Frank Scott is the new vice president of GATF. He once led Time Corporation to complete the conversion of the entire CTP project. At that time, most publishers only considered the digital workflow. What motivated him to do this? He said the most important reason is efficient cost and competitiveness. This article is an interview with him.
In 1997, the industry launched a fierce debate over the advantages and risks of adopting CTP. At that time, the total amount of output using CTP equipment was only 12.5%, and Time Corporation had already adopted a large number of CTP technologies. At that time, Scott was director of the company's digital development department. He not only promoted the company's extensive use of CTP technology, but also established the company's digital advertising library, and developed a document delivery system that can send pages remotely to printing houses for printing. In addition, he also established the Digital Partnership Project (DPP), which aims to eliminate the use of film by collecting digital advertising files, so that the advertising community can be confident that cooperation with Time can save time and cost, and also ensure the accuracy of products. In order to achieve the goal, Scott developed a set of digital advertising parameter toolbox and established the universal Time company digital advertising standard.
In November last year, Scott left Time to join GATF. When he left Time, he talked about his achievements, his views on the profitability of digital technology, and his views on the direction of the publishing industry.
This article is an interview with him.
Q: What prompted Time's pursuit of CTP technology?
A: If the company wants to develop, it can't be achieved without adopting new technologies. It can only make the production process more and more inefficient. The only way to win in the competition is to be able to produce better products faster and at lower cost. And CTP can achieve this goal. The reason we follow CTP is high-quality drive.
Q: What was the biggest obstacle initially?
A: The original technology was not particularly mature (it took 20 years to launch) and it was not until we had the ability to fully organize that we were able to organize all the contents together and work efficiency was greatly improved.
Another big problem a few years ago was network speed, data storage, and file management.
Q: What do you think is the biggest advantage of adopting CTP technology?
A: It is clear that it can save a lot of costs and bring in more profits. From a production point of view, it can make production more flexible and easy to control, while also reducing the production time. Now we can make more pages and the cost is very low.
Q: Time has always had a sense of advancement in receiving digital advertising. Why is there such judgment?
A: At the beginning of 1996, we realized that CTP may be a practical and feasible choice. Therefore, we think of macroscopic considerations and we plan to invest in CTP equipment by the middle of the year. And set the target to fully invest in CTP at the end of the year.
At the same time, we conducted a survey on digital advertising products and found that entering the CTP and receiving digital advertising business is the best way to develop.
When we first switched to CTP, we often received a lot of film originals. We had to use a scanner to digitize them, and the quality was not guaranteed.
If we are receiving digital advertising and processing in the traditional way, that is, film and plates, the cost and time for film production will not be on our side. Both of these systems cannot achieve the perfect state, but if they are combined, they will win.
Q: Are all advertising services you received currently digitized?
A: It's almost 90%.
Q: When did you hit the 100% ceiling?
A: There are still some advertisers who do not accept digital manuscripts. There are also some advertisers who are limited by technology and believe that providing digital files is not their strength. Maybe it contains a lot of emotional factors in it.
And there are not many phenomena in accepting digital manuscripts in the publishing industry. They are more willing to accept films. If all publishers are willing to accept digital advertising, then we will soon reach 100%. But it will take time.
Q: Please talk about Time's Digital Partnership Program (DPP)?
A: We started this plan with CTP. First we specify two file formats: TIFF/IT and Postscript. We do not accept PDFs because we feel that it will not happen.
Then we gather various parameters together to form a toolbox and provide it to customers. This includes the list, the proposed layout, and the parameter specifications we require. In addition, it also includes the size of the page, color space, font type, resolution and other elements. Finally, we formed a practical Universal Digital company's digital advertising standard.
Q: Do you think it's worth spending a lot of time and money on digital partnership projects?
A: Through this, we have formed a company's internal workflow, work is very smooth, the staff also feel very comfortable to use, and soon the entire company accepted it. All processes are the same as before, except that now digital files are used.
Q: What do you think of the production process? What is the biggest problem involved?
A: One year we have to deal with about 25,000 advertisements. It works very smoothly. However, there are still some problems. We train production personnel to ensure that we can produce perfect products that are exactly the same as those provided by our customers.
Not every file is perfect, so we have to check the manuscripts and negotiate further with suppliers to make them more in line with our standards. This problem has not been completely resolved until now.
