Automated Prepress Solutions
Workflow ESP • Direct to Plate • Harlequin RIPs • ROOM Workflows • Post-RIP Imposition • Dynamic Job Routing
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Automated Prepress SolutionsWorkflow ESP • Direct to Plate • Harlequin RIPs • ROOM Workflows • Post-RIP Imposition • Dynamic Job Routing |
Sales: 503-261-7395 |
The Daily Breeze Bolsters Prepress Production With Fusion Systems' Automated Prepress Solutions |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Logan Herbert |
Richard Robinson |
September 5, 2006. Portland, OR -- Fusion Systems International (http://www.FusionSystems.com) today announced that The Daily Breeze, a Copley Press owned newspaper, completed the conversion of their prepress production to a recently installed Fusion Systems' OS X-based raster management workflow solution and is seeing immediate returns on their investment.
The new prepress solution includes Fusion Systems's unique DigiPage™ ROOM Workflow plug-in technology that is now available for all Harlequin RIPs running on Windows, OS X and Linux. DigiPage provides absolute digital integrity proofing without the need for third-party software or additional hardware. DigiPage also automatically fixes a wide range of common production problems in a completely automated fashion.
In addition to The Daily Breeze publication, which covers Los Angeles coastal community news and events, the Torrance CA-based production facility also manages prepress production for several other regional coastal publications.
The decision to invest in new Fusion OS X RIPs with DigiPage and FTIFF workflow plug-ins to replace older, out-dated RIP technology has provided highly measurable returns. The workflow's built-in capabilities for direct file printing, job-name cleansing, advanced true-page numbering, automated file routing and sophisticated soft-proofing have dramatically reduced production time requirements and wasteful proofing materials usage.
In April 2005 the paper moved print production to Southwest Offset Printing in nearby Gardena, CA, a decision that allowed The Daily Breeze to concentrate on creation, editorial, advertising and pre-press. Pages are sent to Southwest Offset for pairing, plating and printing on newer high-speed Heidelberg Mercury presses.
Prior to this change The Daily Breeze ran three AIII RIPs to drive three AIII3850 film-setters. And all products were printed internally on their GOSS press. Transitioning to an outside print facility required several changes in the prepress production process. The Daily Breeze newspaper, which is built using a DTI NewsSpeed System, would have to be RIPed to 1-bit TIFF separations that could be transferred to the remote printing facility. The Weeklies and special Inserts, which are all produced in Quark XPress, would be distilled to PDF and then transferred. While these changes sound minor they immediately introduced new challenges and occasionally resulted in late file submissions, complicated and time consuming correction cycles, wasteful proofing practices, and production bottlenecks due to various technology limitations.
The Daily Breeze continued to utilize their older DEC Alpha RIPs to convert PostSript from the DTI Speed Driver, which links back to a DTI database and pagination engine, to 1-bit TIFF separations. The RIPs worked but were slow, out of date, hosted on unsupported hardware and operating systems, and were growing incompatible with evolving PostScript and PDF standards.
Production of Weekly Editions, typically created on older workstation hardware and older versions of Quark Express, now required page layouts to be individually distilled, or saved out as PostScript pages, each correctly named and numbered. With a weekly count upwards of 300 pages the process of making corrections and re-distilling pages painfully stretched production out past midnight. This in turn delayed submission of all pages to the remote printing facility. Something needed to be done to simplify prepress processes and shorten the total production cycle.
In addition to intermediate proofing during the regular production cycle the transition to an outside printer also necessitated the generation of hard copy proofs at both The Daily Breeze and at Southwest Offset. This was done to facilitate communications, and for overall quality control. This contributed both time and material waste and because the proofs lacked digital integrity to the data used to make plate separations it offered limited value toward overall quality control.
Jim Bush, Network/Production Systems Supervisor, at The Daily Breeze had read about Fusion Systems International and decided to contact them regarding their OS X RIPs and digital integrity workflow solutions. Following a Webex demonstration and initial testing The Daily Breeze purchased three Fusion OS X RIPs, each with the DigiPage ROOM Workflow Plug-in, FTIFF 1-bit TIFF accelerator plug-ins, and FirstPROOF soft proofing application. The solution set was integrated to their specific workflow requirements to simplify and accelerate production.
Immediately, time requirements for getting out The Daily Breeze shrunk due to the high-speed processing capabilities of the new RIPs. Hot-folders routines allowed for automatic processing of DTI generated PDF files. All 1-bit TIFF separations are now held and visually inspected prior to being transmitted to the printing plant. The hard proofing requirements, both at the newspaper and the printer's location were eliminated, saving both production time and eliminating consumable waste.
The impact for production of weeklies has been even more dramatic. All Quark page layouts, are now printed directly to printer queues. This eliminates the need to convert pages to PDF altogether and last minute fixes and changes are easily accomplished. Creating PDFs of the Quark pages used to take 12 hours of time on production days to distill the pages and quality assure them. The new Fusion RIPs automatically handle jump pages and sectioning, and routing of output correctly.
At any time a classified or display ad layout operator can print a single page or series of pages to a published "Proofing" queue and automatically generate a Fusion raster-PDF that shows exactly how the job will print because the PDF is created from high resolution 1-bit TIFF separations data. Hard copy proofing is minimized and errors on the final layout can be completely eliminated. Production time for weeklies has been reduced by 12 hours per week.
The processing of jobs supplied to The Daily Breeze from outside customers has been dramatically streamlined as well. Built-in file name sanitizing has completely automated the task of fixing obscured PDF file names. For instance, one externally produced weekly use to take as much as five hours to manually fix before it could be sent out for printing. With the Fusion RIPs now in place this task is handled automatically, within minutes, in the background.
Fusion Systems International, of Portland, OR, is a leading independent developer and provider of Mac OS X, Linux, UNIX, and Windows-based prepress workflow solutions for the graphic arts industry. We have over 15 years of systems integration experience and specialization in prepress software solutions designed to enhance existing investments and or complement new ones. All products are distributed directly or through a global network of value-add resellers and OEM partners. Fusion Systems International is a division of LDR International, Inc. For more information, please visit http://www.FusionSystems.com, call us at (503) 261-7395.
The Daily Breeze is one of 18 newspapers published by Thee Copley Press based in La Jolla, Calif. The Copley Press Inc. is the sixth largest private family owned newspaper group in the United States and is the 19th largest newspaper group in the country, with news bureaus in Washington D.C., Mexico City, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Chicago and Springfield, Ill.
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