Book Printing

Book Printing

Book Printing, is probably not something Compose System set out to go after in the beginning. After working for several years to provide more functionality to the Express RIP, it is found we really should try to come up with an automated solution for printing. This will help to bring higher productivity to printers for their busy print shop. CTP is soon going to replace the old imagesetters, stripping is no longer the answer for CTP production.

Express Workflow. The idea of building a Express Workflow was conceived in 2002, which we believe by piecing all the application modules together, allow each module to be able to receive files and instructions as data input, process it by each individual application and then place the results for the next module in line to follow up, until the process exhaust its steps at the end of the line. Within the solution we can process multiple streams of process, providing greater flexibility to printers who can then set it up to operate whatever they want in production.

Imposition. It comes as a natural choice after this point we have to provide solutions to deal with Book imposition, as well as commercial printing for handling their odd jobs. For Books we have an imposition application which can allow operators to define their the book layout, according to the page size, trim size, and paper size. This application will also provide allowance for creeping, collation marks, all the necessities for imposing pages to form multiple signatures in order to build a book. To meet the finishing requirement, our imposition engine has to take care of different ways a printer will deal with folding and binding. Compose Imposition engine is one of the most complex tool in the market but also one of most powerful tool in the market which can meet the most demanding customer.

The meet the need from the market at the time, Compose also offers two types of data format, pdf and 1 bit tiff for imposition. PDF was still go through its transition at its time, 1 bit tiff format is one that Printer trusted most at the time, as they can proofread the pages from 1 bit tiff beforehand. This solution we call PRI imposition.

Plate Controller. Life will not be what it is, if everything stands still. Soon after that we were asked to produce Imposition for odd jobs in different sizes, taking care of front and back, work and turn, or work and tumble as the printer requires for preparing CTP plates. This is our solution called Plate Controller, allowing operator to impose jobs automatically, providing tools which can help to guillotine afterwards. Like book Imposition, Plate Controller also comes into two favors, PDF and 1 bit tiff file format, giving printers greater flexibility in creating the plates ready for printing, reduce the wastage by putting as much job as possible for any printing job.

DI Proof. Book Printing and Commercial printing requires a lot of different process to reach the stage that it can start printing, almost every time at that period people have to make a proof. Proofing can in general separated as blue print proofing or color accurate proofs. Compose provides a DI Proof, Direct Imaging proofs from 1 bit tiff file, it requires the ripped page in CMYK we can downsample and recombine to a color looks correct to prints.

ColorExpress. Compose also provides a color accurate proof, applying ICC profile to the PostScript or PDF files coming in from imposition or Plate Controller, or adding a color accurate plugin with to the RIP on the workflow. This will enable jobs ready to be rasterized for printing, can also be used for making a color accurate proof for signing off, reducing the cost of ownership and all the other related cost like fonts and a PC station.

To bring the whole process of book or commercial printing into a efficient process, Compose Express Workflow, comes out a number small unities or applications, to meet the expectation. We have re-combine PDF available, which can assist printer to re-combine multiple PDF in order to make up a complete set of book signatures.

Compose also has quality control solution which can ensure jobs for short run or longer print run can be maintained consistently. This will be a topic in another session.
To best understand what Compose can offer for book printing please follow our links to visit some of our the applications or call Compose System for more detail.