The Big Picture - June 2011 by ST Media Group

06.11

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Building Brand

Momentum ImageMaster’s Coffee Connection PLUS: · Navigating a RIP Solution · Professional Imaging Tools · 5 Recession Lessons

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in this issue

June 2011 Volume 16 No. 6

COLUMNS 4 InSight

ecovering from R a very bad day.

14 Business & Management

ive lessons from F recession woes.

15 Graphics on the Go

ffering more O than just “full color.”

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES 17 Navigating a RIP Solution

y utilizing a quality RIP, you’ll be better equipped to address all the B production tasks and challenges your shop tackles on a daily basis. You’ll be able to improve your workflow, make your operation superbly efficient, and likely take on not only more work but also more diverse types of jobs. To help you select a RIP that meets your unique production needs, we provide critical specs on more than 50 third-party RIPs.

24 An Aqueous Journey

By Paula Yoho

Bill Louf, owner of ImageMaster in Sedona, Arizona, does nearly as much commercial print work as fine-art reproductions. And he sees each job as an opportunity to showcase not only what he knows about art, but what he has learned about digital-printing technologies – particularly aqueous – and how far they can go to make a print jump off the proverbial page.

28 Professional Imaging Tools

Creating, editing, and manipulating images can be a time-consuming and daunting task that precedes a print shop’s real glory moment: the output. To help you during the frontend of your journey to create the perfect print, here’s an array of image-design and editing tools encompassing professional-grade software and plug-ins.

ON THE COVER: ImageMaster’s Bill Louf finds success via aqueous for the Sedona Hyatt Starbucks franchise. Cover design by Laura Mohr.

THE

BIG PICTURE june 2011

6 Wide Angle

tar light, S star bright.

8 Feedback

rom our F readers.

10 Up Front

ews + N noteworthy.

32 R+D

he latest tech, T products, and supplies.

40 Job Log

etting G charged up.

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insight by Gregory Sharpless

www.bigpicture.net Gregory Sharpless Editor/Associate Publisher gregory.sharpless@stmediagroup.com

Recovering from A Very Bad Day Think about the worst day you’ve ever had at work or on a particular job. Let’s face it, at one time or another, everybody has had one of those bad days or bad moments when things go terribly, terribly wrong. At the end of a day like that, you want to go home and kick the proverbial dog. Take, for instance, Marcos Hocevar’s very bad day back in February 1983. At the time, Hocevar was a professional tennis player (now retired) from Brazil, and playing in the WCT Gold Coast Classic tournament in Del Ray, Florida. His opponent: Bill Scanlon from the United States. Scanlon won the first set 6-2 – a bit of a bad set, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then, however, came the second set. In that set, Scanlon not only won every game, winning 6-0, but proceeded to win every single point in the set. In the entire history of professional tennis, it is the only such set (termed a “golden set”) in which one opponent did not win one point. Now, that sounds terrible, and it was. Professional tennis has been around for quite a long time, and is played year round. No one has ever done again what Scanlon did to Hocevar. For you baseball fans, it would be as if only one perfect game had ever been thrown in the history of the sport (20 perfect games have been thrown, 3 in just the past 3 years). I wasn’t there for this tennis massacre, so I don’t know if Scanlon was playing that well, or Hocevar was playing that poorly, or if it was a combination of the two. But the results were certainly bad. And I would assume that Hocevar was miserable about the result. Now, a lesser man might have crawled into a hole and never been seen on a tennis court again that year (or perhaps ever). But Hocevar not only played again, he played very well and prospered. In fact, he finished 1983 ranked number 30 in the world, his best ranking ever in men’s singles tennis. Then, two years later, he finished up the season ranked number 85 in the world in doubles. All in all, not bad for a guy who had such a terrible day that he ended up on the wrong end of the record books. Many print service providers are recuperating from some similarly very bad days right now – particularly as the economy struggles to recover. Keep Marcos Hocevar in mind as you set about righting the ship. It was just one day or one job. You have the rest of the year, and, indeed, a career ahead. Play well and prosper.

Britney Grimmelsman Associate Editor britney.grimmelsman@stmediagroup.com Laura Mohr Art Director laura.mohr@stmediagroup.com Marty McGhie, Craig Miller, Jared Smith Columnists Linda Volz Production Supervisor linda.volz@stmediagroup.com Lou Arneberg - Midwest US Ben Stauss - Western US, Western Canada, Asia Lisa Zurick - Eastern US, Eastern Canada, Europe Business Development Managers Rick Bachelder, Kathy Boydstun, Terry Corman, Scott Crosby, Brandon Gabriel, Michael Garcia, Kirk Green, Robert Kissel, Craig Miller, Greg Root, Jared Smith, Mark Taylor Editorial Advisory Board

Tedd Swormstedt President Steve Duccilli Group Publisher Christine Baloga Audience Development Director John Tymoski Associate Director/Online Subscription Services (847) 763-4938 tbp@halldata.com bigpicture.net/subscribe bigpicture.net/renew Single Copies/Back Issues Debbie Reed debbie.reed@stmediagroup.com

THE BIG PICTURE (ISSN 1082-9660) is published 12 times annually by ST Media Group International Inc., 11262 Cornell Park Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45242-1812. Telephone: (513) 421-2050, Fax: (513) 362-0317. No charge for subscriptions to qualified individuals. Annual rate for subscriptions to non-qualified individuals in the U.S.A.: $42 USD. Annual rate for subscriptions in Canada: $70 USD (includes GST & postage); all other countries: $92 (Int’l mail) payable in U.S. funds. Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright 2011, by ST Media Group International Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for product claims and representations. Periodicals Postage Paid at Cincinnati, OH and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Big Picture, P.O. Box 1060, Skokie, IL 60076. Change of address: Send old address label along with new address to The Big Picture, P.O. Box 1060, Skokie, IL 60076.

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

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Star Light, Star Bright Last year, National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson (jimrichardsonphotography.com) traveled to nine different countries in 22 days, visiting places like the Taj Mahal, Luxor Temple, Machu Pichu, Easter Island, and Samoa. When it was time to produce prints for his resultant “Around the World” exhibition for his own Small World Gallery in Lindsborg, Kansas, he turned to his Epson Stylus Pro 4900, utilizing it rather than the larger Stylus Pro 9800 or 9900 he has in-studio due to the 4900’s speed and convenience, he says. In just three days, he output more than 40 images for the exhibition, all with Epson Ultrachrome HDR inks onto Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper. Most were printed in standard sizes – such as Milky Way Over Easter Island, seen here, at 12 x 18 inches – while several panoramic images were output in varying lengths “to lend visual variety.” The photograph was shot with a Nikon D3 with Nikon 14-24mm zoom.

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

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feedback

From our readers We welcome letters from readers on any of the articles or items appearing in The Big Picture. Send letters to: bigpicletters@stmediagroup.com (subject line: feedback), and be sure to include your e-mail and/or phone number for verification. All letters are subject to editing for content and space. Sorry, anonymous letters will not be published.

Armored Graphics Wow, I loved the tank graphics on the VW Jetta in your April issue (“Jetta Turned Tank,” page 6). Beyond the aesthetics of the work, though, did the job garner the client more business? Hollee Kilchoat McKinney, Texas Yes, in fact, Greg Nicola, owner of the Armored Ink tattoo studio, attributes much of Armored Ink’s latest success to the Jetta tank: “My new tank wrap has people talking, and has increased the clients coming to Armored Ink Studio a great deal. With a wrap like this, I always make sure to have business cards in hand,” he says.

Going Industrial While we produce wide-format graphics, we’re always looking for an additional profit center, and our shop is now beginning to look into industrial print work. Will you be covering this topic in the near future? Frank Ujvary, Ujvary Graphics Fishers, Indiana

Up Next

We have no current plans to pursue that topic in The Big Picture, but we suggest you check out our sister publication, Industrial + Specialty Printing magazine (industrial-printing.net). It’s the only magazine covering functional and decorative printing done as part of the manufacturing process, and

We’re hard at work on upcoming features and would love to include your shop’s recent projects in our articles. We’re particularly looking for jobs featuring these applications/technologies: • Flatbeds and rigid media • Out-of-home projects Drop us a note at bigpicletters@stmediagroup. com (subject line: up next project) with a brief description of the job.

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

covers a host of topics including solar cells, membrane switches, RFID, nameplates, panel fronts, instruments, gauges, and more.

Feet of Vinyl, Clarified I’ve seen the vinyl sandals you showcased in your April issue (“Upcycling Billboard Vinyl,” page 8) elsewhere – are other companies making and/or marketing them? Andrea Stephens, Jag Textiles Estacada, Oregon Although we rightly referenced MMT in our article on paperfeet recycled-billboard sandals in April’s issue, we erred in also not referencing Detroit-based Tombolo Goods Mfg. (tombologoods.com), which concepted and designed the paperfeet sandals and which creates “functional eco-beach adventure gear that encourages creative reuse, conscious consumption, and a get-outside-and-live mindset.” Tombolo sources vinyl not only from MMT but from other companies as well, and MMT sells billboard products from various companies.

More on SOPs Our shop has been integrating standard operating procedures in the past few months, so we were glad to read Marty McGhie’s piece on the topic (“Incorporating SOPs,” April, page 14). We’d very much like to hear more on this. Henry Finke, Sure Color Design Buttermilk, Kansas Consider these other points on SOPs, according to McGhie: • Make sure all SOPs are branded with your company look: “All of our SOPs carry the Ferrari Color brand so that they resemble a document that might be sent out to a customer or vendor.” • Allow employees to access not only their own department’s SOP, but the SOPs established by other departments as well – “this will help generate ideas and open doors to discussions regarding what’s working and what’s not.” • Making SOPs available is important, “but it’s just as essential to establish a program of training, implementation, follow up, and retaining.”

