Newspaper printing revolution in prepress workflow

In the information age, newspapers as traditional media are constantly improving their own competitiveness in order to better face the competition of new media and their own survival and development. For newspaper printing companies, the important thing is the improvement of printing quality and production efficiency. For this reason, many newspaper companies have purchased new printing presses, and they have also carried out many technological transformations in the prepress industry. In particular, the application of CTP has been gradually applied. Concerned by more and more users. The improvement of printing quality and plate-making efficiency brought by CTP has been widely recognized, but in the process of CTP application, some problems are gradually exposed, which are mainly reflected in the existing prepress workflow.

High-definition proofing, digital proofing, Wenhe imposition, and phototype RIP output together constitute a typical newspaper company printing workflow. This workflow, combined with the application of the photosetter, has served China's newspaper industry for many years, which has enabled the newspaper's prepress technology to be basically realized. Digital. However, in the face of high-speed photosetters and CTP applications, the original work flow gradually encountered some problems, and could not adapt to the production needs of newspaper printing companies. Therefore, in the latest newspaper CTP's overall solution, Baoying Violet Laser CTP system, supporting the structure of the workflow - Founder Chang flow newspaper version. Why use a structured workflow? The main reasons are the following aspects.

1. Need to improve overall production management

Each process link in the traditional workflow has its own software, and even if there are multiple sets of software in the same process link, these softwares run independently of each other, making the entire workflow unable to effectively perform unified management and control. In many Indian factories, records of work performed by hand are prone to problems. In the structured workflow, all processes are managed and controlled through a main system, and the status of each work session is automatically recorded. The server/client architecture facilitates monitoring of all aspects of production at any client. The work situation and perfect account management system provide a large amount of accurate data and effective management tools for process management.

2. The need to increase productivity and quality

The decentralized structure of the traditional work flow makes each process link form an “information isolated island”. The information transmission and data flow between each other are completely based on manual operations. It not only fails to form a smooth and efficient production process, but also has great stability and security. The risks. A smooth, efficient, structured workflow that integrates isolated processes is what the printing industry really needs, and it is more important for CTP applications. There are also intermediate control means for outputting the film from the photo-composing machine to the printing plate. For example, the film can be tiled and modified, but these operations cannot be performed during the CTP plate-making process. Moreover, the cost of consumables such as film and PS plates is relatively low, allowing users to repeat the filming when problems occur. The flexibility of the film also reduces the cost of revision and revision, while the current cost of CTP is relatively high. Users have to be more cautious in their use, and the obvious need is stability and reliability.

3. Need to improve the efficiency of data preparation in CTP production

The higher plate-making efficiency of CTP requires that the efficiency of data preparation be improved, and the correctness of data transfer processing must be ensured at the same time so that previews and multi-level inspections can be performed at any time. The structured process first checks the layout document and generates PDF “electronic film”. It uses “electronic film” for black and white proofing, digital proofing, imposition, output, etc. The process consistency is good, and the normalized small page PDF can be used at the same time. Completed and previewed the large-format PDF for preview and check, checking the dot matrix before output after hanging the net; it also can check output by printer. The traditional RIP method can only preview the large-scale dot matrix before outputting. Once the error is not checked at this stage, it will easily cause problems in printing. Therefore, in view of the timeliness, flexibility, and security of data preparation, the structured process is more suitable for high-efficiency, large-scale applications such as CTP.

The structured workflow is RIP's higher generation product. It inherits the core technology of RIP products technically and adopts a revolutionary structural design. It realizes the automatic transfer of internal data and the sharing of resources, and the advanced design of the server/client. , to ensure that multiple clients to achieve parallel operations, greatly enhance efficiency, but also reduce investment in similar products, more suitable for parallel operations. At present, domestic newspaper printing companies have begun to pay attention to structured workflows. Dozens of newspaper and printing companies have already successfully applied the Founder Chang flow newspaper edition. It is believed that the structured process will be recognized by more newspaper printing companies.

Reprinted from: Ke Yin Network