Plates to go: Above, the Purup-Eskofot DMX 2737 CTP device. Below, the Autologic Information International APS3850 CTP device.

Computer-to-plate continues its slow but steady adoption pace

SAN FRANCISCO -- It has been the talk of the newspaper industry for years, and it seems as though we've been waiting just as long to fully embrace it.

Pagination? No. Computer-to-plate (CTP).

At NEXPO 2000, held here June 17-20, the word from some of the CTP suppliers -- wishful thinking or otherwise -- was that the groundswell toward CTP is, at last, beginning to gather momentum.

There are many reasons for the newspaper industry's inclination to wait to implement CTP; some cite the cost of CTP plates as still too high.

There is also the anticipation that processless thermal plates -- that is, plates that can go straight from the imaging device directly onto the press without any processing -- will soon be introduced.

And there's further some skepticism regarding the current state of the technology. Another concern is that CTP workflow does not allow for last-minute corrections.

According to State Street Consulting of Boston, nearly 99 percent of commercial printers believe CTP is inevitable in the next decade. CTP dramatically simplifies the pre-press process, saving time and money.

Conventional platemaking uses labor and materials to typeset the pages, shoot the image onto film using a camera, develop the film and manually strip in the photos.

The output is potentially a fourth-generation image, which takes hours to make, is expensive and produces toxic chemical by-products.

The alternative -- computer-to-film or CTF -- eliminates only a few of the problems of traditional methods (there is still the problem of the disposal of the film processing chemistry), but they are the big problems.

Computer-to-plate eliminates an entire step -- film. Press operations receive electronic files that include full pages of text and photos from clients and directly output a plate using a computer networked to a platesetter.

The result is a first-generation image, which takes minutes, instead of hours, to produce.

Sounds good, but does the newspaper industry concur that the conversion is inevitable? The answer appears to be, at times, a cautious "yes."

The advantages of CTP are well known -- simplification of the pre-press process, improved and consistent print quality, better accuracy and speed, less waste and improved quality of the final printed product.

Computer-to-plate has been around for more than 20 years, with the introduction of a CTP device by Eocom that was installed at the Observer-Dispatch of Utica, N.Y. Unfortunately, Eocom went out of business before the device became popular.

The driving force behind CTP is full-page output, sometimes called pagination. Without the ability to output a page whole, newspapers can't really begin to implement CTP.

And, while U.S. newspapers have been dragging their collective feet in the pagination world, European papers (which skipped one whole generation of technology, going from hot metal to digital without a stop-over at pasteup) are mostly paginated and mostly using CTP.

Increasing deadlines; decreasing costs
According to Jeff Lovelace of Denmark's Purup-Eskofot (which has North American offices in Kennesaw, Ga.), not all U.S. newspapers are waiting. While Purup has 107 Ctp installations worldwide, it does have North American installations, such as the national financial paper based in Los Angeles, Investor's Business Daily, Florida Today in Melbourne, the Chicago Sun-Times and Canada's Le Journal de Montreal, as well as papers owned by Tribune Co., Knight Ridder, Cox and Media General.

"Many newspapers are just now going through the budget process for CTP. In these large corporations, this can take some time. It is happening, just slowly," said Lovelace.

The problem: that pagination thing. Once this is done, the only additional workflow item is to have a bitmap page output management system. This system should work with a film workflow as well as CTP, Lovelace said.

Some CTP systems are neither more efficient nor cost-effective than what papers are doing today, he said. "Some of the efficiency comes from the quality that a few devices can produce. The trick is to have the quality and the speed required for newspapers," Lovelace said.

The workflow, removing the film step and the quality of the dot on the plate, can allow a paper to go to press sooner -- as much as 25 to 60 minutes sooner -- with the same, and usually less, labor cost.

"If CTP can do that, most large papers can save big in additional press equipment required to get products out the door on time," he said.

"CTP, apples to apples, is about the same in capital costs as film," Lovelace said. While CTP devices cost more, a publisher doesn't require as many units, because CTP devices can be as much as four times faster than film imagesetters but don't cost four times as much.

Oh, and the systems of today still require plates.

Lovelace said that if a paper is doing one film for one plate, CTP is more cost-effective comparing material costs. Once the other efficiencies and quality factors are added in, many times, the CTP process will win out over the conventional process.

"As more locations convert to CTP, the material cost of CTP will go down," Lovelace said.

And what about the theory that thermal CTP can't yet handle the demands of a daily newspaper? "I don't see the current thermal technology ever working in a daily newspaper," Lovelace said. "The process is too slow and very costly. Thermal offers no advantage to the newspaper printing process."

