Chapter 1 ― Making the CTP Decision

Many of the larger or progressive printers and prepress services have already invested in Computer-to-Plate (CTP) technologies and have a few years of experience under their belt. However, the many printers and prepress services are just now considering the move to CTP, and the first-time or prospective CTP investor could benefit greatly from some of the experiences and the lessons learned by the CTP pioneers.

ROI or RIB? In management school you learned how to calculate an internal rate of return or a net present value to help you decide if a new investment is worthwhile. These financial methods of evaluation are helpful when you’re planning on investing in replacement equipment or equipment for a known process, but they fail you when you’re looking at new technology. Financial evaluation methods are only as good as the assumptions that they are built on. For the first implementers of this new technology it was difficult to anticipate what all of the potential costs would be. In the case of new CTP equipment there are few cost savings can be estimated in advance with a degree of certainty:

·        Reduced labor rate per plate

·        Faster make ready

·        Reduced paper waste due to improved make ready

·        Faster plate remakes

·        Reduced number of plate remakes

·        Less press waiting time

In each case you will want to interview printers or prepress services that have a similar equipment and workflow environment and who are outside of your geographic area or competitive market segment. Check with prospective suppliers for references. There are also revenue opportunities that may result from your addition of CTP equipment:

·        Plate premiums for CTP plates that are still less expensive than traditional processing.

·        Charges for pre-flighting electronic files prior to processing

·        Additional prepress work that you may not have had with conventional production.

 However, for many CTP buyers the motivation to purchase CTP equipment isn’t just based upon sound financial calculations, but on customer or peer pressure. Most customers are already preparing their materials electronically and digital production has an a priori appeal. They’ve heard about CTP from conferences, trade magazines, and probably from competitors. For many CTP buyers the decision isn’t based upon the Return on Investment, the decision is based upon RIB or “Remain in Business.” You must also determine how much of your business will you lose if you do not implement CTP.

Start with your workflow ...  Experienced users have learned that the cost of the CTP imagesetter may only be a fraction of what you’ll spend to get your CTP operation up and running. The cost of networking, digital storage, prepress stations, and other front-operations may be a third or more of your total cost. A lot depends on whether or not you’re already “digital.” If you are already doing electronic prepress, then you’re half way there, and by “electronic prepress” we mean, at a minimum, the ability to accept digital information in many different forms and file formats, preflight, proof, output and archive. In most cases customers also expect you to have the ability to correct files. This could mean anything from a simple type correction to extensive image manipulation or color correction. Below are listed typical services associated with CTP providers.

·        Job acceptance and Preflighting — Checking customer files to ensure all image, font, and graphic elements are in place, as described in the customer’s instruction or PO, and are properly structured and ready to run. Also, accepting electronic file transfers and removable media, inspecting files for gross errors such as file corruption or wrong file names, and entry of files in the job scheduling system.

·        Image Acquisition — Scanning and digital photography services to include image capture, color correction as well as file format conversion and the ability to ready and write to a variety of common removable drives.

·        Prepress operations — Preparing electronic mechanicals for output specifically for the press or type of printing condition (i.e., SWOP, SNAP, GRACoL) that the job will use to include tone value increase compensation, screening and separations, GCR/UCR, OPI/APR image replacement, and image trapping.

·        Electronic Imposition— A prepress function, that may include some of the above functions, but whose primary task is to collect page files off of the server, impose them into printing flats, and send the flats through the raster image processor  (RIP), if required for your workflow.

·        Digital Proofing — The ability to create proofs that will emulate and match the final printed appearance of the job.

·        File server and job management — To include a file management and workflow coordination database and system, OPI or APR software, and a job archive and system back-up sub system.

 If you already doing all of the above in order to create imposed film flats that are ready to go to the printer for plating, then you’re more than half way to CTP. The CTP processor can be thought of as a replacement for your current film imagesetter. You may also need to purchase an appropriate plate processor, and you many need to purchase a special scanner for customer-supplied film (a “copydot scanner”), but you’re past the hard part.

In some cases, you may be doing some, but not all of the described prepress functions. Many shops did electronic prepress, but outputted individual pages to film and the film had to be stripped into flats before plates were contacted. In this case, you’ll need to invest in imposition software. But most importantly, you’ll probably need to expand the bandwidth of your network and you’ll want to beef up your server somewhat. Beware of the inexperienced DTP consultant or systems provider: many of the early CTP pioneers discovered that many of the “experts” didn’t have a clue about how much storage space and bandwidth CTP operations require. You should estimate the average file size of your customers pages, multiply by the number of pages per flat, and then multiply by the number of days a job takes to produce, including customer approval of proofs, press time, and final commitment of job files to archives. If most of your work is color, you may find that your average flat will be 250 MB or more and you’ll need the network bandwidth necessary to move those file quickly. Furthermore, you may need one, two, or even three terabytes (TB) of live or near-on-line data storage. CTP is more than just DTP writ large, it is several magnitudes larger. 

If you’re a printer who has been accepting customer supplied films and preparing plates, but have not offered any other prepress services, you’re in for the time of your life — you’re going to have to implement both prepress services and CTP. It is highly recommended that you either implement prepress and gain some experience before implementing CTP, or that you try other alternatives such as:

·        Establishing a partnership with a CTP equipped prepress services

·        Buying or merging with a shop that has already implemented CTP

·        Buying or merging with a shop that at least has full prepress capabilities prior to implementing CTP.

The closer to press changes are made the more expensive those changes are. It cost very little to change an author’s article or a photographer’s photo. At the design stage the same changes are a little more expensive if caught after a pre-proof has been made. Then the cost of color prepress is added and contract proofs are made. Finally, plates are processed and the customer gets one last chance at press side. However, plates and press sheets are not the most economical place to proof pages.

