Don’t put off the decision to move into digital color printing. Once you add it, business will find you.

By Rick Wise

Technical Thoughts on Digital Color

Scott McCullough, Digiprint support technician at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has many years of experience handling files in an offset environment. He now handles the more complex customer files that are to be output on the Xerox iGen3. He offers the following observations when comparing digital color to traditional offset.

• Digital printing eliminates the need to separate colors for output. This is especially helpful for customers who use Publisher, Word and other basic software.

• Digital printing provides a reasonable representation of most PANTONE spot colors.

• Digital printing has allowed us to migrate to a PDF workflow, at least for most of our digital customers. Some still prefer to submit live files, but we are in the process of training those who wish to learn to provide us with high-resolution PDF files.

• Digital output allows us to run test prints quickly and inexpensively, eliminating the need for a traditional proof. This helps us to identify problems with color, layout and transparency flattening. Essentially you are offering the customer a quick, easy and inexpensive “press proof.”

• We have worked with a number of our customers to keep their transparencies “live” in their PDF file. This allows us to control the flattening. Customers usually don’t know the capabilities and limitations of the output device so they are guessing when they do their own flattening.

• We have discovered that there is some risk involved whenever we go into the customer’s PDF file and make fixes, since there is now a difference between the native or source file and the file we actually output from. This can create problems on reprints of the job when the source file is submitted later.

• Digital printing, specifically variable data color printing, has allowed us to effectively market our in-plant while at the same time demonstrating variable data printing.

• The iGen3 has allowed us to give MU’s design students (Art and Journalism) real-world production experience, from concept to completion. At the end of a class project, the students have a very high-quality finished product for their portfolios. It has really helped our education mission.

• About the only downsides have been occasional problems reproducing some colors, especially in solid panels. And we’ve created havoc for our bindery department with a flood of short-run, super fast turnaround work on top of the offset work they are already producing.

I SUBSCRIBE to an electronic mailing list for in-plants, and lately I’ve noticed a number of postings regarding various aspects of purchasing a digital color printer. One recent posting asked a very astute question: are you planning to produce digital color for existing customers or do you plan to cultivate new customers?

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