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PHOTOS BY VALERI ESTRADA.

upfront upfront

Serving Up Gourmet Food – and Graphics You can have a name, but not necessarily an identity. Just ask Jenn David Connolly, owner and founder of Jenn David Design (jenndavid.com) in San Diego, who recently completed a comprehensive and defining identity for Los Angeles-based Manna Culinary Corporation’s food truck, Clean Street Food. “I was approached by the team of Manna Culinary Corporation – chef Jack Harding, who has extensive gourmet experience, and his wife, Sara,” says Connolly. “They started Clean Street Food (cleanstreetfood.com) to serve up ‘gourmet food at a pedestrian price’. The food is fresh, gourmet, and delicious. They contacted me with the name already established, but no identity.” Connolly worked with them on developing not only a logo, but also a truck wrap plus a website design. “I illustrated the chef in the logo based on a photo of Jack, so it’s very close to his likeness. And we incorporated the chef’s utensils to communicate that this food is gourmet and prepared by an experienced chef.” The bright colors for the logo and overall wrap design are important as well, explains Connolly: “The red and yellow colors were selected to signify quick-serve

9% 10

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

food, but we put an entirely gourmet spin on it, to reflect the high quality of the food and service. And since this is for a food truck, I developed the cityscape illustration to signify the street aspect of the food, and the sun rays around the logo tie it all together and make it shine, literally.” The other design details serve to reinforce the client’s name and provide contact information. Once the client had approved the design, the final graphic fi les were outsourced to a local print provider. Output was done on an HP Designjet L25500 latex printer, at 1200 dpi, using 3M vinyl and a cast overlaminate. The same shop also executed the install work. The icing on the food-truck cake: The Clean Street Food vehicle was later featured on a recent episode of CBS’s “CSI: NY.” “It was selected because of its bright yellow color, which showed well in the night scene,” says Connolly. “They even did a close-up on the menu portion of the truck, which we designed as part of the wrap to integrate directly with the other graphics on the vehicle.”

Nine percent of surveyed respondents in the US indicated that social media motivated them to go online and visit a website; social-media totals achieved only 3% in the UK. Search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) returned the best ratings: 36% of all 12,000 respondents. Source: Deloitte, YouGov, and Warc (warc.com).

Mutoh America’s New Financial Services Mutoh America has launched Mutoh Financial Services. The service is designed to offer attractive rates and incentive programs to interested Mutoh-printer purchasers and leasers, and allows Mutoh customers to apply for Mutoh financing online. “With tough economic times, Mutoh wants to make sure that our customers can purchase products they require,” says Brian Phipps, general manager of Mutoh America Inc. “Financing shouldn’t be an issue when buying equipment, so we’ve tailored programs to help find ways to meet our customer’s financial needs.” Various financial programs and options are available through the Mutoh Financial Services including rebate incentives (customers can receive up to a $2000 rebate on a qualified printer purchase), 100-percent financing, fair market or $1 buyout, flexible monthly payment options, and more. Also available are customized purchasing programs, including those designed for startup and sole-proprietorship businesses; these programs assist in preserving working capital and conserving existing bank-credit lines, Mutoh reports.

Billboard Remake ViaMaris Partners, Israel-based creators of environmentally sensitive consumer products, has launched Remakes (remakes.biz), a line of eco-friendly placemats made from reclaimed billboards and movie posters. Remakes receives used billboards on an opportunistic basis from a variety of sources to then be repurposed into eco-chic placemats. Many companies are eager to offer up the used media in order to save on inconvenient disposal costs, Remakes reports. “Our society is quick to throw things away, without regard to what ‘away’ really means,” says Ben Wiener of ViaMaris partners. “We rescue these elaborate billboards and turn them into artistic tableware that looks great on any table, saves hundreds of pounds of plastic from becoming landfill, and raises awareness about the impact we have on our environment.” Two styles are available: Remakes Black, all-black, textured placemats; or Remakes Multi-Color, a set of placemats cut from the same billboard or movie poster to offer aesthetic consistency. No two placemats or sets are the same; each features unique colors and designs. All designs feature a Remakes logo and QR code, which links to the Remakes website that features a daily fact or news item about conservation, recycling, or protecting the environment, as well as information about the placemats’ origin. The placemats are currently available in the US from Abe’s Market (abesmarket.com) and through the Remakes website.

“Most sales people run from problems. Order is late – they blame operations. Inventory levels are not adequate – they blame purchasing. Customer retention on the other hand requires that we run toward the problem and take the accountability to make it right.” – Dirk Beveridge, president, 4th Generation Systems (4thgenerationsystems.com)

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upfront

Printscape Acquires Visual Impact Graphics Printscape Imaging & Graphics, based in Pittsburgh, has acquired Visual Impact Graphics, a sign maker and vehicle graphics company formerly located in Robinson, Pennsylvania. “The acquisition will enhance our company’s talent base and expand its signage and graphics capabilities,” says John Dziak, owner and CEO of Printscape. Printscape’s growing vehicle graphics business will be led by former owner of Visual Impact Graphics, Mark Sokol, who will also serve as an internal production consultant. Printscape (myprintscape.com), formerly known as Washington Reprographics, recently added to its architectural, engineering, and construction focus an outreach to universities, retailers, pharmaceutical and public service industries.

First Look: ISA Expo Recap The International Sign Association (ISA) welcomed more than 19,000 attendees to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas for the 65th annual 2011 ISA Sign Expo in late April. Industry exhibitors fi lled nearly 200,000 square feet with the market’s latest innovations. “With an increase in attendees of more than 13 percent from 2010, we feel strongly the industry is seeing a significant rebound and the numbers reflect this rebound. Our exhibit sales were up 14 percent in net square footage and our participating companies were up 13 percent over last year. Our sponsorship sales were up more than 300 percent for the event,” says Brandon Hensley, ISA VP of marketing and sales. The expo featured the third-annual New Product Showcase, which honored the latest technologies in the graphics and signage market by allowing 25 companies to pitch their most recent creations. The attendees then voted to choose the “Coolest New Product,” which went to 3M Scotchprint Warp Film Series 1080 (3mgraphics.com). During this year’s Green Product showcase, which judged products based on advancements in energy eﬃciency, low-VOC, post-consumer waste products, and other similar traits, Image Microsystems MicroStrate (imagemicro.com) took home the title of “Best Green Product of 2011.” Attendees also enjoyed the American Wrap Star competition where professionals from across the nation performed live vehicle-wrap applications. The contest hosted 64 competitors who wrapped four vehicles. The judge crew led by graphic-application specialist Rob Ivers selected Mingo Richter from Blackbox-Richter in Austria as the champion. The general consensus was a feeling of cautious optimism as most exhibitors and attendees reported seeing an upswing in the industry. “The supplier community was reporting higher sales numbers during quarter one than anticipated and the orders being placed on the show floor left many I spoke with feeling that quarter two was headed in the same direction,” adds Hensley. Look for an extended ISA recap in the upcoming July issue of The Big Picture.

market metrics

Does Your Shop Have a Sustainability Policy? Thirty-seven percent of print shops indicated they had a formal sustainability policy in place, according to a recent survey by the Printing Industry Center at RIT (print.rit.edu). An additional 17 percent of respondents indicated they had an informal policy in place. The full report, “Exploring Existing Measures of Environmental Impacts of Print: A Survey of Existing Practices” is available via the center’s website.

37%

27%

Presence of Sustainability Policies Pct of Companies

14%

17%

37% Yes – Formal 17% Yes – Informal 14% In Development 27% No 5% Unsure

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

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business business++management management

Five Lessons From Recession Woes By Marty McGhie

uring the past several months we have all listened to or read from the various “experts” regarding their thoughts on the great recession we’ve recently endured. I’ve realized, as I’m sure many of you have, that you can pretty much decide whatever you want in terms of the current economic state of affairs and then quickly find an economic expert opinion to back up your theory. Whether you decide that we are officially home-free from the recession, still bogged down in the economic crisis, or in the worst-case scenario, heading for a deeper recession, there’s one thing we can all unanimously agree upon: Our businesses will never and can never be managed in the same way. While riding the waves of the economic storm, I learned some important lessons that helped keep my business alive. What follows are five of the lessons I’ve learned from enduring the difficult and complex business environment we have all witnessed over the past few years.

Lessons one and two Let’s begin with managing cash and budgeting capital acquisitions. • Lesson 1 – managing your cash: The first thing that becomes blatantly apparent during tough times is that your customers don’t actually pay you very well. And it doesn’t really matter if they are a big name-brand customer – they still don’t pay you very well. To make matters worse, your vendors also are hurting, so they need their money sooner rather than later. So understanding your cash position at all times is critical.

Marty McGhie is VP finance/operations of Ferrari Color, a digital-imaging center with Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Sacramento locations. The company offers high-quality large- and grand-format photo, inkjet, fabric, and UV printing. marty@ferraricolor.com

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

One suggestion I have that will help here is to set up a system that tracks your cash flow daily. For example, in our business we have a daily cash report sent out from our accounting department that indicates the amount of cash that came in the day before, the amount that went out, and the current state of both accounts receivable and accounts payable, as well as significant cash obligations coming up that week such as payroll or sales taxes. Because we review the state of our finances daily, we are able to accurately track our cash flow, both in and out of the business. This report will encourage you to spend more time on collections, making sure you have a constant and consistent flow of cash into your business and will also keep you on your toes in terms of managing your cash obligations. • Lesson 2 – budgeting your capital acquisitions: Money spent on the purchase of new equipment, new vehicles, property improvements, or any other kind of capital expenditure needs to be scrutinized very carefully, especially when times are tough. The past two years have actually brought our company a much better discipline in terms of acquisitions. While it might seem easier during a recessionary business environment to say, “Hey, let’s just stop all of our capital acquisitions for awhile,” it isn’t really very practical for most shops. What is practical, however, is to implement a budget process for all capital expenditures. Let me recommend a process that has worked well for our business: Put together a full list (aka “wish list”) of everything that you might need to acquire within the next few years. Keep smaller purchases (anything less than $1000 or $2000) oﬀ the list because they are more manageable. Categorize each acquisition as an “A,” “B,” or “C” purchase. The As have the highest priority. Then rank the A, B, and the C categories into their own priority order so you know what the most important acquisitions to the business are. When cash becomes available, make the purchases. This is a much more organized and planned approach to spending precious dollars on your capital needs, and you’ll ensure that all of the company’s acquisition needs are met while keeping on budget. >37

graphics on the go

Offering More Than Just ‘Full Color’ By Jared Smith

can remember a time in the 1990s where our focus was on subjects like: “Will this material have bubbles in it?” “Will it hold up to car washes?” “Will we be able to install it without wrinkles?” And, “Is this high-end vinyl really worth it?” That was, by digital print standards, a very long time ago. Now, we all have our favorite wrap vinyl. We have profi les built to print great color. And our installers can wrap just about any shape a vehicle can throw at us. Yes, adding reflective was always a cool way to make a wrap stand out, but beyond that and brilliant design there really wasn’t much in the way of material options. Until now, that is.

