Graph Expo Report: Spots, Dots, and What’s Hot

Brian Lawler

Each year I find my way to Chicago to attend the Graph Expo or Print trade show (the names alternate annually, but they look like to same show to me). My reasons are numerous. One is to see what’s new in the printing business; another is to chat with clients and associates in the trade (see Figure 1). I also want to size-up the mood of the industry, to see if things are looking-up — or otherwise. Since September 11, 2001, when thousands of conventioneers were stranded in Chicago during the show, things have been a bit weird, and it’s interesting to watch the trends to see if a change is evident.

Figure 1: The Graph Expo show floor is hundreds of thousands of square feet of prepress, printing and finishing equipment displayed in Chicago’s McCormick Place exhibition hall.

Last year the show was small — but optimistic. People were still in shock. The major breakthroughs were the under-$100,000 platesetters that arrived on the scene, making it possible for the average printer to afford computer-to-plate workflows. This year, with those platesetters firmly entrenched, the most interesting news was microscopic — literally.

Fantastic Stochastic
With the tremendous precision of platesetters, and the extraordinary resolution possible, printing plates with non-conventional halftone patterns are now possible (it was more difficult with film). As a result of these trends in platemaking, most of the major prepress suppliers — Agfa, Kodak Polychrome, Heidelberg, and Creo — were exhibiting fresh variations on non-conventional halftone printing. A handful of intriguing new implementations of screening technology was being shown on handsome posters printed on the show floor.

Conventional screen angles cripple the printer’s ability to print with more than four colors of ink without generating moiré patterns, the color distortion that occurs when screen angled interfere with each other. Non-conventional screening techniques — such as stochastic screening — escape those problems. A stochastic halftone pattern is an alternative to the conventional dot pattern invented by Frederic Ives in the late 19th century. Instead of breaking-up tonal elements into variable-size dots (some call these amplitude-modulated or AM halftones, where the amplitude is the dot size), stochastic-pattern halftones divide an image into many more clusters of similarly-sized dots, where the frequency (distance between the dots) changes, and not the dot size itself. Another term for stochastic-pattern halftones is frequency-modulated or FM screening.

The idea is that the machine spots (which is the smallest mark a device can make) of a platesetter can be manipulated to form clumps in the form of dots or clumps in the form of collections of tiny stochastic patterns. In both cases the reflective density (the optical effect) of the little clumps of tonal information is the same — we still see tonality. Among the benefits of stochastic patterns are greater apparent detail and potentially smoother tonality.

At Graph Expo we were able to see examples of four-, six-, and seven-color printing with these stochastic halftones. A young woman approached me in the walkway and (excessively) cheerfully asked if I preferred AM or FM? I had to reach deep into my cerebellum to respond… long pause… “Well, heck, I like both!” was my response.

I was in luck with her, because the company she represented — Agfa — was showing a new screening scheme called Sublima that uses both conventional halftone dots and stochastic patterns. Agfa’s stochastic-only method — called Cristal Raster — is now considered old technology (they are an Old European company, after all).

One really has to be a printing geek to get excited about this kind of stuff, and I confess I was in my element. I took out my pocket magnifier (I finally gave up the pocket-protector in August) and looked at Agfa’s samples. Their technique is very clever and results in handsome printing that is free of the defects of conventional halftone printing.

Over at Heidelberg’s 42,000-square-foot display area I saw examples of that firm’s stochastic pattern imaging, similarly impressive. Heidelberg was giving away posters of balloons. The poster appeared to be printed in at least eight colors plus two varnishes. It was spectacular.

At Kodak-Polychrome Imaging the poster being given away featured a lovely scenic photo by Joseph Holmes, printed with a stochastic pattern process. The detail was extraordinary; the color more so. In Creo’s display area were numerous examples of that firm’s work in microscopic halftone dot control — similarly impressive.

Obviously stochastic screening has reached maturity, and with maturity, the manufacturers all arrived on the scene with offerings aimed at the average printer. I don’t think that they got together on a teleconference to decide that stochastic patterns were this year’s Next Big Thing. It must have been spontaneous, and I’ll bet they were all surprised to see that their competitors were headlining similar offerings.

Big Presses for Big Business
Another trend I spotted was extra-large presses, going along with the tendency these days to ‘super-size” everything. MAN Roland was showing a 72-inch press, a machine that has been sold to a New Jersey printer in a six-color arrangement. This is the largest sheet-fed press I have seen in decades, and the press sheets they were giving away were far too big to carry (I folded and rolled mine to bring it home).

Heidelberg was showing a model of a die-stamping press that is new to that firm, a machine that can cut cardboard into die-cut cartons or do embossing on 8-up press sheets. After years of extricating itself from relief printing, they are back in the business in response to demand for packaging presses with high speed and Heidelberg quality. Its biggest competitor in this market is the German manufacturer, Bobst, that makes freight-car-size presses for this kind of work. And, where Bobst machines shake the floor in operation, the new Heidelberg machine was fairly humming along; there was no hint of its multi-ton pressure while I was standing next to this press.

