Development of digital manuscripts
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With the development of computer direct plate making (CTP) technology in recent years, the industry generally believes that this technology is bound to replace the existing film processing, but its development has been hindered. Because the filmmaking process using the film can still provide a certain flexibility for manual modification, such as typo or partial plate change and so on. The direct plate making is a one-step use of the plate-making machine to directly image on the plate, all the image data can not be lost, otherwise you need to re-export the full-page layout. In other words, CtPlate requires a more reliable digital workflow to handle the manufacturing process from the designer to the press, as opposed to computer-based direct film production (CtFilm). Therefore, the most controversial issue is not whether lasers can be used to create high-precision dots directly on the plate, but whether there is an approved digital workflow to replace the existing production methods. What needs to be considered in the whole process include digital drafting, computer layout, production efficiency, flexibility of modification, cost, trapping and self-filming. Below we will give an introduction to the requirements and techniques of digital drafting.
Comparison between digital drafting and traditional drafting
Whenever the effect of digital drafting is mentioned, the traditional manuscript is generally used as a benchmark for comparison. Although the comparison is logical, it is often easy to miss the benefits brought by some functions attached to the digital manuscript. Below we are divided into three major areas, including quality, cost and effectiveness, and try to objectively compare the differences between the two.
Quality effect
Color Simulation Capability — Since traditional drafters are also imaged using ink, the theoretical color gamut that they can express is very close to printing. In terms of digital drafting, some equipments can also use the color inks that approximate the ink composition, and the color gamut performance is also very similar to printing. But the cost of ink and machine is very high (generally the equipment is between HK$550,000 and 1.65 million, depending on the format and accuracy). Other common color printers, such as inkjet or sublimation, can express more color gamut than printing inks at a lower cost. The key is how to use the too rich color gamut to simulate the color gamut of printing inks, depending on the color management technology of individual manufacturers.
Net flower simulation capability — This is an absolute advantage in traditional drafting. Because they use the same set of film printing and printing. And if digital drafting is to simulate online flowers, on the one hand, it will pay more than one million yuan to purchase high-precision equipment, but the effect is not consistent with the real printing effect. For example, the precision of the digital drafting machine is 2000/3000dpi, and the accuracy of the photo-picker is 2400/3600dpi. The net flowers made by the two are completely different. Most of the devices on the market that can simulate cyber flowers can only meet the visual requirements of customers.
Stability — Because the traditional drafting machine uses the ink of the person and adjusts the pressure, the effect is very unstable. The industry has the experience that the same set of film is used to play the draft separately, and the effect is usually different. Digital drafting is automated imaging and can be very stable. Of course, if the quality of the equipment is not good, such as the ink head is often blocked, it will also cause instability. However, the more stable equipment on the market is not difficult to find.
Reliability — Traditional drafts use a film that is consistent with printing and is highly reliable. Digital drafting can be considered in three levels on this issue. (1) If the RIP of the output is completely different from the RIP of the final plate making system, then the reliability is low; (2) If the output is RIP and The plate-making system is the same, but it needs to be re-processed separately before imaging, so the reliability is high; (3) If the same set of data that has been processed by RIP can be used for drafting and plate-making, the reliability is very high. . Because in addition to human factors in the entire process, the most likely difference in operation is the operation of RIP. The three methods mentioned above are available on the market and users must pay special attention.
Cost-effective
Investment costs — In this respect, traditional drafts are inferior to digital drafts. Because the same production capacity, such as the completion of two sets of four-color four-color drafts in an hour, the investment of traditional equipment requires four sets of drafters, supporting printing, printing equipment, plus the required work For personnel and a large factory, the investment will cost approximately HK$2.2 million. The investment in digital drafting can be between HK$330,000 and HK$1.65 million, depending on the quality requirements, while the additional labor is close to zero. In terms of material cost, the cost of traditionally-printed paper and ink is very low, and the cost and the higher proportion are the plate and the potion. For digital drafting, a split format is about HK$22-165, depending on the individual printer. In general, the rate of return on investment in digital proofing (to a certain degree of quality recognition) can be much higher than traditional drafting.
Performance
Production speed — On the surface, digital imaging is faster, and printers that are common on the market can complete a high-quality folio in 20 minutes. The traditional manuscript, regardless of size, does not include the time of imposition, printing and printing. The operation of the manuscript is usually 30-40 minutes, but this is only a comparison of the production of a manuscript. When it is necessary to produce more than one color draft, the difference in speed between the two is relatively close.
Multiple Simulation Capabilities — Most of the digital drafters mentioned above can express more color gamut than printing inks. The rich color gamut combined with the good color management software makes digital proof not only simulate the effect of printed matter, but also simulate other production effects, such as screen printing, digital printing, inkjet posters, etc. The performance of the simulation under the high-speed rotary press is more compatible with the increasingly diversified output of the market. The most common example is a set of advertising designs that need to be advertised through different media.
Multiple Format Capabilities - A complete digital proofing system, in addition to simulating the color effect of an output medium, can automatically adjust the color of the image in the file in response to the needs of different outputs, so that the operator does not need to manually modify it. A truly automated workflow. The characteristics of the above two digital drafts are all lacking in traditional drafting.
Digital draft selection
Digital drafting can basically be divided into three models
Design proof design drafts, only for layout design.
Color proof color proofing for color effects.
Screen proof screens for drafts, while targeting color and mesh effects.