An entrée to the custom market Now is a great time to be in the vehicle-wrap business. Many new materials are entering the marketplace that can challenge us all again. Importantly, I don’t mean “challenge us” when it comes to the actual production or installation. Rather, I mean challenge us in fi nding creative ways to enhance the final results and make for happier, more-likely-to-return customers. Quite a few manufacturers have recently come to market with these specialty fi lms. These fi lms include a wide assortment of textured and colored vinyls previously not available for the vehicle-wrap market. And with some creative thinking and pre-planning, you can make some amazing looking vehicles using fi lms like these. I see these types of fi lms serving two purposes in my company’s product lines. The first is a new market for us, one that we’re calling the “custom automotive market.” In the past, we would shy away from a wrap job that was for a personal vehicle for a variety of reasons. These jobs seemed tough to make a profit on; the client was always extra picky; and the final sale total was usually very little. In short, these jobs had a high risk and a low reward – not the kind of combination you’re looking for. With the new fi lms out there, however, we can now do a custom “paint” job that requires no printing and sometimes may not even require design. This is something that used to be unheard of in the vehicle-wrap market.

Let me explain. A customer can now come to bluemedia with their brand-new car and pay us to wrap it in matte black. There are many reasons that this is now a good thing – maybe even a great thing – for us. Obviously we don’t have to spend much time in design at all. We can skip both the printing and the laminating stages. We can install it as soon as there is an opening on the install schedule. And, as you can imagine, there really isn’t much to proof either. Plus, with a price point similar to that of printed vinyl, the revenue can be the same and the eﬀort can be reduced. The risk is also reduced, meaning that these types of custom or personal-vehicle jobs are now certainly worth it for us.

Supporting graphics The second purpose these new fi lms can serve is to not replace a printed wrap but rather to augment it – by isolating certain areas such as mirrors, bumpers, or even graphic elements themselves. For instance, we just completed a car for a high-end German auto dealership in which we wrapped most of the car in printed vinyl but we did the roof, the bumpers, the ground eﬀects, and the mirrors in black carbon fiber. We were able to charge a premium for those areas and they were actually easier to complete. Opportunities like these can help add to a shop’s bottom line. As you might guess, we’ve had a lot of fun coming up with cool new ways to use these fi lms. For instance, we recently completed a design on a 2010 Ford Mustang that looked like a Chris-Craft boat using a wood-grain vinyl and matte silver vinyl. And when a client approached us >37

JARED SMITH is president of bluemedia (bluemedia.com), a leading provider of design and printing for use in vehicle, large-format, and environmental applications, in Tempe, Arizona.

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Nearly 50 RIPs to help you onto a faster “throughput highway.”

Wouldn’t it be great if there were an actual “throughput highway” on-ramp that you could physically access from your shop? You’d never have workflow problems, color matching would be nearly automatic, and a plethora of challenges – such as image quality, variable data, and printing from various applications – would all but disappear. Alas, such an on-ramp only exists in the same fairy-tale land as the infamous pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The right RIP choice, however, can get you pretty darn close to a thoroughfare that runs all but parallel to the aforementioned throughput highway. By utilizing a quality RIP in your operation, you’ll be better equipped to address all the production tasks and challenges your shop tackles on a daily basis. You’ll be able to improve your workflow, make your operation superbly eﬃcient, and likely take on not only more work but also more diverse types of jobs. To help you in selecting a RIP, we asked RIP suppliers to provide us with information on each of their RIP models and each model’s features. For purposes of the charts on the pages that follow, we’ve limited this group to “third-party” RIPs – those RIPs typically purchased from a non-printer OEM – because these are generally engineered for more than one manufacturer’s printers. Various printer OEMs also produce (or have produced for them) RIPs for

their own machine models, and we certainly encourage shops to investigate all options when it comes to RIPs. Keep these points in mind as you study the charts: • We only included RIP models that were geared toward or could handle wide-format output, according to manufacturer specs. • We list 25 RIP features, and indicate if each feature is standard (S) or optional (O) on that particular RIP. If a cell is left blank, you can assume that the feature is not oﬀered. • File formats supported: We designed this chart to be a staging area for your research into which RIP might best suit your individual operation, so we list only basic fi le formats handled, not every fi le format listed; see the supplier’s website for more information. Similarly, we did not list the printers that the RIP supports; again, see the supplier’s website. • We list a price when provided by the RIP supplier (most did so). Finally, we urge you to also check out the “Notes” section in the chart. Because our basic chart template is in its final cycle, we suggested to RIP suppliers that they especially provide information on additional and newer features here. We’ll be updating our chart template next year to accommodate many of these features as well. www.bigpicture.net

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RIPs

CADlink Technology Corp.

Digital Factory Print and Cut Production

8-bit

SignLab v9 Print and Cut

8-bit

CopyRIP

16-bit

Caldera

VisualRIP+

16-bit

Caldera

GrandRIP+

16-bit

CGS

Oris Press Matcher // Web

Overdrive RIP Single User

16-bit

ColorBurst

Overdrive RIP Server

16-bit

Colorburst

X-Proof

16-bit

ColorBurst

X-Proof Plus

16-bit

ColorBurst

ColorBurst Pro

16-bit

Productionserver 6 Pro

16-bit

Colorgate

Productionserver 6 UXT

16-bit

Colorgate

Productionserver 6 Roland Ed.

16-bit

Colorgate

Productionserver 6 HP L25500 BestPrice Ed.

16-bit

cadlink.com CADlink

Caldera caldera.com

cgs-oris.com

ColorBurst colorburst.com

ColorGate Digital Output Solutions colorgate.com

THE BIG PICTURE june 2011

Col

RIP

Company

ted por Sup

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X

Win

$1995

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X

Win

$4000

Incl. complete design front end; works seamlessly w/most desktop-publishing programs.

PSD, PDF, PDF-X

Mac OS X, Linux

$995

Other features: hot folders and workflow; multitasking, HPGL support, cost est and mgmt; optional: Adobe PDF print engine (native PDF), lenticular flip creation, cut mgmt.

PSD, PDF, PDF-X

Mac OS X, Linux

$3395

Other features: hot folders and workflow, multitasking, HPGL support, cost est and mgmt; optional: Adobe PDF print engine (native PDF), lenticular flip creation, cut mgmt.

PSD, PDF, PDF-X

Mac OS X, Linux

$6850

Other features: hot folders and workflow, multitasking, HPGL support, cost est and mgmt; optional: Adobe PDF print engine (native PDF), lenticular flip creation, cut mgmt.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X , more

Win, Vista

$3500 $10,000

Centralized color server can automatically match multiple devices to one common standard. Other features: contract-quality soft proof, proof/print certification, extensive data preflighting and file normalization for older PDF and PS-version RIPs, auto gray-balance optimization.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Mac OS X

$295$1195

RGB RIP for aqueous printers; avail. in 13-, 17-, 24-, 44-, 64-in. printer versions.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Mac OS X

$395$1395

RGB RIP for aqueous printers; avail. in 13-, 17-, 24-, 64-in. versions.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista, Mac OSX

$495$1095

Avail. in 17-, 24-, and 64-in. versions.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Mac OS X

$1090$1890

PrintCertification: auto placement of industry std/custom color bars and PrintCertification targets for measured verification of color accuracy; avail. in 17-, 24-, and 64-in. versions.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista

$995$2995

Halftone screening capabilities; opt. contour-cut module; 17-, 24-, 64-, 72-in. versions.

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PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista

$5144

Supports 2 printers simultaneously (opt up to 6); modular software architecture.

PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista

$11,855

Supports 4 printers simultaneously (opt up to 6); 2 grandformat drivers incl.; incl. Proofgate, DeviceLink profiler, Quality Assurance, Express profiler, Cost Calculation, and Print & Cut modules.

PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista

$2528

Optional up to 6 printers; modular software architecture.

PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista

$2977

Optional up to 6 printers; modular software architecture.

www.bigpicture.net

EFI

eXpress for Proofing

EFI

eXpress for Photo

EFI

Colorproof XF v4.5

EFI

Fiery XF v4.5

Eisfeld Datentechnik

PosterJet e24PS

Eisfeld Datentechnik

PosterJet e44PS

Eisfeld Datentechnik

PosterJet e60+PS

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8-bit

8-bit/ 16-bit

PosterPrint v14

8-bit/ 16-bit

ErgoSoft

TexPrint v14

8-bit/ 16-bit

ErgoSoft

StudioPrint v14

8-bit/ 16-bit

PrintFactory

16-bit

Four Pees

ProofMaster Certify

Four Pees

ProofMaster Plus

Fusion RIP

RIPCenter vX10

PosterShop vX10

efi.com

RIP

RIP Prin / t-

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RIPs

posterjet.com

ErgoSoft ergosoft.net

Four Pees fourpees.com

Fusion Systems fusionsystems.com

Onyx Graphics onyxgfx.com

Onyx Graphics

THE BIG PICTURE june 2011

16-bit

8-bit

16-bit

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Notes

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Mac OS X, Vista

$600$1000

Incl. Ugra/Fogra mediawedge 3, G7 wedge; supports ISO 12647-7/8 content/validation proofs.

JPEG2000, PSD, more

Win, Mac OS X, Vista, Win 7

$600$1000

Specialized output solution for photographic work and reproduction.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X, Win 7

$2795

Produces ISO 12647-7/8 and G7-compliant validation prints and proofs; incl. Ugra/Fogra mediawedge and dynamic wedge; modular client/server/unidriver setup.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X, Win 7

$2490$5490

Essential, Advanced, and Premium editions; step-andrepeat, clean color, cut marks & cut servers, modular client/server/unidriver setup.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$999

Mac version avail. as client only; starts printing in 7 sec. (Dist by DK Graphic Supplies, dkgraphicsupplies.com.)

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$1499

Mac version avail. as client only; starts printing in 7 sec. (Dist by DK Graphic Supplies, dkgraphicsupplies.com.)

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$3749

Mac version avail. as client only; starts printing in 7 sec. (Dist by DK Graphic Supplies, dkgraphicsupplies.com.)