Equipment Evaluation and the Implementers Checklist.  There are thirty or forty CTP vendors competing for your investment dollar and all of the choices can be confusing. If you’re not already providing prepress services, the choices are compounded. So where do you start? First there is the platesetter itself — you must:

1.      Determine the customer’s needs for quality, run-length, resolution, format, etc.

2.      Determine your press requirements for plates, plate sizes, and mounting methods.

3.      Determine the cost of the platesetter, plates, materials, maintenance, and vendor supplied training.

4.      Determine the type of plate each candidate platesetter uses, and confirm that the more than one supplier is competing for your business, plate availability, plate quality and durability, and plate pricing.

5.      Check out the vendor’s references. Are they proven? Are they likely to be around in ten or fifteen years? Do they have a good track record of providing service and support?

Once you’ve decided on a couple of plate, imagesetter, and processor combinations, you’ll next need to determine how compatible you’re prepress front-end system is with the system, or you’ll have to determine what options there are for purchases. Among the most important considerations is file compatibility between your customer base, the front-end, and the CTP system. What type of files are you going to encounter?

·        Native format

·        PDF

·        Fat PostScript

·        Continuous Tone &  Line work

·        DCS

·        TIFF/IT

·        DCS2

Your front-end system must be fast enough to handle the file sizes mentioned above and you need to be sure to plan for several functions, including:

·        Trapping

·        Ripping

·        File Conversion

·        Proofing

·        Archiving and Storage

·        Workflow management and Scheduling

·        OPI and APR

·        Preflighting

·        Tone value increase compensation

·        Copydot scanning

The front-end system itself must be networked and networked to the CTP system. Speed and bandwidth are critical and each component must be considered. Anyone of the following can become a bottleneck that will bring down your entire operation:

·        Servers

·        Routers

·        Switches

·        RAID/Storage

·        Protocol

Don’t forget to prepare your People!  Before you even make your purchase, your CTP implementation team must begin the process of preparing your people! This includes operators, sales staff, CSR’s, and customers. In each case you must assess the knowledge and skills that exist — not just of CTP operations, but of computer literacy and electronic publishing as well. Each group must be assessed, training must be scheduled, and a chain of technical support must be established along a time line that begins well before installation and that may continue well beyond your initial implementation of CTP. All four groups must be considered and it recommended that you establish “standard operating procedures or guidelines for each group. The SOP should incorporate the basic skill set as well as:

·        Workflow planning, operations, and control

·        Maintenance of equipment

·        Continuing skills assessment and evaluations

·        Data collection for quality, costs, customer billing, and variance analysis

·        A feedback loop that ensures that your operating methods improve as you learn more about your new CTP operations and the response of your customer base.

GAMIS Study. Ken Cloud of Cloud Information Services did an analysis of ROI of CtP to provide a model for predicting future expansion of CtP technology for GAMIS (The Graphic Arts Marketing Information Service, a special industry group of Printing Industries of America, Inc.) Ken surveyed 10 sites from the magazine and periodical publishing market; collateral materials and annual reports market; and general commercial printing market.  For each market Ken analyzed the workflow of existing operations and their transition to CTP in order to generate a typical ROI. Ken said that he limited his study to metal plate users with Gerber, Screen, and Creo plate servers. He also looked at one trade service that was providing plates to printers. (The only major difference between the printers and the tradeshop was that the tradeshop was more efficient at linearizing output devices including CTP equipment.)

Ken found that there was a generic workflow that turned out to be almost identical from site to site, regardless of whether it was a $3 million commercial printer or a $170 million publication printer. To get a true CTP ROI, Ken had to eliminate ROI that was the result of investments in electronic imposition or digital proofing rather than the CTP equipment itself. For instance, electronic imposition eliminates stripping labor and capital costs and those savings cannot be attributed to a CTP investment. The changes attributable to just the CTP investment were:

·        Elimination of image setting

·        Elimination of film processing

·        Addition of soft proofing

·        Transition to digital imposition proofing

There were several other benefits of CTP including:

Simplified workflow — including the elimination of film generation, reduced manpower, and reduction in material costs

Better quality — CTP means you are only working with first generation originals, there are reduced printer errors, and CTP plates have a sharper, more controllable spot.

Marketing tool — In some cases, the investment in CTP attracted customers.

 The barriers to CTP investment and adoption include:

Workflow — Digital data is required from customers and there are new OPI/Trapping, and imposition requirements. If the printer was not already providing digital prepress services (e.g., direct to film) then they were not ready to make the investment in CTP.

Skill Sets — There are not enough PostScript professionals on the market and usually the customers also require training in providing good digital files.

Investment — Beside the cost of the equipment there is also the cost of training and setup to consider.

The biggest savings found were in make-ready, and in particular the number of plate re-makes and related press down time. Plates were rejected because they were poorly contacted or the data didn’t include proper curves. Plate re-make rate may have been decreased because printers have to proof the completed plates ― the that fact that they are looking at plate closely means that they have the chance to catch mistakes before the plates go to press.

The GAMIS study had to assume that booth the analog and digital (CTP) workflows were maintained. After the companies in the study transitioned to CTP Ken found that there were real (hard dollar) savings in the following areas:

·        Imagesetting

·        Analog blueline proofing

·        Stripping/step and repeat

·        Plate re-makes

·        Press make ready

Realized cost increases included:

·        Equipment investment

·        Increased service costs

·        Digital blueline proofing

·        Plate Material cost differential

·        Installation and training