The San Antonio Express-News in late October made the switch from hard proofing to calibrated soft proofing, going live with Presteligence Inc.’s Blackmagic and Xtreme Inking presetting software on its Goss International Corp. Colorliner presses. Blackmagic released the soft proofing version of its flagship Blackmagic News Extra proofing app earlier this year.

Vice President of Production John Martin recently spoke with Newspapers & Technology and Presteligence about the deployment.

Q: What made San Antonio Express-News switch from hard proofing to calibrated soft proofing?

Martin: Soft proofing is hands-down better than hard proofing when properly set up, calibrated and maintained. When you’re running 20-plus pages of process color on a product and generating numerous hard copy proofs, as well as being able to use them properly, it was very time consuming.

Operators have found the process easier and faster than hard copies, which in turn helps reduce the waste. This was the main goal for going with the soft proof process.

Photo: San Antonio Express-News
Kelly Cook , press operator for the San Antonio Express-News works on the newspaper’s press with Blackmagic Xtreme inking.
 

Q: What were the key selling points of Blackmagic and Xtreme Inking? 

Martin: One of the key selling points was the ability to have pages automatically displayed on-screen every time the operator selected a page to check ink and water balance from the Goss Press Control System. The other point was how well Goss and Presteligence worked together.

Q: How will you measure ROI for this?

Martin: To measure our benefits from the installation, the ROI would be to have zero complaints or credits due to not matching what the customer wanted or expected in the color reproduction.

We also expect to reduce cold start waste by 1 percent with the help of new presets sent from Presteligence to the new control system.

Q: When do you expect a return on your investment?

Martin: Once the automatic page selection (an interface between Goss PCS and Blackmagic) is installed we expect a return within a year of completion.

Q: In what ways has soft proofing improved your production process?

Martin: Using the proofing system to better match the color tones in our process color ads to better match what the customer is looking for and expecting. Graybars were our only tool previously and when the graybars were outside of the image area on full-page process color advertising pages, the graybar did not reproduce well and at times cut off.

The proofing process has greatly improved our ability to match what is being printed to what is expected. Screen-generated tones now match better. It’s a great tool for our press staff to utilize in our efforts to continue to improve the quality of our products to meet customer demand.

Q: Have you seen benefits and cost savings with the use of Xtreme Inking? 

Martin: The benefits of Xtreme Inking were to regain our ability to precisely preset the printed pages on press based on calculated coverage of the digital data on each page produced.

Prior to Xtreme Inking we used an electronic page area reader that would scan a negative and give us presets. We lost this ability when we converted to computer-to-plate, so it was imperative for us to regain our ability to preset the ink based on coverage to help control waste and improve the print quality on cold starts of the press runs.

We still have to work on naming conventions because we have files coming from a couple of different systems. However, we have several small commercial runs and weekly newspaper products where it has greatly helped keep waste down and improve startup quality. We are rebalancing our print parameters on our Goss Colorliners to optimize the results of this component and its relationship with our new Goss press controls.