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista

Varies

Job costing, job estimation, hot folders, automation features.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista

Varies

Step and repeat, color combine, job costing, job est, hot folders, automation features.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista

Varies

Job costing, job estimation, hot folders, automation features.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$3149+

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Mac OS X

$1349+

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$2175+

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Mac OS X

$500

Built-in PDF preflighting.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

$1695

Supports 400+ inkjet printer models incl. aqueous and solvent. Other features: multi-page PDF support, hot folders, auto print-and-cut, optimized native PDF/FS and TIFF RIP, Web-based job log, job archiving, auto nesting.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

$3295

Supports 600+ inkjet printers incl. aqueous, solvent, and latex. G7 support, multi-page PDF support, hot folders, auto print-and-cut, optimized native PDF/PS and TIFF RIP, Web-based job log, job archiving, manual/auto nesting. Onyx continues next pg.

Win, Vista

Win

www.bigpicture.net

FlexiSign-Pro

SA International

PhotoPrint SE

SA International

PhotoPrint DX

SA International

PhotoPrint Server

SA International

PhotoPrint Server-Pro

DaylightRIP

Shiraz Focus

Shiraz Software

Shiraz Signature

Shiraz Software

Shiraz RIP Server

Topaz RIP Business vX

SoftRIP LargeFormat Edition

Wasatch Computer Technology

SoftRIP TX Large-Format Edition

Wasatch Computer Technology

saintl.biz

SCP Software scp.de Shiraz Software shiraz-software.com

Valloy topazrip.com Wasatch Computer Technology wasatch.com

Xitron xitron.com

Xitron

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T ili tom

8-bit

16-bit

SoftRIP SP Large-Format Edition

16-bit

Navigator Elite Workflow

8-bit

Navigator Proofing RIP

8-bit

THE BIG PICTURE june 2011

16-bit

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Cu s

Onyx Graphics

SA International

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Notes Onyx listings begin on previous pg. Supports 900+ inkjet printers incl. aqueous, solvent, UV, latex, flatbed, grand format. G7 support, textile step and repeater, multi-page PDF support, hot folders, auto print and cut, auto ICC profiling, optimized native PDF/PS and TIFF RIP, Web-based job log, manual/auto nesting.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win

Also incl. dual-roll, repeat job, job contour cutting, pure hue, object color control, variations, ink.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win

Other features incl. variations, print wizard, print from any application.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win

Other features: repeat job, contour cutting, pure hue, variations, ink, print wizard, print from any application.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win

Other features: dual roll, repeat job, contour cutting, pure hue, object color control, variations, ink, print wizard, print from any application.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win

Other features: dual roll, repeat job, contour cutting, pure hue, object color control, variations, ink, print wizard, print from any application.

JPG2000, PDF-X, PDF

Win, Vista

JPEG2000, PSD, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$600$1050

$4995

JPEG2000, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$660$2060

Adobe PDF compatible.

JPEG2000, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Mac OS X

$800$3700

Client/server; Adobe PDF compatible.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista

$2490

Cutting option.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Win 7

$2995

Incl. Wasatch Cut Estimator, hot folders, direct-to-layout workflow, archiving. Opt. contour cutting; Wasatch ColoRIP upgrade; exclusive editions for various printer OEMs.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Win 7

$3495

For digital textile printing. Seamless repeats, Cut Estimator, hot folders, direct-to-layout workflow. Opt: contour cutting; ColoRIP upgrade; editions for several OEMs.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Vista, Win 7

$3495

For prod. of color seps for screen/flexo/litho. New Separations Mode in 6.8, Cut Estimator, hot folders, direct-to-layout workflow, archiving. Opt: contour cutting; ColoRIP upgrade; editions for various OEMs.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista

$25,000

Supports wide-format printers, CtP, and directimaging presses. Job mgmt, imposition, ink remapping, PDF creation, preflighting, scriptable hot folders.

JPEG2000, PSD, PDF, PDF-X, more

Win, Win 7, Vista

$1200$2000

Capable of driving wide-format printers as well as CtP and direct-imaging presses.

www.bigpicture.net

AN AQUEOUS

JOURNEY

Photographer-turned-print provider Bill Louf finds wide-format success. By Paula L. Yoho In the wide-format digital print world, it’s rare to find a formally trained artist specializing in commercial print work. That’s where Bill Louf, owner of ImageMaster (imagemastersedona.com) in Sedona, Arizona, breaks the mold. His was a long road from the New England School of Photography to custom digital printer, and the evolution was entirely organic. Today, Louf does nearly as much commercial print work as fine-art reproductions. And he sees each job as an opportunity to showcase not only what he knows about art, but what he has learned about digital-printing technologies and how far they can go to make a print jump oﬀ the proverbial page. Before settling in the remote artist colony of Sedona, Louf worked for years as a custom printer – initially in New England, and then in the Pacific Northwest. His first job out of college at a photographic lab in Boston introduced him to the print side of the photography business, and he leveraged everything he learned then – in the late 1970s – about printing 16 x 20s, 20 x 30s, and other large prints in a darkroom, into a profitable income in Seattle. By the early 1990s, Louf had more business than he could handle doing custom print work for clients such as the United Parcel Service out of his photo lab near Everett, Washington. 24

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

Becoming purely inkjet “Because of the emergence of digital printing, in 1994 both United Parcel Service and Datacom Technologies called me in the same month and said, ‘You know, Bill, we’re starting to go digital and if you went digital, we’d have more work for you, plus we’d be able to keep you as our supplier, because that’s the way the business is moving,’” Louf explains. “I went home and told my wife, ‘Instead of buying a film processor for my lab, why don’t we buy a computer and a scanner?’ I immediately began taking in work – in fact, I was taking in work before I even knew how to use the thing. That’s one way to learn it, and it’s one way your beard turns white in one summer, too. It was pretty stressful.” That year, Louf went to a Photo Marketing Association (PMA) tradeshow in Las Vegas, where he first saw a 36-inch inkjet printer in action. “I thought, ‘That would be great for doing banners and posters and all the commercial work I do, because you can change the type on it really easily.’ We leased one – at the time it was $30,000 – and I was the first person north of Seattle to have an inkjet printer. Of course, a year and a half later, they came out with a better-resolution model that had eight colors, so I wasn’t even done paying for the first one, and I bought the second one and got even more business.”

From there, he began producing tradeshow displays, posters, and banners, and he finally found himself in a position to return to his roots in fine-art reproduction because the new inkjet printers were capable of output onto canvas. In 2000, Louf decided it was time to re-brand his business. He sold the photo lab he had been working out of, moved six blocks up the street, and added the name ‘ImageMaster’ to his business cards. “At that time, I had a Colorspan and an Epson 7600 printer, and I would do artwork for people as well as tradeshow displays and banners. Then, I hooked up with the hockey team in Everett, Washington, and I would do the boards that go around the rink. As a matter of fact, I still do the design work for the team’s pocket calendar and their season tickets and program every year.” The business, he says, “Just kind of evolved from there, where I became purely an inkjet print provider – I ended up having four big printers in my shop near Seattle.”

Eventually, Starbucks closed down the corporate store, but the Hyatt owners jumped through hoops to license the location as a franchisee. Once they got the nod, one of the new manager’s first priorities was to resurrect the Sedona Red brand. Which is when Louf came into the picture. “I’m one of their customers, so they see me all the time – I go for coffee there every morning. The Hyatt said to me, ‘We’re going to come up with the blend and start selling it, and we want a label.’ Nancy, the manager, asked if I had any images of Snoopy Rock, a red rock formation that you can see from the Starbucks. I told her about one I shot after a thunderstorm with a rainbow coming right out of the top of the rock formation, against a dramatic gray sky.” The photo in question, which Louf shot using his Nikon D300S camera, would eventually become the “face” of the Sedona Red blend – but not without a dramatic overhaul. “I did nine versions of the label. The first one I did was the version they wanted and when they looked at it, they

A new focus on fine art In 2006, when he and his wife were looking for a change of pace, and of climate, they loaded up their belongings and moved to Sedona, an artists’ enclave about two hours outside of Phoenix. It was there that they set up shop to focus on reproducing artwork for the town’s abundance of creative-types. “We just opened a frame shop down here and offered giclée printing and, because we’re such a small, isolated town, I now do more artwork than anything else. Of course there’s also a lot of competition these days. “Now that you can buy a printer for five grand, though, everybody thinks they’re a printer. I had a couple of customers who were retired dentists who became photographers. They were coming to me in the beginning and then all of the sudden they stopped coming to me because they went out and bought their own printers. Some of these people don’t want to buy anything over a 24-inch, so they have me print anything that needs a 44-inch printer.”

The coffee connection However, Louf – who considers himself first and foremost a landscape photographer – is something of an expert networker, and he’s not one to turn away a commercial print job when it comes his way. And that seems to happen more often than he initially planned when he relocated to the desert to focus on printing fine art. His coffee habit, for instance, scored him a recent job with a local Starbucks franchise located inside the town’s Hyatt Resort. Louf recounts the evolution of his partnership with the coffee shop: “Back when it was a corporate store, one of the managers wanted to create their own coffee blend, so they came up with the idea of this Sedona Red Special Blend. Starbucks corporate approved the formula but wouldn’t help them market it.”

ImageMaster’s Bill Louf has been able to find success via aqueous in both the commercial and fine-art ends of the wide-format spectrum. Left: his work for the Sedona Hyatt Starbucks franchise; above: Just Let Me Be, original oil on canvas, reproduced to gicleé on LexJet Satin Canvas. www.bigpicture.net

aqueous success

“It’s like anything else – when times get tough, you go looking for work that you know how to do,” says Louf. His networking capabilities came in handy in garnering jobs for clients such as Sedona’s Cliff Castle Casino and the Snohomish County Museum of History in Everett, Washington. said, ‘We don’t like that.’ We went back and forth a ton. They asked if I could put some coffee beans on it, so I took a photo of some coffee beans piled up on a table, clipped them out and put them in the foreground like a little hill. They liked that, so then they said, ‘What would it be like if there was a coffee cup on it?’ So I put a coffee cup on it. Of course, their reaction was, ‘No, we don’t like that! Get rid of that!’ so I took it back out. Then, I think they’d almost approved it when the manager at the Hyatt said, ‘I don’t like the gray sky, though, can you put in a blue sky that’s got puffy white clouds?’” Louf’s reaction at this point: “Well, then you’re not going to have a rainbow there, and the rainbow is what’s really cool about the picture!” But, like any compliant designer, he headed back to the drawing board – in this case, utilizing a combination of Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to see if he could make the changes the client envisioned. “I took this image I’d shot at Sand Dunes up in Utah that has really dramatic white clouds in it. I managed to superimpose it in PhotoShop behind the rock formation and still keep the rainbow. Even though it was less saturated, you could still see there was a rainbow. And, boom, that’s the one they liked.”