In contrast to the high-speed machines in press manufacturers’ booths, there were some really-large-format ink-jet printers on display. GraphExpo has morphed from a traditional printing and finishing show into a no-holds-barred graphic arts show. An entire region of the show floor was devoted to ink-jet devices for proofing and — hmmm — making stop signs on Gatorfoam. One booth showing a very-wide-format ink-jet printer had a crowd watching it churn-out gigantic Coca-Cola vending machine faces on a weatherproof plastic material (See Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Jet-I ink-jet press was generating a lot of attention with these brilliantly-colored display signs on plastic material.

Big Umbrellas
Sinar Bron, the world’s leading supplier of photographic strobe lighting, had its digital camera backs on display in their booth, and they were showing what is likely the largest photographic umbrella in existence (see Figure 3). The light from this unit is incredibly soft, and it performs magic with portraits and products. I gave it a test, and was awfully impressed — but where will I put it?

Figure 3: A photographer tests Sinar Bron’s gigantic umbrella with the firm’s digital camera back on a Hasselblad camera.

Prove It to Me — Remotely
Another theme that was evident this year was the availability of remote- and remote-soft-proofing for printers. In crowd-gathering displays, Kodak Polychrome made demonstrations of their remote-soft-proofing system with two presenters in curtained booths pretending to be on opposite sides of the country engaged in a soft-proofing session (see Figure 4). Each booth featured a television camera, and loudspeakers allowed the public to listen-in on their collaborative proofing session. The demonstration was well received; the product seemed effective.

Figure 4: A Kodak Polychrome staffer explains the firm’s remote-soft-proofing product. In curtained cubicles on either side of the stage, demonstrators carried-on mock remote-soft-proofing sessions.

In quieter, but similarly impressive displays of remote soft-proofing and collaboration were Remote Director, a new offering from Integrated Color Solutions of New York City, and Imagexpo, from Group Logic, which has been on the market for years. The release of more-capable flat-panel displays with SWOP certification may have bolstered the interest in remote-soft-proofing this year. The Apple Cinema Display HD was prominent in several vendors’ booths acting as a soft-proofing station.

Hot Digital Presses
Heidelberg’s NexPress, Xerox’s iGen3, HP’s Indigo machines, and Xeikon’s digital presses were turning heads this year with glorious demonstrations of printing that looks so close to offset printing that it takes a powerful magnifier to see a difference. Heidelberg was tantalizing the audience with a charming example of one-to-one variable-data printing featuring variable photos on a long card extolling the virtues of this technology. As visitors gave a demonstrator their names, sheets would come out of the machine with personalization on the fly. Rather than impress with variable-text, Heidelberg’s sheet substituted images of shaved heads at a football game, the shaved areas making-up the letters of the recipient’s name.

I asked a sales engineer from Heidelberg about two flashing yellow lights atop the NexPress (rather obnoxious); I wondered if they might be there to warn-off low-flying aircraft. He indicated that the machine is intended to run remotely, and that the flashing lights indicate feed or printer errors, calling an operator from across the plant to attend to the machine. I was relieved to learn that they have a purpose.

Sit with CIP
Workflow automation is beginning to make its mark in equipment booths and sales presentations, thanks to the efforts of CIP4, an industry group devoted to integrating manufacturing and management information systems. (The abbreviation stands for “The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress.”) Heidelberg’s Prinect is an example of CIP4 at work, with preflight, prepress, RIPping, and printing processes all passing accounting and job-cost information to a master database, and a single electronic job ticket being written onscreen to control all of the processes that affect a printing job including binding, finishing, and mailing operations.

I am sure that CIP4 will take-hold, but like other “sleeper” technologies in graphic arts, it will take a few more years to reach the point of being perceived as a hot technology. Change in this part of the industry is sure, but surely slow. In order to take effect, CIP4 prepress systems, presses, and bindery equipment must reach market, and be installed by more companies. This requires a cycling of new equipment into existing plants, and that takes time.

Sales in the Millions!
In the year 2000, Heidelberg had a much larger display space at the show, and they rang a bell every time a sale was made, the sound audible from the entire show floor. Over the course of the weeklong event (it’s now been reduced to four days) they rang-up hundreds of millions of dollars of sales and we all heard that bell ringing again and again (to the point of irritation).

At this year’s event it was evident that sales were up slightly from last year, but they’re nowhere near what they were in 2000. The industry is still suffering from a recession that is killing off small printers at a surprising rate. Big printers are still doing OK, but the days of numerous big-ticket sales at Graph Expo are gone. At this show, a press salesman friend told me he was grateful to sell one machine this year.

In 2003, GraphExpo seemed to be more a show of specialization, upgrade, and perfection-of-process. To me this represents readjustment of priorities in our industry, and this is good. I am always thrilled to see so much amazing technology in one place, and I will continue to plan a long weekend visit to Chicago each fall to visit North America’s largest exhibition of prepress, printing, and finishing technologies.