The Graphic Systems Division of Fuji Photo Film
U.S.A. Inc. and Chromaticity Inc. formed an alliance to bring professional
support services for color management to dealers and their customers, including
services such as International Color Consortium workflow installation and
implementation, evaluation and training and distribution of color management
products.
In addition to its partnership with Chromaticity,
Fuji has been demonstrating the remote proofing capabilities of its two-page
continuous tone digital proofer PictroProof, as well as the capabilities of
myfujifilm.com, which provides customers with the ability to organize, manage,
store and share digital files.
Despite the fact that 99 percent of its business
— including both the services developed through the Chromaticity partnership
and the company’s remote proofing technology — comes from the commercial
printing market, Fuji is looking to make an entry into the newspaper market.
“Right now we’re actually migrating into
newspapers with some of the technologies we’ve developed for them, such as our
CTP plates and some of our film products,” said Allan Dunn, national technical
sales manager for Fuji Photo Film U.S.A.
Although neither of the aforementioned products
directly concerns the newspaper market, Dunn explained some of the reasons for
his company’s decision to investigate getting more involved in an area from
which they have traditionally drawn a small portion of their business. CTP
technology, specifically, has been one of the driving forces behind Fuji’s
decision to look at the newspaper market.
“We’ve been involved with CTP technology
since its inception, and up to this point we feel that it’s been an
opportunity for us to expand our manufacturing and expand our growth into other
areas outside of the commercial market,” Dunn said.
Myfujifilm.com, while developed for remote
proofing in the commercial printing business, might find itself filling a niche
in the newspaper market, though Dunn admits that the role has yet to be
determined.
“It’s really been recently that we’ve
started to get involved [in the newspaper market], and to be honest with you, we’re
still learning, so remote proofing might be tremendously applicable to the
newspaper market. We’re still trying to learn,” he said.
At the Print Oasis conference in McLean, Va. this
past April, myfujifilm.com was used in conjunction with PictroProof, Visual
Profiler and Photo effects in a project which proofed a color brochure, uploaded
it to the Web site, performed remote proofing and later downloaded it to the
company’s Finalproof to check for color accuracy. Key tools available on the
Web site include digital asset management, soft and remote proofing, file
transfer and reporting.
“Right now we’re very much in the infant
stages of getting started. We have one account running our CTP plates,” Dunn
said, but he explained that his company’s desire to expand the range of their
business.
“It’s been my goal to draw more attention to
the newspaper market,” Dunn said. “Fortunately, I’ve been pretty
successful so far, both garnering the attention of some accounts as well as
starting to turn some heads internally, but it’s a real limited resource right
now, from our standpoint. We went to Nexpo for the first time [this year] and
tested the waters there. We are doing more with CTP accounts, and we figure that
will help us better understand what the needs of the [newspaper] market are.”