A peel-and-stick solution With consensus on the label design, Louf and his partners at the Hyatt Starbucks were ready to move forward with printing. Because the private-label coffee was something of a marketing experiment for the store, they didn’t know how much they could expect to sell. Starting small, with only 26

THE BIG PICTURE June 2011

100 labels, Louf knew there was little chance of finding a label company willing to print such a small batch for a reasonable price. So, instead, he offered up his own machine – a 44-inch Epson Stylus Pro 9800 – for output onto LexJet 11-mil Sunset Photo eSatin 300g paper, using Epson Ultrachrome K3 aqueous pigmented inks with three-level black-ink technology (simultaneous black, light black, and light light black). All told, Louf says, he can output, cut, and mount 100 labels for Starbucks in less than an hour. “Basically, I gang them up so they’re 11 images across on a 36-inch roll, and then I print them three rows high, so I’m printing 33 at a time. I always print some extras, because I know they’re going to order them, and I just put them in the drawer until I run the next run.” The labels are applied by hand, peel-and-stick fashion, to white coffee bags that have a picture of the Pike Street market store, the Starbucks label, and brown printing on them. But, because the media Louf chooses to print on is not self-adhesive, he has combined ingenuity with his years of experience to come up with a solution for the client. “They’re printed on eSatin paper, which comes on 100foot rolls x 36 inches, because that’s what I stock. When I get done printing them, I sled them upside down with a piece of 3A Composites Gatorfoam that I run through my 33-inch Coda roller press [laminator] and basically put an adhesive on it. I don’t take the release sheet off, I leave it on because it’s Teflon coated, so anything I run through there is not going to stick. Then I flip the prints upside down so they’re face down on this sled and I run them through the

Coda again with the adhesive this time, and the adhesive goes on the back of the print. When I flip them back over, I trim away the outside edges that are bigger than the print, and I end up with a sheet of these labels that have an adhesive backing on them that’s peel-and-stick. Then I take my Rotatrim cutter and, in 20 minutes, clip them apart into a stack of 2 x 3-inch labels that they can peel and stick onto the coffee packages.”

Building brand momentum The label experiment was a solid success, with Starbucks selling out of 100 packages of coffee in the first month-anda-half. To maintain the branding momentum, Louf then proposed developing a series of signs and P-O-P displays, and Starbucks jumped on board. “I made them a small sign mounted on 3A Composites Sintra and they put it on what used to be a Starbucks pointof-purchase display. They put the sign on top and put nine bags of coffee with the label on it and set it right by the register,” says Louf. He also created several 16 x 20-inch signs using LexJet Photo Tex peel-and-stick media, featuring the label image and the words, “A Taste as Unique as Sedona,” and had Hyatt put these on the window. “That way, if someone tells them to take it off, they can just pull it off and put it back on whenever they want or if they have different promotions. They ended up putting them up on the window and they’re still there today and it’s been a year and a half. Now, they sell more of the Sedona Red Blend than any other coffee.” Then, when Starbucks approached him about printing inserts for clear plastic coffee travel mugs featuring the Sedona Red Blend image, Louf jumped at the chance to try something new. “I printed those on LexJet Archival Matte paper with the same printer and inks. I said, ‘You pay me a royalty fee, I’ll print them, and you can trim them and put them in

This tradeshow display for Datacom Technologies was output onto LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin with a Luster UV laminate.

yourselves to increase your margins since Starbucks corporate is charging you retail on the cups themselves.’ Those things started selling like hotcakes.”

Evolving organically Louf admits he never imagined when he was studying photography in college that he would find himself all these years later becoming a commercially oriented print provider. “It’s all evolved organically,” he says. “I guess I’m a good networker, and I just keep falling into these commercial-type jobs.” The fact that he knows about marketing from years of working with companies to promote their own messages hasn’t hurt Louf’s self-promotional efforts, either. “It’s like anything else: When times get tough, you go looking for work that you know how to do. That’s how I fell into the Cliff Castle Casino job,” Louf says. “I was doing a design job for another client and when she saw samples of my work, she said, ‘I should hook you up with my husband – he’s the marketing director at Cliff Castle Casino.’ I went and showed him my portfolio and the next thing you know, I got a photo shoot there. I told him, ‘Your backlit transparencies look just terrible.’ There was banding on them, and you could tell they were using like 50-percent ink coverage. So I ended up getting that gig, too.” Another recent job fell in Louf’s lap earlier this spring, when he was approached by an electric-car dealership in Sedona that was looking for help with a new tradeshow display. “I say to the client, ‘Tell me what the tradeshow booth display is like.’ I’m told it’s a 10-foot booth. So I design this thing for a 10-foot-wide booth. Then, three days before the tradeshow, I’m told that it’s a 50-foot-wide booth. I say, ‘Do you have a budget?’ and the client says, ‘Not really,’ so I said ‘I’m going to have to add some banners and stuff to fill up this space.’” Undeterred, Louf set to work with InDesign and Photoshop to create enough compelling images to fill up the empty spaces on the display, which the client called, “Go Electric.” “I ran a bunch of banners on matte canvas and I ran some on banner material. I did a bunch of little signs I designed that say, ‘Gasoline’ at the top, like a gas pump, and it says ‘regular, high test, premium,’ underneath. All the pricing numbers are ‘0’ because they’re electric cars and they don’t use any gas,” he explains. “We didn’t do any of the signage on hardboard, so they could roll them up and put them all in one box. The client also had me do a bunch of those gas pump signs on Phototex to stick on the cars.” In the end, the client was happy and Louf says he enjoyed the challenge – especially now that he can look at it in the rearview mirror of life – and see that it was another success in his repertoire. Paula Yoho is a Columbus, Ohio-based freelance writer. www.bigpicture.net

PROFESSIONAL IMAGING

TOOLS

Software and hardware for image editing and illustration.

Creating, editing, and manipulating images can be a timeconsuming and, in some cases, daunting task that precedes a print shop’s real glory moment: the output. But before you can show off that perfect print, you must be able to help your client ready the perfect image. For whole-scale image editing and other image enhancement and augmentation, professional graphics software can provide you with many of the necessary tools to take images from ordinary to extraordinary. Adding special textures and effects, retouching imperfections, sharpening, upsizing – these are just a few of the capabilities that you can add. Plus, this software typically can also help you better your up-front workflow efficiencies, drastically reducing, for instance, the amount of time your shop might have to spend working on multiple client images. Another factor to consider: With the current economy, print providers are under pressure to serve as a “one-stop shop” for more than just output – image editing and augmentation are no longer capabilities that can be neglected, as fewer and fewer companies enter your door seeking print services alone. To cater to the broad front-end needs of your clients, mastering the art of image preparation is critical. The list that follows comprises a sampling of image design and editing tools encompassing professional-grade software and plug-ins that can help you during the frontend of your journey to create the perfect print. ACD Systems acdsystems.com ACDSee Pro 4 features advanced editing and processing capabilities as well as tools for managing/organizing, viewing, and online publishing. In Process mode, ACDSee Pro 4 allows users to: attain correct white balance, color, exposure, and fine-tune tonal distribution; adjust details (sharpen and reduce noise, etc.) and correct geometry, while previewing those adjustments in real time; and render and process raw fi les. In addition, once global non-destructive image adjustments have been completed, ACDSee Pro 4 allows users to add finishing touches at the pixel level and edit specific areas of images with its Selection tools. Multiple edits can be applied to multiple photos at once for express editing. Processing presets can be created and continually refined, and copied and pasted from one image to another. Price: $239.99; includes a free 2-GB account on the ACDSee website. Adobe adobe.com Adobe’s wide range of photo-editing and illustration software, includes Photoshop, Illustrator, and Freehand MX. Photoshop CS5’s tool set includes: Content-Aware Fill, which removes any image detail or object, examines the surroundings, and seamlessly fills in the space left

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

behind; Refine Edge, which precisely detects and masks tricky edges such as hair and foliage, while eliminating background color contamination; and high dynamic range capabilities for ghost-artifact removal and tone-mapping and adjustment control. New tools include the Mixer Brush, which blends colors onto a single paintbrush tip; Bristle Tips, which adds brushstrokes; and Puppet Warp, which allows you to warp any image element to generate a new perspective; automatic image straightening; and the ability to save 16-bit images as JPEGs. Other features include: Smart Objects, which allows users to scale and transform images and vector illustrations without losing image quality; Multiple Layer Control permits users to select and move, group, transform, and warp objects by clicking and dragging directly on the canvas. Batch processing of raw files can now be done in the background. The Spot Healing Brush handles common photographic problems such as blemishes, red eye, noise, blurring, and lens distortion. Compatible with PCs and Macs. Price: $699. Illustrator CS5 can now adjust stroke width interactively using new width handles; use perspective grids to draw shapes and scenes in accurate 1-, 2-, or 3-point linear perspective; and interact with gradients directly on objects and control the transparency of individual colors in gradients and gradient meshes. Illustrator CS5 can also work on up to 100 art boards of varying sizes in one file; paint with vectors that resemble real-world brush strokes; combine, edit, and fill shapes directly on the art board without accessing multiple tools and panels; apply raster effects, such as drop shadows, blurs, and textures that maintain a consistent appearance across media; and more. Other features include an enhanced user interface as well as expanded support for a variety of file formats including PDF/X, Flash, and SVG. In addition, it includes: Live Trace, which converts scans of hand-drawn sketches and digital photos into fully editable and scaleable Illustrator artwork; Live Paint, which enables users to color artwork quickly and intuitively based on how it appears on screen, rather than how it was constructed; and the new Control Palette allows users to access selection-based tools from a single location, eliminating the need for multiple palettes. Price: $599; upgrade: $199. Freehand MX is a vector-based drawing application for creative design, storyboarding, document production, and editing. Freehand’s design and illustration features allow users to create editable vector graphics that can be scaled and printed at any resolution. Freehand features include Multiple Attributes to apply unlimited stroke, fill, and effect attributes to a single vector object; Object Panel, which can inspect and change image properties – such as stroke, fill, font, or effect in one centralized location; and Life Effects, which applies complex distortions and effects without altering the original object. Price: $399.

