40 Years of Digital Prepress - Part 3

Commentary by Andrew Tribute

February 26, 2008 - Towards the end of the 1980s we started to get the signs of major change to come in the future. The high-end color systems were starting to be challenged by some new suppliers. These new suppliers like Unda and Dalim used high-end workstations from Sun, Silicon Graphics and others, and they showed that color image editing did not require specialized proprietary hardware on which to operate. We saw the arrival of low cost desktop color scanners. These were not as good as the scanners from the high-end suppliers but they opened up color scanning to the creative community. The Mac II started to get established as a color workstation with programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and Letraset Image Studio. The creative community realized that finally here was a tool to free them from the high priced extravagant approaches of the color repro shops. I remember as an advisor to one of the leading London newspaper publishers getting them to try out a Mac based color system. This newspaper had a large Crosfield based color studio and initially their studio manager threatened resignation if the Mac approach was tried. After some persuasion, and a visit to the USA he tried it. Within one year the Crosfield system was phased out and the newspaper was one of the world’s first to adopt a full desktop color PostScript approach to image handling. The benefit was they cut the time to get a color image onto the page from three hours to thirty minutes. By the start of the 1990s the era of high-end color was finishing. Many repro shops refused to recognize the change and concentrated on trying to live on work from quality fashion work and magazines, but their time had come. By the mid 1990s the high-end color workstation was a thing of the past and most scanning was being done on the desktop.

Skilled Mac operators handling the key programs became the important people in the publishing production space

The result of the above developments in how color was handled again changed the face of the industry in the same way the first part of the DTP revolution had heavily impacted the monochrome business. In the high-end color era, specialized service companies handled all color work. Desktop color with the Mac, Quark XPress, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator changed all that. Publishers largely brought color in-house for newspapers and magazines. Skilled Mac operators handling the key programs became the important people in the publishing production space. Every key designer would now be working with a big fully loaded Macintosh instead of a set of felt tipped pens.

During the 1980s and into the early 1990s imagesetting had transitioned from being output of monochrome pages to a move to color. Developments in the power of PostScript RIPs and enhancements to PostScript output quality moved the imagesetter to being color output devices producing high-quality color screening. The big debate at the time was about the quality of color screening with discussions about the benefits of rational and irrational screening. The high-end color suppliers would claim that the only way to output color separations was on one of their output devices in their language rather than via PostScript on a flatbed or internal drum imagesetter. The matter was settled in favor of the PostScript approach after the very expensive Seybold screening tests in which every major supplier participated. In a blind assessment when the judges had no idea whose output they were looking at, the winners were the typesetting companies of Linotype-Hell and Agfa. That was probably the final nail in the coffin of high-end color.

The resurrection of CtP started in the mid 1980s in Denmark with Purup Electronics and Hope Computing, but again it was limited because of the plate problem

As we moved into the 1990s the first moves to kill off the imagesetter and the era of computer to film (CtF) were taking place. This was the arrival of computer to plate (CtP). CtP actually started in the 1970s with companies like Eocom, LogEScan and Chemco who were trying to image printing plates in remote newspaper plants. The technology failed at that time because there no suitable plates, as well as the technology with the lasers at that time did not really work. The resurrection of CtP started in the mid 1980s in Denmark with Purup Electronics and Hope Computing, but again it was limited because of the plate problem. It was only when the Hoechst Ozasol N90 plate, the first dedicated CtP plate, was introduced in 1991 that the move to CtP really started. Hope computer was acquired by Krause Biagosch, but the first successful players were Gerber and Crosfield, both of whom aimed their products at newspapers where high-resolution output was not required. Over the next few years many other companies launched products into this area. New plates were introduced from most of the plate suppliers using either silver or photopolymer technology. All the machines used visible light lasers outputting red, blue or green light. Everyone projected that drupa in 1995 was going to be the major rollout from all companies of the CtP products that would make the industry switch from CtF to CtP. We all expected major things of the new Linotype-Hell Gutenberg, the latest Gerber Crescent, the new Agfa, Dainippon Screen, Krause and Scitex products, as well as products from many new players such as Optronics. Instead Kodak and Creo threw a big spanner in the works that stopped the market dead for a time in commercial printing. The spanner was Kodak’s new thermal plate and Creo’s Platesetter.

CtP had been struggling with image quality through problems with variable exposure and chemistry fluctuations in the developer. Thermal technology changed all that, as it did not matter if there were exposure fluctuations provided you had more than enough power for imaging the plate

Thermal technology turned the industry upside down. CtP had been struggling with image quality through problems with variable exposure and chemistry fluctuations in the developer. Thermal technology changed all that, as it did not matter if there were exposure fluctuations provided you had more than enough power for imaging the plate. Processing was not such a problem as heat rather than light was used for exposure so there were no differences in exposure to be covered. The thermal technology was one thing, but the development that changed the market came from a publisher. Frank Scott who was in charge of production at Time Life magazines saw thermal CtP as a way of standardizing imaging to a matching quality at all the remote printing operations that printed for Time Life. He specified that any printer that wanted to print for them had to adopt thermal technology. Almost overnight all the largest magazine printers in North America committed their imaging to Creo’s platesetters and Kodak’s thermal plate. It was a slam-dunk! Following this most CtP suppliers either switched totally to thermal imaging technology or added thermal CtP devices to their product lines. The rest is history with Creo rapidly becoming the most successful prepress supplier in the industry. They became so successful they acquired the Scitex CtP and prepress operations to become the largest prepress vendor in the industry. They then somewhat screwed up the situation and had to be acquired by Kodak in Kodak’s acquisition binge.

