A giant step for desktop: Scitex link with Adobe combines top-quality color with page layout software

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June, 1988 by Paul Frichtl

A giant step for desktop

Desktop page make-up systems will take a major step toward main-line magazine use with a recent agreement between Scitex Corporation and Adobe Systems Inc. Scitex's high-quality color imaging for magazine pre-press will now accept composed page data through PostScript page description language, which drives most desktop publishing systems.

For the first time, microcomputer-based page make-up systems will have direct access to commercial-quality color pre-press. Because Scitex computer language will be compatible with various desktop software programs, color photos and full-page layouts can be combined electronically, completely bypassing mechanicals paste-up and color stripping.

Until the agreement, only a handful of magazines, using sophisticated custom computer programs, were capable of combining text and four-color graphics in an electronic format to be output directly to plate-ready films.

"There are a number of very powerful text composition programs," says Scitex's Ned Boudreau, "but they don't do color. They all need an engine that will provide the layout, high resolution imaging and the color."

The Scitex link

Scitex is a leading supplier of interactive computer imaging systems used for magazine pre-press production. PostScript is the page description language for printer output introduced by Adobe Systems Inc. in 1984. As a device-independent language, it will link virtually any computer, including minicomputers and mainframes, to Scitex imaging equipment.

Display PostScript, a recently introduced extension of PostScript, is a display imaging model. A page can be composed and displayed on a color monitor with the text, color and graphics in place, in the exact format of the final printed page--even showing the text fonts.

First to make use of Scitex's embrace of desktop publishing is Quark Inc., maker of a leading desktop page layout and composition program, QuarkXPress. A new version, released this spring, incorporates the Scitex Handshake format for digital data exchange. This program enables users to create page layouts, compose text and add graphics using a Macintosh system. Boxes are left open on the electronic page for four-color artwork. The page file is then transferred directly to a Scitex system by floppy disk or modem, with the original color transparencies or artwork sent to the Scitex service bureau for scanning.

Once transferred to equipment such as the Scitex Response System, the document can be merged with the scanned four-color graphics. Scitex provides some of the industry's highest quality color scanning and separation equipment, where sizing, cropping, color correction and other sophisticated photo manipulations can be performed. The equipment also carries the full Linotype and Bitstream font libraries for text composition, as specified by the original page designer.

The final output is high-quality, plate-ready separation films. Since the text and art are integrated, there is no need for a second burn in platemaking to add the text to black halftones on the black printing plate.

Page layouts can be proofed on plain-paper laser printouts prior to Scitex transmission. Color proofing can be handled through any of the conventional methods, such as Cromalins or Matchprints, or through any of several-digital color proofing systems with which Scitex interfaces.

Scitex was to begin marketing the QuarkXPress Handshake version this spring. The PostScript link, which will apply to a wide range of other desktop publishing programs--such as the popular Aldus PageMaker--will not be available until late this year.

U.S. News & World Report is one magazine anxious for the PostScript release. Plans are to move the magazine's art and editorial operations to Macintoshes, says Frank Scott, vice president of technology, PPI Network, which handles pre-press services for U.S. News. By doing so, he says, all graphics, copy and now color photography will be generated in the same computer language. That will enable smoother, faster and more accurate integration of all the elements, Scott explains.

U.S. News may begin the conversion as early as this summer. In this way the art, editorial and design departments will be comfortable with the computer systems by the time the PostScript link becomes available. The whole operation will then switch to a direct-to-film system.