In addition, Adobe’s Lightroom 3 is designed for professional photographers, where users can import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images. Images handled by Lightroom are editable in Photoshop CS5. New features include: lens correction, which automatically reduces lens defects like geometric distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting with single-click profiles; support for video files from most digital SLR cameras; image watermarking; perspective correction; and more. Price: $299. Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 includes the latest CS5 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and more. Price: $2599 (Premium edition), $1899 (Standard edition). Alien Skin Software alienskin.com Eye Candy 6 is a graphic-design special-effect plug-in for Photoshop. Version 6 features include: the ability to work with the 64-bit version of Photoshop; improved pre-sets that automatically adapt to image size; 30 filters; and more than 1000 presets (organized into categories). Eye Candy also offers multiple techniques for non-destructive editing in Photoshop, including Smart Filter support and rendering effects on a duplicate of the original layer; the ability to customize each effect and save those settings; “tooltips” that now appear above every control and a detailed pop-up manual; and connection to the Alien Skin website (which has a library of tutorial videos, example images, a knowledge base, and a discussion forum). Price: $249 (owners of previous Eye Candy versions can upgrade for $99). Alien Skin’s Exposure 3 is a photography-effect plug-in for Adobe Photoshop. Designed to provide accurate film simulation and a wide range of creative effects in a simple interface, Exposure boasts a range of new features, including: a 64-bit support for Photoshop CS5 on both Macintosh and Windows; Lightroom integration that does not require Photoshop – it now works in Lightroom 2; aging effects and vintage films such as Technicolor and old Kodachrome; simulation of Lo-Fi toy camera photography; and more. Price: $249; $99 for upgrade. Blow Up 2 is a Photoshop plug-in for enlarging images for print. New features designed to take the complications out of the process include more than 100 presets for common output sizes, a built-in batch-processing tool, auto cropping, auto rotate (to match photo orientation), sharpening-to-media presets, and more. Simulated texture and film grain are designed to keep photos looking natural even in extreme enlargements; Blow Up can also clean up JPEG compression artifacts when a client insists on using a lowquality source image from the Web, reports Alien Skin. The Image Doctor 2 plug-in restores old photos, removes unwanted objects from photos, and repairs low-quality JPEG images. Xenofex 2, for special-effects enthusiasts, allows users to: simulate natural phenomena such as lightning and clouds; www.bigpicture.net

imaging software create sophisticated distortions such as Flag, Television, and the new Rip Open; transform photos into jigsaw puzzles, constellations, and mosaics with one click; and more. Snap Art 2 turns photographs into works of art, creating detailed simulations of a variety of painterly styles, including oil paint, watercolor, pencil sketch, comic filter, and more. Bokeh 2 adds creative focus effects and lens simulations, allowing users to draw attention to their subject by manipulating focus, vignette, and depth of field.

onto images. Aperture 3 includes 15 Quick Brushes that perform popular tasks like dodge, burn, polarize, and blur, without the layers or masks. Brushes can automatically detect edges in images to allow users to apply or remove effects exactly where desired. Dozens of Adjustment Presets are included that apply a specific style or look to the entire image with one click. Users can create their own custom presets or explore the techniques of other photographers by importing theirs. Users can also weave together photos, audio, text, and HD video. Price: $79.99.

Ambient Design artrage.com ArtRage3 Studio Pro is painting and drawing software designed to simulate real-world painting and drawing tools. It includes an intuitive, scalable, and customizable interface; a “canvas puck” that allows for easy navigation on the canvas; customizable keyboard shortcuts; an autosmoothing inking pen; a text tool that for live text editing on layers; and more. The software provides Photoshop-compatible transparent layers that can be used for advanced compositions and allows photos and images to be easily recreated as paintings. The Pro version adds real color blending, sophisticated color-adjustment options, Photoshop filter support, and an inking pen with opacity, blending, and anti-alias control. Price: $80. ArtRage supports pen tablets from Wacom and Adesso, and also works with camera-based touch screens.

Auto FX autofx.com The new DreamSuite Pro Bundle from Auto FX features DreamSuite Series One, DreamSuite Series Two, and DreamSuite Gel Series. The Pro version of DreamSuite uses SmartLayer technologies to build effects on layers that work together to form a composite effect. The Pro version also includes the ability to create layer masks, correction layers, photo layers, and effect layers. Plus, it allows users to save and reload presets that rebuild layers, masks, and settings that can be applied to other images. The Pro Bundle can be used as a stand-alone or as a Photoshop plug-in. Price of DreamSuite Pro Bundle: $399. DreamSuite Series One is a collection of 18 visual effects including 35mm frame, chisel, hot stamp, deckle, crease, and liquid metal. DreamSuite Series Two comprises 14 visual effects for enhancing photographs, including plastic wrap, puzzle pieces, mosaic, and film grain. And DreamSuite Gel includes Gel, Liquid Crystal, Gel Painter, and Crystal Painter. AutoEye 2.0 is an automated image-enhancement solution that rebuilds lost detail and color and enhances digital photos to bring out clarity and color fidelity. AutoEye runs as a stand-alone application and as a Photoshop plugin.

Apple apple.com Apple’s Aperture 3 photo-editing and -management software includes more than 200 new features including: Faces, face detection and recognition to find and organize photos by the people in them; and Places, which allows the user to explore photos based on where they were taken, and automatically reverse geocodes GPS data into user-friendly locations. Users can assign locations by dragging-and-dropping photos onto a map or by using location information from GPS-enabled cameras, tracking devices or iPhone photos. By using the Brushes tool, users can “paint” effects

Corel corel.com Corel has recently introduced CorelDraw Graphics Suite X5 geared toward designers as well as other professionals. The graphics program comprises not only CorelDraw X5, the core graphic-design and page-layout product; but also: Photo-

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Paint X5, image-editing application specifically designed for use in a graphics workflow; PowerTrace X5, bitmap-to-vector file conversion tool; Capture X5, one-click screen capture utility; and Corel Connect, search tool that helps you find digital content on your computer, and search millions of images on Flickr, Fotolia, and iStockPhoto websites. Some of the key new features in X5 include: Corel Connect, a full-screen browser that allows the user to peruse the software’s digital content as well as search the computer, local network, and external storage devices for images (browse by category, keyword, etc.); PowerTrace, for converting bitmaps into editable vector graphics; Pixels view, which allows the user to create drawings in actual pixel units; Photo Effects, including Vibrance, Grayscale, and Photo Filter; Document/Image palettes, providing automatic customer color palettes on the fly for each design project; Collect for Output option, which gathers fonts, color profiles, and other file information; and an enhanced EPS filter, to support files created with Postscript 3. Compatible with Windows 2000/XP Tablet PC/XP. Price: $449. Painter is Corel’s painting and illustration software, designed for digital artists seeking to create new works of art or enhance existing photographic or fine-art images. Features include: Hard Media Controls, which allow for the creation of hard media variants, or the ability to choose from new media variants in the Brush Library; RealBristle Dry Media tools-marker, which creates the looks of pen, pencil, and chalk; individual color profiles, new color-management interface, and improved color recognition for files imported from Photoshop; enhanced Photoshop and Wacom product line support; and enhanced drawing tools that perform up to 30% faster than previous Painter versions. Details on the just-released Painter 12 next issue. Paint Shop Pro X3 photo-editing software offers an integrated Learning Center, which intelligently organizes tools by task; RAW Lab, which manually adjusts groups of raw photos during the loading process; Express Lab that quickly fixes common photo flaws; and Advanced Tools edits with features such as Smart Carver, Vibrancy, and more. Integrated projects creates photo books, HD slideshows, cards, and more. And Photo Sharing e-mails, prints, and sends

directly to Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Compatible with Windows 7/Vista/XP. Price: $59.99. Evident Technologies asiva.com Asiva Photo allows the user to make corrections, enhancements, and apply effects without masks – including sharpen or blur specific parts of an image, change the color of an object, remove background colors, and create a special effect. The software allows users to control how the effects are applied to an image using adjustable maps (curves) on the hue, saturation, and luminance components. Operations can be turned on and off for an instant comparison; organize and arrange the sequence of operations, save the sequence independently and use on other images. Compatible with Mac OS 8.6 through OS X 10.3 and Windows 2000/XP. Price: $199 Imagenomic imagenomic.com Portraiture 2 is portrait-retouching software with a skinmasking tool that smoothens and removes imperfections while preserving skin texture and other important portrait details such as hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, etc. The skinretouching plug-in features an unlimited number of detailed history states, with resizable thumbnails; an unlimited number of presets and space for descriptive notes; refinement to parameter sliders; and feathering and fuzziness sliders for the skin-tone mask. Also the real-time mask preview follows the selection cursor, allowing users to spot-check effects. The enhanced skin-masking control allows users to isolate changes to the skin mask, in addition to global adjustments. Price: $199.95. Noiseware 4 noise-correction technology eliminates digital noise and unwanted artifacts that have been introduced by high-ISO photography and less-than-optimal shooting conditions. Version 4.0 features an increase in speed, an array of new noise-correction controls and noise-suppression levels for better fine tuning and quality, including Noiseware 4’s DetailGuard, which safeguards picture details from excessive alteration. Price: $49.95, Standard Plug-in; $69.95, Professional Plug-in. >38

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Inca Digital Onset S40

Inca Digital Printers has launched its Inca Onset S40 printer. Positioned between the company’s flagship Inca Onset and the Onset S20, the new Onset S40 features new Fujifilm Dimatix Sapphire QS-256 MEMS printheads, with jetting accuracy resulting in prints with tighter fine text, as well as smoother prints, Inca reports. The S40 prints at up to 5059 sq ft/hr (with automation), oﬀers a 63 x 123-in. print area, and can accommodate media up to 2-in. thick. It’s intended for the production of single and double-sided displays, P-O-S, exhibition graphics, backlit/frontlit displays, outdoor signage printing, and cosmetic/fashion graphics, etc. The new UV flatbed is 4-color standard with optional light cyan and light magenta (Fujifi lm UVijet OB inks); users can choose among uni-directional, bi-directional, and super-high-quality print modes. Additional features include variable levels of gloss (from Satin to Gloss), user printhead replacement, and automatic print setup controls. In addition, the Onset S40 is compatible with Inca’s flexible automation system (optional), oﬀering users the choice to operate in manual, semi, or three-quarter automation from the same configuration, as well as Inca’s Print Run Controller (PRC) software module. Distributed in the US by Fujifi lm USA (fujifi lmusa.com). INCA DIGITAL PRINTERS incadigital.com

