is the specification of how a commercial offset lithography press should print. In other words, it's how the ideal press sheet from the great press in the sky would look like. GRACoL 2007 is the latest specification of GRACoL, while G7 is the grayscale definition and calibration method common to SWOP and GRACoL. In other words, G7 describes the grayscale and how to calibrate a press so its output resembles the one from the great press in the sky.

On a G7 calibrated press sheet, the CMY grays should be neutral. Basically, if you were to compare CMY values versus K values, you'll find that they visually match. This makes it very easy to confirm that the press sheet is printing correctly.

Typically, printers are under the impression that this certification is useful only if their customers are demanding it. But G7 makes more sense than what most printers think. What many have not realized yet is that printing to G7 standards is very simple. Plus, it makes most jobs easier to print. There's less make-ready time and most importantly, the proof finally matches the press sheet accurately.

Besides offering press calibration and G7 Certification services to our customers, Compose has a suite of tools to confirm that color is being reproduced correctly. Tools that will allow consistent and accurate color throughout the workflow. This suite of tools is called pressSIGN-Pro.

We have found that clients want the monitor to match the proof and the proof to match the press sheet. We can help with our pressSIGN-Pro-suite. It makes it easy to ensure that colors match throughout the workflow.

This is our first time sending a newsletter like this; I hope that you'll find this information useful and you'll think of us when you are ready to calibrate your press or presses. If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, please drop me a line.