Overall, Color proof color proofing is the most comprehensive and selective, and the best cost-effective. (figure 1)
In fact, there are many types of color printers available on the market. The main imaging technologies include laser printing, thermal wax transfer, thermal sublimation, and ink jet. The inkjet type can be regarded as the mainstream middle and high-end products. The following are training materials based on the 1998 Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States.
Introduction to digital proofing hardware
Thermal Transfer Technology - This technology contains wax blocks of pigment and transfers to special paper. However, the color space that this technology can cover is different from the color space of traditional offset printing. The drafts using the thermal transfer technique have a rough appearance, and the resulting dots are also inconsistent with the printed halftone dots. The equipment investment is about $8,000 and the cost per print is about $3.
Sublimation Technology The tasting system using sublimation technology uses a printhead containing thousands of heating elements and a color ribbon containing CMYK pigments for proofing. The printhead produces 256 levels of different heat, allowing the solid pigment to sublime into a vapor and condense on the receiving medium. At the center of each point, the color is darker and the edges are lighter. When the four printing colors are printed, the four colors are fused together to form a continuous tone image. The average set of such devices is about $25,000, and the cost per print is about $7.
Inkjet Technology (Professional) □ Inkjet proofing system ejects ink onto paper to form an image. Although paper costs are lower than sublimation, overall, the overall system is more expensive and requires more maintenance. Prices range from $44,500 to $69,000. The cost per print is about $2-3.
Laser technology □ This technology has high precision and can produce halftone dots, and the specific technologies used are different. The system accuracy is 1800dpi to 4000dpi. Equipment is priced at approximately $200,000 – $275,000. These drafting systems cost about $15 each time they are drafted.
The right printer only provides hardware features, and the more critical part of the entire drafting system is the color management software. In the topic of digital drafting, a term called "ICC PROFILE" is often encountered. This is actually a data file with a standard format, which is used to record the unique color gamut of different color output devices. Applying this "ICC PROFILE" in the digital proofing system is just a common procedure. What users need to master is how effectively this data is generated. Is the user allowed to be inspected regularly? It all depends on the software features of individual manufacturers. The following technical notes provide a brief overview of how Agfa uses unique concepts to enable printers of all grades to perform their best color simulation.
Software introduction
Our perception of the color of nature is determined by three factors – The type of light source, how the object changes the reflected or transmitted light, and the sensitivity of our eyes to the changed light. The eye is one of the important sensory organs, and the principle of eye color matching is consistent with the color mixing principle of color light. When the red, green and blue light in the external light respectively stimulate the corresponding cone-shaped cells, the nerves are generated by electrical impulses to form nerve excitation, which is transmitted to the visual center on the cerebral cortex, which constitutes a certain color, and different colors will be Different visual effects. The same color also has different visual effects under different contrast changes, because the color contrast in the same picture affects the brain's judgment of color. This is one of the important principles used in our color conversion. (Fig. 2a, 2b, 2c)
First you need a way to measure and define color
Visible colors can be composed of □ hue, saturation, and brightness. Hue is a color that can be perceived by the eye by the one or two-color light with the largest RGB tri-color light; the saturation is the intensity of one or two-color light with the largest RGB tri-color light. When RGB is equal, the color becomes unsaturated and appears to be gray or white; the brightness is the RGB light wave that stimulates the eye to sense the intensity or wave height of the cell. These characteristics can be stacked by a number of "discs" to form a three-dimensional color model, which describes the change in the circular motion of the disc is the hue; the movement from the bottom to the top increases the brightness. Each disc moves outward from the center to increase saturation. This model is an irregular type because the eyes are sensitive to various colors. (image 3)
Each device has its own gamut space, some of which can be seen on the screen but not by the output device. This is due to the inconsistency of the color gamut space between the screen and the output device. Agfa CMS can connect and match two gamut spaces to solve the problem of color conversion. When using the screen color to simulate the process color, one method can remove the hue that cannot be expressed and express it with the color closest to the color gamut. One can narrow the inexpressible gamut space to the expressible gamut space, change the color of the surrounding environment, and use the relationship between the eyes and the brain to simulate the effect between different color gamuts, so the latter is a better method. It enables all color output devices to have a certain color simulation capability. (Fig. 4a, 4b
Digital proof application
The existing digital proofing technology has been able to satisfy most ordinary users. They mainly pursue speed, stability and cost effectiveness. The performance of these three aspects of digital drafting is significantly better than traditional drafting. Examples of users mainly include general books, magazines, and textbooks.
For high-end users, although the above three advantages can not fully satisfy them, color quality is the most important requirement. But because of the strict requirements of these users, a layout usually needs to be modified several times during the production process, and many users of this type, such as advertising companies, have begun to use digital proofing as a TEST PROOF (test draft). In the process of modification, digital drafting has been used until the modification is completed, and then a traditional drafting is done. This alone can save a lot of costs for rewriting.
In the last part of the introduction, is it possible to draw a conclusion? In the end, is the digital draft mature? How to choose equipment? In fact, different users will have different answers. Depending on the importance of each feature of the digital drafting mentioned above to individual users, the following picture shows an intuitive method to display a high-end printing factory and a short-run fast printing factory. The current comparison between digital drafting and traditional drafting. (Fig. 5a, 5b, 5c)
The above introduction hopes to provide some reference for everyone. The last thing to mention is that today's digital proofing technology has reached a certain practicality, but users must pay attention to the cooperation between software and hardware when selecting equipment to achieve the best results.