Value Vinyls’ Rio 18-ounce Opaque Matte Value Vinyls has introduced Rio 18-oz Opaque Matte to its Rio line of media. The new media features an identical sheen and texture on both the face and back surfaces, so is capable of being used for printing on one or two sides. Its high-opacity pigments and blockout layer eliminates show through, reports the company, and ensures a clean, bright white surface to maximize print opacity. Compatible with solvent, UV, and latex inks, this latest Rio version is intended for indoor and outdoor displays for long-term usage and for banners (pole, street, and aisle) and building wraps. Available in 38-, 54-, 72-, and 126-in. widths. In addition, Value Vinyls has announced that the formulas for its Ad-Flex 8-oz and Ad-Flex 12-oz products have been improved to allow these media to print exceptionally well when using UV or solvent inks at high speeds, the company reports. Ad-Flex 8 oz and Ad-Flex 12 oz are available in black back as well as white back with matte and gloss finishes; available in 150-, 174-, and 196-in. widths. VALUE VINYLS valuevinyls.com

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

B-Steam Fixation Unit from Setema The new B-Steam fixation unit from Netherlands-based Setema B.V. is a professional compact and rollable steamer designed for printshops and designers. The roll-to-roll B-Steam features: an onboard steam generator; Setema’s High Steam reflow system for color brightness; a steam temperature range of 100 to 180°C, making it suitable for the fixation of all textile dyes; and dwell times of 2 to 30 minutes. The B-Steam can accommodate media up to 87-in. wide. Production capacity ranges from 984 ft/hr (2-min fixation process) to 66 ft/hr (30-min fixation). Setema’s primary sales and marketing partner is 2-some (2-some.com) in the Netherlands; the US distributor is Unitex Inc. (unitexinc.com). SETEMA setema.com

Onyx X10.1 Production RIPs Onyx Graphics has announced v X10.1 of its production RIP products: Onyx ProductionHouse, PosterShop,,and RipCenter. Version X10.1 software includes a feature that makes it a support tool for G7 process to help users produce balanced gray and color consistency across print devices that meet G7 standards. This tool was developed to work with Chromix Curve2 software, which is used to generate G7 calibration targets. PosterShop and ProductionHouse import the calculated data and automatically set the calibration targets, making it easier for print shops to achieve G7 Certification. The new software also offers an optional JDF module to provide workflow connectivity for print providers using JDF-workflow components. The module is available for PosterShop and ProductionHouse. The ability to split multi-page PDF files is now also available, optimizing production for jobs created from Adobe Illustrator artboards. With this feature, the Onyx RIP-Queue can process each different page size in multiple-image PDF files and optimize page nesting for maximum media savings, Onyx reports. Each page can be processed and sent to the printer individually, without having to wait for the entire PDF file to be processed. The feature is included in RIPCenter, PosterShop, and ProductionHouse. ONYX GRAPHICS onyxgfx.com

Scanera TopFace Pro for 3D Objects Newly Corporation’s Scanera TopFace Pro provides high-resolution scanning of 3D objects and can scan fabric, wood grains, materials, food, artwork, and more up to 4-in. deep. The TopFace Pro features a large-format 23 x 33-in. scanning bed, a variable light source to bring out shadows and highlights, and a proprietary video circuit that is designed to interpret scanned data and create a realistic replication. Optical resolution is 400 dpi; output resolution is 100-800 dpi. The scanner comes bundled with Scanera Eyes high-speed viewing/editing software. The unit is self-contained; all equipment, including the camera, is housed internally. Distributed in the US by A-Lex International Consulting. NEWLY CORPORATION newlyscan.com

www.bigpicture.net

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PrintFactory Go Launched PrintFactory Go, from Four Pees, is a stand-alone correction and production prep tool for wide-format print work. Usable with any RIP technology, PrintFactory Go oﬀers a collection of pre-production tools designed to save time and reduce error and waste. Features on the new PrintFactory Go include: customized output folders, allowing for print-to-cut production workflow; a preflight engine to check opened fi les against a set of job-specific parameters; soft-proofing capabilities and preflight features; editing/correcting; a native PDF engine to handle any PDF fi le; and a dedicated LFP job-prep environment for adding folds, seams, and tunnels as well as defining white ink/varnish, creating tiles and placing grommets, and more. PRINT FACTORY print-factory.net

Wasatch Releases SoftRIP 6.8

Durst Introduces New Omega 1 Printer Durst has introduced the Omega 1, an entry-level UV inkjet printer designed to provide fine-art printing quality at an industrial production level, says the company. The Omega oﬀers a top resolution of 1728 dpi, grayscale printing technology, and an advanced magnetic linear drive for precision transport of the printheads (for consistency and accuracy). Users can choose a 4-color (CMYK) version, a 6-color Plus version (CMYKcm), or a PCA version (CMYK, orange, violet); white and gray are options. Inks are supplied in 1-liter containers. The printer can accommodate roll media and rigid substrates up to 62-in. wide and 1.95-in. thick. It will print onto substrates such as 3A Composites Kappa, Forex, and Dibond, as well as acrylic and wood, plus onto self adhesive foils, papers, PVC vinyls, PE foils, and textiles. Top print speed is 376 sq ft/hr. A Caldera RIP Server (CopyRIP) is standard. The Omega 1 is initially only being released in Europe; final US release date has yet to be set. DURST USA durstus.com

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

The latest edition of Wasatch SoftRIP, version 6.8, offers a variety of newly introduced features, including a new Separations mode, Press and Calibration Curves, enhanced custom inkset support, improved handling of PDF fi les that involve transparency, and more. • The Separations mode provides for the production of separation fi lms and for direct-toscreen and direct-to-plate systems. In Separations mode, SoftRIP SP will automatically detect the correct separations to produce for incoming jobs, whether fi les are opened by a user in the RIP or printed directly from application software, with no user interaction. • Press Curves and Calibration Curves are now available in all editions of Wasatch SoftRIP 6.8 (not just in the SP edition, as was previously the case). This makes it easier for users to construct color profi les for processes that suffer from extreme dot gain, such as dye-sublimation and digital textile printing. • This release improves support of custom inksets for popular printers. The custom inkset creator that allows users to configure SoftRIP with custom Hi-Fi inksets. • Version 6.8 includes improvements to the handling of PDF fi les that involve transparency. Wasatch SoftRIP Version 6.8 also offers a new Hindi user interface and now offers new support for Chinese printers such as Gongzheng, Micolor, A-Starjet, and Galaxy. WASATCH COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY wasatch.com

QUICK SHOTS

New Kona warranty: Mutoh America Inc. has announced a new three-year warranty on its Kona Cutters. The new warranty goes into effect immediately. mutoh.com

LexJet, Expand partner: LexJet is now distributing 10 different Expand banner stands, and has certified many of the stands for these LexJet inkjet media: LexJet 5.5-mil Matte Opaque Display Film and LexJet Satin Light Block Polyester (7- or 9-mil). lexjet.com, expandmedia.com

3M, EFI launch co-branded ink: 3M and EFI have launched a new co-branded UV ink for use with the Vutek GS5000r printer from EFI; the ink is covered by the 3M MCS warranty. 3M and EFI have also announced a new co-branded UV ink for use in the Vutek GS2000 and GS3200 printers from EFI; the ink will also be backed by the 3M MCS warranty and will be commercially available in Q2. 3m.com, efi.com

Global distributes Klieverik: Global Imaging will now distribute the Klieverik line of heat-transfer calendars for dye sublimation; the deal marks Global’s entry into the dye-sub market. “Dye sublimation printing is going to emerge as a growing market in the US as it has proven to be over the past several years in Europe,” says Greg Lamb, CEO, Global Imaging. globalimaginginc.com

Radius Small Business Edition: EFI has launched a new version of its Radius packaging MIS/ERP solution targeted at the small-to-medium business segment. EFI’s Radius Small Business Edition is an entry-level, fully integrated automation solution designed for single-site label, flexible packaging, converting, and folding carton companies. efi.com

Jaxsun distributes Universal: Universal Products has announced the addition of Jaxsun LLC in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as a master distributor for its line of plotter films and digital media. u-p.com, jaxsunweb.com

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Coroplast Introduces CoroGreen Coroplast has debuted CoroGreen, a 100% recyclable corrugated plastic sheet. Made from post-consumer and post-industrial polypropylene, CoroGreen meets the requirements for US Building Council LEED credit. CoroGreen is ideal for outdoor signage and eco-friendly messaging and can endure high-moisture environments, the company reports. With a printable white surface and black core, CoroGreen is available in 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-mm thicknesses. Custom surface colors and sheet sizes are available. COROPLAST coroplast.com

QUICK SHOTS Personalized messages for direct mail: Objectif Lune and DirectSmile GmbH have announced co-branded release of an enhanced DirectSmile Creator Pro version specifically for PrintShop Mail. The DirectSmile Creator Pro PrintShop Mail Edition allows for the creation of full-blown directmail campaigns. objectiflune.com, directsmile.de

Pantone for plastic: Pantone

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has made available Pantone Plastic Standard Chips, to let designers and other users reproduce Pantone colors in plastic. The new chips are composed of polypropylene, include both gloss and matte finishes, and are in a 3 x 1-7â &#x201E;8-in. format; they range in thickness from 1mm to 2mm. pantone.com

QuarkXPress 9 now available: Quark has made QuarkXPress 9, the newest release of Quarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s page-layout and design software, now available for purchase. Version 9 includes new features to help automate the design process and allow for publishing of content to digital devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.). quark.com

Lightroom 3.4, Camera Raw 6.4: Adobe has announced Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 updates. The updates bring rawfile support to 13 camera models and add more than 25 new lens profiles. adobe.com

New Spectra Polaris printheads: Fujifilm Dimatix has ex-

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panded its Spectra Polaris brand of 512-jet, general-purpose, binary, drop-on-demand printheads. The three new PQ-512 models have 15-, 35-, and 85-picoliter fundamental drop sizes. dimatix.com

UL listing for Palram: Palram Americas has announced that the Palsun SG (Sign Grade) and Palsun CS (Coil Stock) polycarbonate products are now UL-listed and placed in the Sign Components Manual (SAM). palramamericas.com

business + management <14 Lessons three, four, and five The final three lessons deal with employee costs, efficiencies, and customer care. • Lesson 3 – dealing with employee costs: We often take for granted just how much money our employees cost. The fact is, employee costs usually represent one of the highest costs to our business, thus need to be the most tightly regulated. Learning how to keep your employee costs down can help your business save a lot of money. At times, we move too quickly when it comes to choosing to hire a new employee, often omitting necessary steps to evaluating whether or not we really need an additional employee instead of perhaps improving some processes and gaining efficiencies in alternative ways. Additionally, we frequently hire without calculating the full financial impact to our businesses. For example, a $20-per-hour employee will cost the business more than $40,000 in salary per year, and when you add benefits and payroll taxes this quickly exceeds $50,000 per year. So if that employee stays on for four years, that’s $200,000 out of your company’s pocket. What might initially seem like a small amount of money is actually a very significant cost over time. The lesson here: First, make sure that you actually need to add an employee to your workforce; second, make certain they become a productive and efficient employee. • Lesson 4 – operating efficiently: When times are tough, the pressure to produce jobs accurately and efficiently is greater than ever. But we sometimes get caught up in the other aspects of the business and overlook just how much we can save by simply avoiding efficiency killers such as waste and mistakes. Dig into your operations in detail and find out what processes are causing waste and rework in your shop. Here’s my suggestion: Avoid accepting waste and rework as “just part of business.” Figure out how to fi x the problems that occur, whether they are employee-related or process-related.