Lovelace said that there is a new thermal process that is just now being introduced that could have some advantages of quality, run length and speed.

"Thermal plates are slow and not suitable for newspapers, and thermal lasers are more expensive," said Ruta Medina, director of marketing communications at Autologic Information International of Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Lovelace believes that the complete conversion to CTP within all major newspapers will occur within four to six years, and in about that time newer CTP technology will be ready to be introduced. "Today's CTP will find an after-market and about two years into that, just about everyone will be CTP with new, or at least used, equipment."

According to Medina, some newspapers have not made the conversion because they have not resolved their digital workflow issues. "They must be able to track, manage and have complete control from input on through to plate-bending. If they don't have this type of 'digital window' into production, they can't make the switch. Workflow issues must be resolved, and the need for a new or replacement imager must exist," Medina said.

Autologic's CTP customers include Media Print of Austria, Zero Hora of Brazil, Finland's Turun Sanomat and La Voix Du Nord of France. The French daily, based in Lille, was one of Autologic's first customers for workflow software, according to Michel Ollevier, the paper's director of technology and system information.

In the United States, Autologic has one installation at Cleveland's Plain Dealer; Nevada's Reno Gazette-Journal recently placed an order for two Autologic CTP devices.

When asked how CTP fares in efficiency, both in cost and time, Medina said, "Faster make-ready, first-generation dots, less ink, paper and labor wasted. Deadlines can be pushed back. Plate cost is an issue in the U.S., as it is higher than film, but not in Europe where prices are about the same."

Models vary in throughput speed and maximum image size. For example, the Aps 3850 Ctp Wide Imager/240 will image 240 (27-inch-by-13¢-inch U.S. broadsheet) plates per hour at 1000 dots-per-inch. The company's comparable film imager handles 168 pages per hour at the same resolution.

CTP market to expand
When Eastman Kodak and Sun Chemical set up the Kodak Polychrome Graphics joint venture to market their graphics arts products in 1998, the new company also acquired Horsell Anitec.

From this union, Anitec Newspaper Co. of Holyoke, Mass., was formed, which was designed specifically to focus on the U.S. newspaper business.

Anitec expects the CTP market to expand dramatically for two reasons. First, CTP saves time and money. Second, the general movement toward increased digital data and the availability of information.

The company claims a "true" 80 plates-per-hour. This productivity is achieved through one continuous flow of plates; only one step is required from page makeup to the press cylinder and no manual intermediate steps are required during plate production, which minimizes opportunities for defects through manual handling.

Western Lithotech of St. Louis, Mo., a division of Mitsubishi Chemical Co., is currently offering the high-speed efficiency of computer-to-plate to small- and medium-size newspapers with the introduction of the new DiamondSetter 610-SP-100 laser platesetter. The Tri-City Herald, a daily in Kennewick, Wash., was the first to purchase this platesetting technology, and in fact, purchased two of them.

The 610-SP-100 can achieve production rates of up to 70 panorama or 90 single page plates per hour at 1016 dpi.

Regardless of the supplier, the sales pitches were virtually all the same -- improved production, increased performance, not to mention speed, and the human error factor virtually eliminated. No one denies the virtues of CTP, so what more will it take for the newspaper industry to fully accept it, or rather to stand in line to get one?

With prices beginning to come down, along with the lure of reduced operating costs, it just shouldn't take that long for newspapers to jump on the CTP bandwagon. Adding in efficiency and quality factors, CTP will win out over conventional processes.

Ballpark figures from several CTP manufacturers indicate a four-to-six-year time frame, but as CTP's customers become more knowledgeable, and, more desirous of it, that time frame could be shortened dramatically.

Normally, it takes five to seven years for pre-press and pressroom equipment to pay for itself. CTP will drastically reduce the time for return on investment. That reason alone could be the catalyst for CTP to be at the top of the news industry's wish list.

The manufacturers are listening to their customers' needs, and are working hard to produce high-quality innovative machinery for newspapers and commercial printers around the globe.

We know publishers want CTP; as with everything, it's just a matter of time and money.

-- Aimee Beck, beck@colepapers.net

Anitec Newspaper Co.,
(413) 538-9624;
Autologic Information International Inc.,
(805) 498-9611,
e-mail: rmedina@autoiii.com;
Purup-Eskofot,
(770) 427-5700,
e-mail: america@pe.dk;
Western Lithotech,
(314) 225-5031.

From THE COLE PAPERS, August 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.