Computer to plate "You have no choice" 31Jan02
Hanan Drory's presentation on Computer to Plate at the IppStar centre in Noida on January 25 drew more than 45 industry participants. The exposition of the need for computer to plate, imaging and plate technologies and workflow requirements went on for almost three hours with plenty of interaction and questions. While Drory was most enthusiastic when he spoke of thermal technology and Creo's Squaredot, the presentation tried to present the CtP issues as a whole. Drory's knowledge of CopyDot was an especially informative part of the workflow discussion. Hanan Drory is the Regional Sales Director of Creo Asia Pacific and is based in Singapore.
photo
ippstar
Although the interactive snature of the discussion and the late start of session didn't permit Drory to engage in a complete discussion of the Return on Investment issues, he did say that one has to look at the savings in makeready time and wastage and the increase in quality and reliability (repeatability of print) as a part of any investment calculation. The improvements in quality and the possibility of colour enhancement using Hexachrome printing using directly imaged plates have to be attractive to commercial printers. He emphasised the need for printers to look at where their business will be in a three-year time frame and also courageously predicted a significant fall in thermal plate prices within two years.
Hanan Drory's long experience in the prepress industry and his background as an research engineer bring a special authority to his down to earth style. Representatives of Heidelberg, Agfa and Technova also contributed to making the discussion an informed one. Drory ended the discussion by saying that although it was up to the printers to choose the technology and device of their choice, the quality printers really have no choice but to go for computer to plate.
The seventh open house at IppStar was the most successful yet and included representatives from many of the leading printers in the Delhi area including Hindustan Times, Times of India, Thomson Press, International Print-O-Pac, Gopsons, TechBooks, A&M Colour Graphics, Saraswati Offset, Frank Brothers, Graphic House, Anand Graphic Industries, Visual Dynamics and Paras Offset. Vendors and suppliers such as Adobe, Agfa, ATE, Capital Graphics, Creed Engineers, Heidelberg, Hi-Tech Systems, Memory Systems, Raj and Company, Technova Imaging Systems and Insight Communications also took a keen interest in the round table discussion and attended in full force.
The full schedule of the Open House monthly discussions for 2002 has been announced with the next industry get together scheduled for February 22, 2002 at 4pm with the topic "Full Digital Workflow for Packaging Prepress". Presentations on the Packaging Digital Prepress Workflow will be made by Hemant Jain of Barco India and Ajay Aggarwal of Insight Communications. The full schedule of Open House discussions is accessible at the IppStar website: www.ippstar.com/starevents.htm.
Quark support
for IppStar 28Jan02
Course in Xpress 4.1
from January 29 to Feb 2
Agfa donates scanner to IppStar 23Jan02
