The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel is no stranger to color proofing. The newspaper has been producing color pages since the 1970s. Bob Crandall, the newspaper’s quality assurance manager has been with the Sentinel for nearly 31 years.

In June, the Sentinel (daily, 260,367; Sunday, 382,439) went live with ATD News, X-Rite’s auto-tracking densitometer system. ATD News automates and expedites the process of evaluating and adjusting gray balance in newspaper production and provides complete feedback on process color print jobs. The system comes equipped with process control software that lets operators obtain the information they need to reduce waste and improve color quality. The Sentinel is currently running five ATDs — one for each of its quiet rooms.

The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel has been live with X-Rite’s ATD News auto-tracking densitometer since June. ATD News helps users evaluate and adjust gray balance and gives feedback on process color print jobs.
Photo courtesy of X-Rite

“We use them basically to monitor the graybar. We run a 40:30:30 graybar on the bottom of our editorial pages and some of our advertising pages,” said Crandall.

The Sentinel has not yet fully implemented graybar. “We are working with one of our major advertisers. We’ve been running some ads with graybar and it’s worked like a charm,” said Crandall.

All of the editorial fronts in the paper contain graybars and the Sentinel is in the process of implementing graybars on its tabloid pages as well.

“The product is accurate, consistent and reliable; plus the training was very good,” Crandall said.

Prior to ATD News, the Sentinel was using handheld densitometers. “That became cumbersome. It was too manual of a process.”

Crandall commented that top management at the paper is very committed to reproduction quality: “They’re providing the tools to meet the quality standards.”

The Sentinel chose ATD News after seeing its debut at Nexpo 2000 and Crandall said the choice was based on the system’s user-friendliness and simplicity. By pressing a button, the user can scan a printed page. A touch-screen monitor enables rapid, direct page selection and measurement ID. The system displays a graphical color gauge for each ink zone on press, showing the density values as compared to target values. The user is alerted if color is out of balance.

“We have so much complexity in the process now that something that’s simple to use is a relief. The press operators have enough to worry about without having to figure out how to use a scanning densitometer,” Crandall said.

X-Rite came to the Sentinel to train crews, and Crandall said employees learned the system in roughly half an hour. “They grabbed right onto it and they loved it.”

The Sentinel is working with its technology department to get all of the direct data into the quality lab at which time they will output density reports. They are scanning HP proofs to ensure that they are consistent. Press operators do not have any formal reports, but can download the data to loop it directly into the lab where they can do data grab. That way, if there is a quality complaint, they can generate a report that shows the density stability during any given run.

“This gives us greater credibility when we communicate with our material suppliers, production and our advertisers,” Crandall said. If there is an input problem, running a graybar allows the Sentinel to identify upstream problems and get them corrected.

“This gives us better credibility to isolate that issue. If you can’t control your densities, you don’t know where to look,” Crandall said.

Crandall said the Sentinel is always looking to drive whatever technology it is using to its optimal point. The paper is currently discussing with X-Rite, ways to get ATD to drive the digital inkers at the paper, so adjustments could be made on-the-fly.

The idea of printing graybars came about during the Sentinel’s recent editorial redesign.

“We thought this was an opportune time to discuss incorporating it into the redesign. Also we saw that as an opportunity to bring the ATDs in,” Crandall said. “It was … a redesign to improve the appearance of the paper, but also to improve the print quality. It was a win-win situation for everybody.”

So, ATD News was originally implemented as an editorial quality control tool and the paper is now trying to implement it in advertising.

“If we want to get into the higher levels of color management, we have to learn to practice the basic disciplines of quality control and measurement and that’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve built a system of measurement from monitors to proofing to platemaking to the press,” said Crandall.

ATD News is available in a variety of configurations to meet the needs of each individual printing operation. Each system includes the auto-tracking densitometer, a vacuum hold-down system, control software with gray balance bar control and reporting capabilities, Pentium-class computer with a Windows operating system and a 17-inch touch-screen color monitor. X-Rite offers training on the system to every client.