Desktop prepress: opening new territories - desktop publishing

Communication World, Nov, 1990 by Betsy Brill

Desktop Prepress Opening New Territories

The reports you've heard from the desktop frontier are true--about scanning photos and drawings, incorporating these images into page layouts, using the computer to assign color to design elements and, instead of printing camera-ready pages, actually producing entire color-separated pages of film from which a printer will create plates for printing.

Think of it. No stripping costs. More steps eliminated from the production process. Less turnaround time. Complete control from editing to layout to improving the contrast or the color of photos--to printing out entire pages along with their photos already color-separated.

In truth, however, while desktop pioneers are pushing the boundaries of the publishing business ever outward, the prepress frontier remains sparsely populated.

A recent survey of IABC members turned up vast numbers of publications managers who have turned to desktop publishing to gain control and curb costs of their printed materials. Yet despite success stories familiar in the folklore of desktop pioneers, few have fully explored the range of prepress possibilities.

Cautious Exploration

From the simplest in-house newsletters to four-color monthly magazines, most desktop publishers are using a blend of high-tech and conventional prepress methods.

For example, Mark Fotheringham, director of communication for the Utah Medical Association, uses a Hewlett-Packard Scanjet Plus (256-gray-scale) scanner to scan black-and-white photos for his 12-page monthly magazine, produced with Ventura Publisher. However, he doesn't generate film because so much of his advertising arrives as camera-ready that he finds it more practical to assemble the magazine on boards for his printer.

At Liberty Life Insurance Company in Greenville, S.C., Terry Price oversees publication of all employee communications. Alert to the cost savings being attributed to desktop publishing in late 1986, Price and her colleagues evaluated the technology and found it lacking at that time. In early 1988, however, the advances in page layout programs lured them in.

The company's venture coincided with the introduction of high-quality Linotronic imagesetters at local printers --resulting in a partnership that has affected "tremendous savings," Price says. Today, Price's department creates its printed materials on the computer and sends its files directly to one of those printers, who prints film from the Linotronic and then makes plates for printing.

Citing dissatisfaction with the quality of scanned photos--both black-and-white and color--Price has declined to place photos electronically in their layouts. Instead, halftones and separations are created traditionally and then stripped into the film pages generated by the Linotronic.

"We do scan in artwork," she says, "but we only scan photos for position."

Price's attitude toward photographic reproduction is one shared by most publication managers. The technology just isn't there yet, they say.

Tracking New Territories

However, with the introduction of more sophisticated scanning devices and the advent of Adobe's Photoshop (high-quality scanning and photo manipulation software), that may soon be changing.

Kelly Guncheon, managing editor of California Physician, a 34,000-circulation four-color monthly magazine directed to members of the California Medical Association, also produces a high-tech hybrid. His magazine is a blend of film and of camera-ready positive pages generated on the Linotronic. And, he notes, this decision is one based more on his printing contract than on the technology: Guncheon's printer charges for film and basic stripping regardless of whether camera-ready pages or actual film is delivered. And the printer doesn't charge for making traditional halftones. Consequently, Guncheon opts for traditional prepress methods except when it comes to complex color pages. When the contract comes up for renewal, Guncheon plans to negotiate for more flexibility, he says.

Meanwhile, Guncheon sees himself as being in the experimental stages of electronic prepress. He monitors the quality of color photo separations by using desktop separation technology sparingly. "I don't scan larger photos, but I do the smaller pictures in our travel section. I like to use several photos, color screens and color elements in that section, and (desktop prepress) offers the route to do so relatively inexpensively."

Rather than investing in scanners and software and trying to take on the role of a color engraver, Guncheon turns to an outside specialist in desktop prepress--Digital Prepress International, based in San Francisco, Calif. Digital PrePress employs a mid-range desktop scanner, the CIS 4520, to scan photos and Adobe's Photoshop to refine the images. The photos are then integrated into Quark Xpress layouts, which are output to film. Even using an outside vendor like this, Guncheon estimates savings of US $100 per computer-separated page versus a page created by conventional methods.