Q: Do you predict that there will be no print output problems in the proportion of advertisement files?
A: You can confidently say about 90%. About 70% of digital files are submitted to us in TIFF/IT file format, and their quality should not be too ridiculous. The only document to be rejected is the wrong size, irregular trimming, and improper size of the bleeding.
And 30% of the files are in Postscript file format and can be handled well. However, there are problems with explaining the PS file. This problem has exceeded the problems of trimming and bleeding. Missing fonts and low-resolution images are often problems.
Q: Do you think this plan helps small publishers who want to implement digital processing?
A: There are a large number of small publishers that use digital systems. It is not necessary to use Time Systems to adopt digital systems.
Whether publishers or service providers, like prepress or printers, when they start receiving digital files, they can consider using digital processes to deal with them. Once such a transition is made, there will be more opportunities and will benefit from the digital workflow more quickly.
Q: Do you think the final product will be better?
Answer: Of course. When the digital file is combined with the CTP system, the original file can be used for plate making without any loss. There is no need to make excessive adjustments to highlights, shadows, and midtones. There will be no alignment problems, no dirty spots, dust, or scratches. It is much easier to process digital files than to process them.
Q: Can you talk about Time's digital advertising file repository?
A: With this library, you can search for ads, export them, get high-resolution CTP files, and send them to the printing plant through a web browser.
The advantage is that once you receive a good advertisement and process it into CTP format, you don't need to do it every time. In our company, it often happens that the same advertisement may appear in different places, so that only one copy can be paid, and when necessary, it can be called from the library.
Q: How do you keep these low-cost operations for so many years? Did you withdraw your initial investment?
A: In the beginning, we only required that the production costs of CTP equipment be kept at a moderate level. We worked hard only to be able to balance our revenues and expenditures, but many of the concerns were redundant. In two or three years, we actually delivered a lot.
Q: What do you think is the main obstacle to preventing the widespread dissemination of this technology?
A: It is not clear that digitization is just another way of doing things. For many people, it is difficult to manage after change. Many people say that if they do something, they would rather use the traditional method than change.
Q: How do you view the development trend of digital publishing?
A: Perhaps a color management workflow, it will make the output of the product closer to proofs
In 1997, the industry launched a fierce debate over the advantages and risks of adopting CTP. At that time, the total amount of output using CTP equipment was only 12.5%, and Time Corporation had already adopted a large number of CTP technologies. At that time, Scott was director of the company's digital development department. He not only promoted the company's extensive use of CTP technology, but also established the company's digital advertising library, and developed a document delivery system that can send pages remotely to printing houses for printing. In addition, he also established the Digital Partnership Project (DPP), which aims to eliminate the use of film by collecting digital advertising files, so that the advertising community can be confident that cooperation with Time can save time and cost, and also ensure the accuracy of products. In order to achieve the goal, Scott developed a set of digital advertising parameter toolbox and established the universal Time company digital advertising standard.
In November last year, Scott left Time to join GATF. When he left Time, he talked about his achievements, his views on the profitability of digital technology, and his views on the direction of the publishing industry.
This article is an interview with him.
Q: What prompted Time's pursuit of CTP technology?
A: If the company wants to develop, it can't be achieved without adopting new technologies. It can only make the production process more and more inefficient. The only way to win in the competition is to be able to produce better products faster and at lower cost. And CTP can achieve this goal. The reason we follow CTP is high-quality drive.
Q: What was the biggest obstacle initially?
A: The original technology was not particularly mature (it took 20 years to launch) and it was not until we had the ability to fully organize that we were able to organize all the contents together and work efficiency was greatly improved.
Another big problem a few years ago was network speed, data storage, and file management.
Q: What do you think is the biggest advantage of adopting CTP technology?
A: It is clear that it can save a lot of costs and bring in more profits. From a production point of view, it can make production more flexible and easy to control, while also reducing the production time. Now we can make more pages and the cost is very low.
Q: Time has always had a sense of advancement in receiving digital advertising. Why is there such judgment?
A: At the beginning of 1996, we realized that CTP may be a practical and feasible choice. Therefore, we think of macroscopic considerations and we plan to invest in CTP equipment by the middle of the year. And set the target to fully invest in CTP at the end of the year.
