The development trend of proofing market - digital proofing becomes the best alternative to traditional proofing

At present, with the rise of the CTP (Computer-to-plate computer-to-plate) wave in the global printing industry, the era of digital printing has arrived, and CTP technology has become an inevitable trend for the prepress industry. In recent years, the print service market has undergone great changes. The increase in work orders on the market, the reduction in the number of prints per order, and the shortening of the printing time required make the traditional proofing methods face more severe challenges. Traditional lengthy proofing processes such as film making and printing are difficult to adapt to the ever-increasing demand for modern printing. Manual operation and chemical proofing are not only time-consuming and expensive, but also the printing colors are in an unstable state. The actual printing and printing Colors often have large in and out. How to print the most documents in the shortest time? How to use the most advanced technology or method to improve or replace the traditional proofing? Digital Proofing - An emerging alternative to traditional proofing is getting more and more attention. Digital proofing: replacing traditional proofing has become inevitable what is digital proofing? Compared with traditional proofing, what are the advantages of digital proofing? What is the difference between them? We know that digital proofing is after the emergence of large-scale electronic imposition systems. With the maturation of image data technology, proofing has begun to develop in the direction of digital. The so-called digital proofing is a kind of proofing technology that directly outputs digital manuscripts after electronic manuscripts are processed in electronic publishing. It uses digital format printers to directly output proofing, and replaces the traditional film making and drying samples. The proofing process. Compared with the traditional proofing, digital proofing has the following advantages: First of all, in terms of quality and effect, we mainly look at the stability of color and the reliability of objective analysis. Since the traditional proofing is performed manually with the ink and adjustment pressure, the effect is very unstable. If the same set of film is used for proofing, the printing effect is often not the same. Digital proofing is automated imaging and can be very stable. Of course, if the equipment quality is not good, such as the ink head is often blocked, it will also cause instability. Traditional proofing is very reliable due to the use of film that is consistent with printing. Digital proofing can use the same set of data that has been processed by RIP for proofing and plate making. The reliability will be higher. Because in addition to human factors in the entire process, the most likely difference in operation is the RIP calculation. Second, in terms of cost-effectiveness, it mainly depends on the investment cost and return status. In this respect, traditional proofing is inferior to digital proofing. Because the same production capacity calculation, such as the completion of two sets of four-color proofing within one hour, the investment in traditional equipment requires four sets of drafting machine, supporting the printing, printing equipment, plus the staff and the necessary For a large factory, the amount of investment is about RMB 2 million. The investment in digital proofing will not exceed 1.5 million yuan at most, and the additional labor will be close to zero. In general, the return on investment for digital proofing can be much higher than traditional proofing. Finally, in terms of performance, it mainly depends on production speed, multiple simulation capabilities, and multiple format capabilities. The speed of digital proofing imaging is fast, and ordinary printers on the market can complete a high-quality half-page layout within 20 minutes, while the traditional proofing generally takes 30-40 minutes. The color gamut expressed by most digital proofers (that is, the full range of colors that a device can express) is richer than ink. Rich color gamut with good color management software enables digital proofing not only to simulate the effects of prints but also Simulating other production effects, such as screen printing, digital printing, inkjet posters, etc., can even simulate the performance of a high-speed rotary press and better meet the increasingly diversified output needs of the market. The complete digital proofing system, in addition to simulating the color effects of a certain output medium, can automatically adjust the color of the images in the files according to the needs of different outputs so that the operators do not need to make changes and truly achieve an automated workflow. . All of these are not completed by traditional proofing. Common tools that support digital proofing Although digital proofing has many advantages, it is inseparable from the specific hardware and software support. With the rapid development of digital printing technology, major companies have introduced their own technologies and equipment to meet the needs of different environments, especially the large-format printers necessary for digital proofing. In the domestic printer market, there are many types of optional printers, but there are not many products that really satisfy the unique needs of the digital proofing business. This is because both the higher speed and the higher output screen are required at the same time. Quality, and realize the organic unity of speed and quality. In the current large format printer market, the most typical is the HP DesignJet 5000 large format printer series. In terms of speed, it is the first professional large-format printer with production speed due to the use of more advanced Jet Express technology (with 512 nozzles per head) and a revolutionary 25mm wide printhead. . In terms of color, this series of printers uses six-color ink (CMYKcm) and color grading technology to achieve a truly practical six-color ink printing and 1200dpi printing. This comprehensive improvement in speed and quality has broken the “inertia law” that has not been able to improve the speed and quality of the large-format printing industry for a long time, and achieved a true “speed quality” all-round capability. In software, it is inevitable to mention the corresponding RIP software. Now that there are many RIP softwares in the market, but it is really less tailored to digital implementation, we present the Easy Proofing RIP software of Jin Hao Electronic Systems Co., Ltd. For example, the software is a Harlequin RIP OEM product based on the Postscript Language Level 3 standard. The ICC color management system is built in to ensure that the digital proofing sample can realize the true color reproduction of the printing ink. Therefore, before choosing a digital proofing system, we should clarify our own requirements and then select a digital proofing system with different degrees or different prices. The application prospects of digital proofing With the advent of computer-to-plate and the development of related equipment, digital proofing will further threaten the status of traditional proofing. Because the digital proofing program eliminates the influence of human factors and other external factors, the stability of the proofing output is greatly improved, and the proofing process is greatly shortened; at the same time, the proofing work can be modified by digital means, thereby greatly reducing the proofing cost. This scheme has successfully solved many problems in the traditional proofing such as long production cycle, unstable proofing, and high cost, which has triggered a new revolution in the printing field. At present, digital proofing has been widely used in the United States, Japan, and other developed countries. However, due to the constraints of many conditions in China, digital proofing has not yet been fully promoted, but some users have begun to use digital proofing, they are pursuing speed and stability. And cost-effectiveness. Especially for high-end users, although the above three advantages cannot fully satisfy them, color quality is their most important requirement. It is with the strict requirements of these users that digital proofing is gradually becoming popular as a new technology, which is of great significance for improving prepress work efficiency and customer satisfaction. It can be said that digital proofing has broad application prospects in the market, and there will be more and more cases of using digital proofing instead of traditional proofing. Especially in the publishing and advertising industries, the demand for digital proofing will be even greater. Therefore, digital proofing instead of traditional proofing will certainly become a new trend in the proofing market.