• Lesson 5 – taking care of your customers: Last but certainly not least is regarding your customers, and how you deal with them during financially challenging times. The most obvious recommendation is to do everything possible to keep your key customers – you just can’t aﬀord to lose them. But beyond the struggle to provide great customer service is the challenge of dealing with customers that are themselves experiencing significant financial pressures. As a result of the recession, customers are now asking for price concessions or are required to bid all of their jobs out and award them to the lowest bidder. The best way to avoid a knee-jerk reaction and immediately drop your prices is to figure out the best ways to add value to what you’re already providing your customer. This might entail extra customer service, superior fulfi llment processes, Web support, or a number of other ideas that don’t involve decreasing your profit margin. The point is, get yourself out of a situation where you’re just providing a product for the lowest bargain price.

Moving forward I think it’s safe to say that we all hope to never again have to endure a recession like the one we have just experienced. But by the same token, I think we’ll all agree that we can’t aﬀord to drift back to old business practices and pretend that everything will be the same as it was before we hit these challenging times. Things won’t ever be the same. We must act in a constant state of defense, taking every precaution necessary to keep our businesses afloat. Every penny spent must have a justifiable purpose and every business decision made must be strategically weighed to ensure successful longevity. If we are to move forward in the coming years and maintain healthy and sustainable profits, we all need to make drastic changes.

graphics on the go <15 from Accelerated Depreciation Race Team, we designed and installed a very sleek Porsche 911 wrap making use of a matte black combined with black carbon fiber and bright orange vinyl lettering. These types of projects are fun and low risk – and they can be very profitable. I challenge you to get your hands on some samples of these new materials – then figure out how they can work for you. Go on an ad-agency tour to show them what you can now provide. Find a great creative use for, say, a white carbon fiber, or be the first to wrap an entire car in a brushed gold vinyl. Get up to speed on all of the cool, new

options available to you, so that you’re ready when your next vehicle-wrap client calls. Be on the cutting edge of these types of fi lms and get to work with them. Find out what’s possible and what the limitations are (if any). We wrapped our own shop fleet in fi lms like these so we could get some practice with them and our local market can see how cool they are. To maximize your company profits, you need to provide great solutions. In many areas, these fi lms can be part of those great solutions. These vinyls are ready to go and they just need you to find the great uses for them. www.bigpicture.net

imaging software <31 RealGrain provides methods for simulating the grain patterns, the color, and the tonal response of different films and different scan resolutions to convey a film-like image effect to digital images. Nik Software niksoftware.com Silver Efex Pro 2 software, an Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom 2, and Apple Aperture plug-in, allows users to create quality black-and-white images from scanned or digital color photographs. Specific features include: U Pointtechnology control points for on-image editing – allowing users to precisely control the tonality of objects or areas selectively without the need for selections or layer masks; and a film-grain engine that features algorithms written specifically to allow the user to produce realistic grain, mimicking the natural silver-halide process. With Film Types, users can emulate the grain, color sensitivity, and tone curve of 18 popular black-and-white films. The tinting and toning capabilities offer preset toners to provide the ability to recreate sepia, selenium, gold, silver, and splittoning options.Other features include: a history browser; a dynamic brightness tool; and a soft contrast tool. An image borders tool uses organic image elements to create unique and random borders. Selective colorization is for easily adding color elements back into images. Price: $199.95; an upgrade from the first version costs $99.95. Dfine 2.0 provides control over exactly how much and where to apply noise reduction, and is designed to eliminate contrast/luminance and color/chrominance noise in images while maintaining detail and sharpness. Viveza 2 offers precise, selective photo editing to control color and light. New features include global image adjustments, shadow adjustments, and an interactive help system. Color Efex Pro 3.0 comprises a set of more than 50 photographic filters. New in Pro 3.0 are: Bleach Bypass, Cross Balance, Film Effects and Film Grain, Glamour Glow, High Key and Low Key, Polaroid Transfer, and Tonal Contrast. Sharpener Pro 3.0 provides control over the entire sharpening workflow. New creative sharpening tools enable the enhancement of subtle details and textures hidden within an image; an updated raw presharpener retains and enhances sharp details within images without amplifying noise and artifacts; the Output Sharpener is designed to sharpen based on proven loss of detail caused by different output methods and devices. OnOne ononesoftware.com OnOne Software’s Perfect Resize 7 is based on Genuine Fractals’ algorithms for enlarging images to any size or resolution necessary while maintaining fine image details, the company reports. Intended for creating poster or wall38

THE BIG PICTURE June 2011

sized prints, as well as enlarging cropped photos, Perfect Resize allows for the resizing of images up to 800% and beyond. It can be launched directly from the desktop as a standalone application or from within Photoshop (as well as Lightroom or Aperture in the Professional Edition). Other features include: the ability to crop and resize images in a single step and resize entire folders of images; new Smoothness and Sharpness controls; a Loupe Tool for an instant preview of the resized image quality; a Gallery Wrap feature (Professional Edition only) for quick preview of gallery-wrap results; improved tiling; and more. Price: $159.95, Standard Edition; $299.95 Professional Edition (resizes CMYK images, integrates with Lightroom and Aperture). PhotoTools 2.6 is a Photoshop plug-in that features a new Effects Library, improved effects categorization, a keyword mode that allows users to search effects by desired tone (such as “warm and grainy”), an effects preview mode, and masking support. The Professional edition includes 120 additional new effects plus support for Lightroom 2 and Aperture 2.1. Prices: $259.95. PhotoTune 3, designed to allow users to color correct and enhance images, now offers the following new features: professional color controls/automatic correction; skin-color correction; and black-and-white conversions. Synthetik Software synthetik.com Studio Artist 4.0 from Synthetik can automatically paint, draw, and auto-rotoscope. The software examines a source image or video, and then re-renders it in the style chosen, automatically or interactively. Studio Artist 4.0 includes more than 480 editable parameters and more than 3000 paint presets plus hundreds of effects. Effects such as warping, morphing, and texture synthesis can be added to still images. Compatible with Windows 2000/7/VistaXP, Mac OS 8, 9, and OS X. Price: $399. Xara xara.com Xara Designer Pro 6 is image-editing and illustration software. Features include a vector 3D extrude tool; a freehand tool that offers live smoothing and the ability to edit outlines; a transparency tool with a click-drag blend tool to blend from one shape to another; and a soft vector tool for feathered vectoring. Other capabilities include: animated Flash support; an enhanced text tool; full support for importing and exporting Photoshop PSD files; PDF export improvements (as well as support for PDF imports); TIFF import support; the capability to integrate with external photo editors such as Photoshop and Corel PaintShop Pro; color and fill handling; and a collection of new editable templates. Price: $299.

ad index

June 2011

Agfa Graphics

30-31

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Seiko I Infotech

IBC

Specialty Graphic Imaging Assoc 5 www.sgia.org

www.marabu-northamerica.com www.mimakiusa.com

Onyx Graphics

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Mimaki USA, Inc.

IFC

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www.caldera.com

Marabu North America

Océ North America www.oceusa.com

Bordeaux Digital Print Ink Ltd. OBC

FESPA

www.sourceoneonline.com

www.bigpicture.net

Caldera Graphics

Nazdar SourceOne

Visual Magnetics

www.visualmagnetics.com Zund America Inc.

www.zund.com

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job log

Getting Charged Up “None of us had wrapped an eStar, but the client wanted the job turned around in a very short amount of time.”

The Client Chicago International Trucks The Player Road Rage Designs (roadragedesigns.com) Tools & Supplies Mimaki JV3-130, Avery MPI 1005 Supercast Easy Apply RS, Avery DOL 1360 overlaminate, GBC Arctic Titan laminator The Job The revolutionary Navistar eStar – billed as the world’s first electric box truck – boasts the ability to carry a 4000-pound payload while holding a 100-mile charge. Proud of its latest green-inventory addition, Chicago International Trucks sought to beautify the aesthetically plain ride to promote its eco-friendly qualities. Road Rage Designs in Spring Grove, Illinois, was contracted to come up with graphics for the box truck. With limited funds, Chicago International sought the most budgetfriendly option. “To cut costs, we presented the idea to only wrap the back and sides of the box and use lettering on the cab area instead of a typical full-coverage vinyl wrap,” says Road Rage’s Kris Harris. In highlighting the energy eﬃciency of the eStar, Chicago International called for a fresh-air themed design. Production Designed by Harris using Adobe Illustrator, all of the graphics were vectored, including the eStar and Chicago International logos. Because the small logo graphics were only available in GIF format, they had to be completely redrawn. The client approved the sky-and-grass design via a soft proof, and the graphics were readied for print. Road Rage output the 334-square feet of graphics onto 53-inch sections of Avery MPI 1005 Supercast Easy Apply RS using a Mimaki JV3-130 with Mimaki HS ink. For finishing, Road Rage relied on its GBC Arctic Titan laminator with Avery DOL 1360 overlaminate and then trimmed the panels to size. Altogether, the job took only two hours. Although Road Rage specializes in fleet vehicle and boat wraps, no one on the team had ever worked with an eStar before – after all, only about 100 are currently on the road – which presented an installation challenge. And, to add to the pressure, Chicago International called for an almost immediate turnaround. Ultimately, though, the team met the tight deadline and Chicago International plans to flaunt the eStar’s graphics for the next two years.

THE BIG PICTURE JUNE 2011

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