At the same time, we conducted a survey on digital advertising products and found that entering the CTP and receiving digital advertising business is the best way to develop.
When we first switched to CTP, we often received a lot of film originals. We had to use a scanner to digitize them, and the quality was not guaranteed.
If we are receiving digital advertising and processing in the traditional way, that is, film and plates, the cost and time for film production will not be on our side. Both of these systems cannot achieve the perfect state, but if they are combined, they will win.
Q: Are all advertising services you received currently digitized?
A: It's almost 90%.
Q: When did you hit the 100% ceiling?
A: There are still some advertisers who do not accept digital manuscripts. There are also some advertisers who are limited by technology and believe that providing digital files is not their strength. Maybe it contains a lot of emotional factors in it.
And there are not many phenomena in accepting digital manuscripts in the publishing industry. They are more willing to accept films. If all publishers are willing to accept digital advertising, then we will soon reach 100%. But it will take time.
Q: Please talk about Time's Digital Partnership Program (DPP)?
A: We started this plan with CTP. First we specify two file formats: TIFF/IT and Postscript. We do not accept PDFs because we feel that it will not happen.
Then we gather various parameters together to form a toolbox and provide it to customers. This includes the list, the proposed layout, and the parameter specifications we require. In addition, it also includes the size of the page, color space, font type, resolution and other elements. Finally, we formed a practical Universal Digital company's digital advertising standard.
Q: Do you think it's worth spending a lot of time and money on digital partnership projects?
A: Through this, we have formed a company's internal workflow, work is very smooth, the staff also feel very comfortable to use, and soon the entire company accepted it. All processes are the same as before, except that now digital files are used.
Q: What do you think of the production process? What is the biggest problem involved?
A: One year we have to deal with about 25,000 advertisements. It works very smoothly. However, there are still some problems. We train production personnel to ensure that we can produce perfect products that are exactly the same as those provided by our customers.
Not every file is perfect, so we have to check the manuscripts and negotiate further with suppliers to make them more in line with our standards. This problem has not been completely resolved until now.
Q: Do you predict that there will be no print output problems in the proportion of advertisement files?
A: You can confidently say about 90%. About 70% of digital files are submitted to us in TIFF/IT file format, and their quality should not be too ridiculous. The only document to be rejected is the wrong size, irregular trimming, and improper size of the bleeding.
And 30% of the files are in Postscript file format and can be handled well. However, there are problems with explaining the PS file. This problem has exceeded the problems of trimming and bleeding. Missing fonts and low-resolution images are often problems.
Q: Do you think this plan helps small publishers who want to implement digital processing?
A: There are a large number of small publishers that use digital systems. It is not necessary to use Time Systems to adopt digital systems.
Whether publishers or service providers, like prepress or printers, when they start receiving digital files, they can consider using digital processes to deal with them. Once such a transition is made, there will be more opportunities and will benefit from the digital workflow more quickly.
Q: Do you think the final product will be better?
Answer: Of course. When the digital file is combined with the CTP system, the original file can be used for plate making without any loss. There is no need to make excessive adjustments to highlights, shadows, and midtones. There will be no alignment problems, no dirty spots, dust, or scratches. It is much easier to process digital files than to process them.
Q: Can you talk about Time's digital advertising file repository?
A: With this library, you can search for ads, export them, get high-resolution CTP files, and send them to the printing plant through a web browser.
The advantage is that once you receive a good advertisement and process it into CTP format, you don't need to do it every time. In our company, it often happens that the same advertisement may appear in different places, so that only one copy can be paid, and when necessary, it can be called from the library.
Q: How do you keep these low-cost operations for so many years? Did you withdraw your initial investment?
A: In the beginning, we only required that the production costs of CTP equipment be kept at a moderate level. We worked hard only to be able to balance our revenues and expenditures, but many of the concerns were redundant. In two or three years, we actually delivered a lot.
Q: What do you think is the main obstacle to preventing the widespread dissemination of this technology?
A: It is not clear that digitization is just another way of doing things. For many people, it is difficult to manage after change. Many people say that if they do something, they would rather use the traditional method than change.
Q: How do you view the development trend of digital publishing?
A: Perhaps a color management workflow, it will make the output of the product closer to proofs
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