The laser printer was a development of the 1970s. It became increasingly popular in the 1980s with the desktop and office laser printers and also with Canon introducing the color laser copier. High-speed laser printers took over in the transactional space doing high-speed monochrome printing. We had to wait however until the 1990s to see the laser printer move into the graphic arts production space. In 1990 Xerox introduced the Docutech 135 Production Publisher. This product could print from a stack of monochrome originals in its scanner or from a digital file supplied on disk or via a network. The Docutech started the digital printing market and one of the most successful products ever produced by Xerox. It essentially killed most of the short-run monochrome offset market.

At this time the color copiers from Canon and Xerox operated at less than 10 pages/min. Early Rips from companies like EFI drove some of these color copiers, but the ideal of a color version of the Xerox Docutech seemed far away. In November 1992 I received a phone call from Israel from a gentleman who introduced himself as Benny Landa and he had a company called Indigo. I was invited to a meeting in New York in December 1992 to discuss a future product his company was planning. This was my introduction to digital color printing alongside a few other well-known ‘experts’ like Charlie Pesko and Frank Romano. We spent a fascinating day discussing Indigo’s plans and I believe we all helped to reshape them, and no doubt it is 100% down to us that Indigo succeeded. However Indigo planned to keep everything secret until IPEX in October 1993.

Unfortunately for them another rather bright guy called Lucien de Schamphelaere in Belgium had ideas in beating Benny Landa to the market. I had an invitation to discuss his plans in mid 1993 for the Xeikon company, and the Xeikon product was launched before Indigo, much to Benny’s chagrin. Both companies however released the digital color printing revolution together in October 1995 with products that would print around 35-color pages/min. The next entrants to this market were Scitex, once again a leading company and Xerox. They both used the same 40-page/min-color engine from Fuji Xerox with a controller to drive it. This was not as good a quality as either the Indigo or Xeikon products, but it was substantially cheaper to purchase and more likely to keep running for most of the day.

Today one can get twice the speed and quality of the early Indigo and Xeikon products that cost over $250,000 for well under $50,000

Digital color printing had started and we owe a huge debt to the entrepreneurial spirit and forward thinking of both Benny Landa and Lucien de Schempelaere in starting their small companies. The market however really only stuttered along for some time until drupa in 2000. Most buyers of these products were companies that previously had been high-end color prepress shops who understood all about color and needed a new business area. At this time Xerox introduced its Docucolor 2000 series (2045 and 2060) products. These were the first highly competitive and goodish quality products and they started the rush of commercial and quick printers into digital color. Since then more and more digital color products have come to market in both the high and low end of the market. Today one can get twice the speed and quality of the early Indigo and Xeikon products that cost over $250,000 for well under $50,000.

While all these developments were happening to change the face of printing something else was happening that many people thought would make printing redundant. This was the Internet. During the time from 1995 until 2000 I had an editorial role with another person who also played a major role in the changing face of digital prepress. This was Jonathan Seybold and his Seybold Publications organization. In this Seybold was deeply involved ain the development and acceptance of the new technologies in printing and publishing. In this time many organization would not buy a product until Seybold Publications had reviewed it and given it a good rating. It was one of the driving forces in getting digital technology accepted in printing and publishing. Jonathan was perhaps the first person to identify the impact that the Internet would have on the printing and publishing markets. During that time Seybold Publications each year made a number of Seybold Awards for Innovation to what Seybold’s Editors felt were the most significant developments to bring forward technological developments for printing and publishing. Internally within Seybold after a few years of making these awards they became known as The Seybold Kiss of Death Awards since many of the winners appeared to go out of business soon after receiving their awards. In the early 1990s however Jonathan did identify what was probably the greatest development ever to change the face of information distribution. Seybold made an award to Tim Berners Lee who at that time worked at CERN, the Swiss nuclear research facility. for his development of the World-Wide-Web. As Tim could not attend the awards ceremony in San Francisco the award was transmitted via the WWW. (At this point let me make a claim I have never admitted to before. In the early 1980s when I worked for Monotype I employed Tim Berners Lee as a sub contractor to do some amazing cool coding on a digital proofing application. Obviously I must have influenced him in his future development of the WWW!)

I won’t say any more about how the Internet and World Wide Web has changed the industry because that is common knowledge and its impact is still being felt everywhere within this industry. This is both as a means of communicating information and also as a means of enhancing business communication and trading. It is however a fitting point after 40 years to stop my ramblings as we look forward to the next stage of development. We see digital printing either via xerography or inkjet becoming increasingly competitive against established offset printing, while at the same time opening new forms of printing never done before. You will note I have not even mentioned the huge impact of inkjet printing in changing the face of point of sale, display, billboard and presentation printing.

There are now real alternatives to print, but despite all the soothsayers that defined print as being dead over the past 20 years it is still going strong

In these 40 years I have worked through all the changes that have impacted on the printing market. In that time the market has changed tremendously. There are now real alternatives to print, but despite all the soothsayers that defined print as being dead over the past 20 years it is still going strong. As an industry it has changed immensely. It is no longer the craft industry it used to be. It is now seen as a computer assisted manufacturing process that is a part of the overall information communications industry. Long may it play a part in this communications industry? For me I still love the printing process and the delight of opening a beautifully printed product and smelling the ink and the binding. No fully electronic process can ever replicate this. It has been a privilege to play a part for the past 40 years in the changing of this industry from being an analog to a digital industry.

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40 Years of Digital Prepress - Part 2

40 Years of Digital Prepress - Part 1