As more and more newspapers consider moving to computer-to-plate, they’re looking for ways to stay profitable, cut costs and waste, and improve productivity.

Many newspapers are dealing with aging technology - old film imagesetters for which parts are getting harder to find, older RIP technologies that do not reliably (or at all) process newer applications’ native files or customer-supplied PDFs, and workflows that are more manual than computerized. These papers need to move forward not for technology’s sake, but for the future viability of their business.

 

Investments in newer workflows and CTP technology provide measurable returns on investment. Consider:

*Material cost savings: The most notable savings is in the area of makeready paper waste. This is because a press comes up to color much faster with CTP-generated plates. If a newspaper purchases 2,000 tons of newsprint per year at $635 per ton that’s almost $1.3 million spent. But if makeready waste goes down from 10 percent to 5 percent, that would amount to an annual savings of $63,500.

While CTP plates can cost more than traditional plates, other costs, such as film and chemistry (which will be eliminated after going to CTP), ongoing support contracts, as well as labor must be factored into any equation that attempts to compare the real costs of CTP and the reduced make-ready time it brings.

*Labor and time savings: Time is saved since the press comes up to color much faster with CTP. Prepress times are also compressed. Manual stripping is eliminated. Time spent keeping stacks of film organized for page pairing, punching, cutting, taping, registering, masking and burning is compressed into a single direct output to plate. A CTP system can produce a set of plates faster than just the vacuum frame draw time for exposing a conventional plate.

*Later editorial and advertising deadlines: With the compressed timeframes for plate output and makeready comes the potential to push prepress deadlines further out. This can allow more time to accept ad submissions and the ability to insert or finish time-sensitive stories or photos closer to press time. In a competitive news market, this can be a key competitive edge.

*Quality: With ever-increasing competition from the Internet and other sources for customers’ time, attention and money, the quality of the printed product can be a subtle, but real competitive tool as well. CTP has proven itself far superior to traditional methods of platemaking in terms of color and image quality. Readers and advertisers are more inclined to invest in a visually rich, high-quality color product. As fast and up-to-date as the Internet can be at newsgathering, for the average consumer it cannot compare in depth, size, readability and portability of a printed newspaper.

Taking first step

Although business reasons for moving to CTP are clear, what remains fuzzy is taking that first step.

All too often, companies make the mistake of selecting the manufacturer of their CTP device as the initial step. This is understandable insofar as the CTP device is the most visible expense. But the first step to moving to CTP can come as early as several months (or even years) before the actual purchase of a CTP device. The first step to moving to CTP should be preparing the workflow.

Focusing too soon on which CTP device to purchase can be like the tail wagging the dog. While the choice of CTP device is important, it might be wise to put more emphasis on choosing the right workflow and plate product first. Since every name-brand CTP device on the market today will accept industry standard 1-bit TIFF files, the options are truly wide open. Separating the choice of CTP device from workflow allows the most flexibility and allows the customer to get the best solutions for their particular needs.

Keep in mind, workflows are not free. Some CTP manufacturers will bundle a workflow with a new CTP system and a plate consumable contract. While a “free” workflow is enticing, it’s important to consider the real costs of developing, maintaining, advancing and supporting a workflow product. It’s a good idea to choose the workflow first and, later, the CTP device based on what works best in your environment and meets your particular needs.

Choosing the right workflow

To determine your requirements, it is often useful to sit down with a team of people from various departments, including composing, advertising, editorial, prepress and the pressroom. Every department has expectations and requirements. The choice to move to CTP will necessitate certain changes in workflow. It will be important to make sure that the critical needs of each department are taken into account when making workflow adjustments as part of a migration to CTP. Here are a few areas to consider:

*Compatibility: How well does a given workflow integrate with the existing editorial and advertising systems? Will operators be able to continue to use their existing procedures, or will changes need to be made? What is the overall cost in software, hardware and time for the upstream changes to support the new workflow?

*Flexibility: Many newspapers use their editorial system for standard news pages but compose tabs and other products directly in design applications like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. Is the workflow capable of taking data from different sources and in different formats?

*Accuracy: Do you ever have to compensate display ad customers because an ad they approved does not match the ad that printed in the paper? This is not uncommon, due to the differences in processing technologies between proofers and the imagesetters or platesetters. Ad refunds due to proof or press mismatches are common. But with a good workflow in place that ensures absolute digital integrity between the proof, the plate, and the final image on press newspapers can drive their cost of ad refunds to zero. Do the workflows you are considering offer a 100 percent reliable proofing solution? Do they give you a means of soft proofing and/or hard proofing the final 1-bit raster data that will mark the plates and eventually transfer ink to paper? Once moved to CTP, it’s no longer possible to proof the final film. There are solutions, however, for soft and hard proofing the final raster data. Some solutions are more elegant than others. But if this level of accuracy is important, make sure your new workflow can provide it.

*Automation: Many tasks in the production of a newspaper are repetitive. Is the workflow you are considering able to provide automation for any of these repetitive tasks? Automation ought to free operators from mundane and repetitive tasks to be able to focus on higher value efforts. For example, newspapers invariably use strict and consistent file-naming conventions. Is the workflow able to take advantage of this to provide routing of pages for automated imposition for a multisection publication? Solutions are available today that offer this level of automation.

*Rasterizing: When does the workflow actually rasterize the incoming PostScript/PDF pages? Is it able to RIP individual pages as they are finished? Can it automatically output page pairs as they are completed? Or do you need to impose the PostScript of PDF prior to RIPping the page pairs? Do you need to wait for an entire section to be complete before it can be imposed and/or RIPped? This can put a tremendous burden on the RIP computer at the final stages of production, and doesn’t allow much leeway for corrections. RIPping individual pages as they are finished allows the load on the RIP computer to be spread more evenly throughout the day. It also allows for mistakes to be found much earlier in the production process if the RIPped individual pages can also be proofed. Finally, only pages with mistakes need to be reprocessed rather than the whole page pair or imposed flat.

*Minimal disruption: With ongoing pressure to get the paper to press, the fewer disruptions to prepress production the better. A main advantage of going to CTP is ROI. To ensure minimal impact, it makes sense to change fewer variables at one time. Implementing a new workflow before a CTP device allows operators to become familiar with the new tools and workflow, without the added burden and disruption of installing and learning a new platesetter.

Next month: Choosing the right plate technology.

Tim Tomassi is product development manager for Fusion Systems International, a Harlequin RIP OEM and independent developer of Mac OS X, Linux and Windows-based prepress, PDF and automated workflow solutions. He can be reached at 503.261.7398, or via Fusion's Web site at http://www.FusionSystems.com.