Reassess CTP (1)

The CTP technology began with the argon-laser and high-frequency YAG laser CTPs published on Drupa in 1995, and the old lasers were released on the IMPRINTA in 1997, which has since accelerated its popularity. At the time of Drupa 2000, several CTPs for UV lasers were exhibited, and in 2001 PRINT01 entered the practical period. At present, the number of CTP installations in the world exceeds 6,000 units, and Japan accounts for about 10%, ie about 600 units. CTP has gone from the introduction period to the popularization period and is now moving from the popularization period to the mature period.
In addition, the manufacturers and importers have positioned the CTP in production equipment. While improving hardware, they have been driven by DTP to solve a variety of problems. These technologies have been combined to build a workflow centered on prepress engineering. To achieve more effective automation.
This article will summarize the key issues and future developments supporting the CTP technology trends and practices.
Trends in CTP workflow
Due to the introduction of the DTP, over the past decade, the environment of the prepress project has undergone major changes. DTP is still evolving in this trend. Although various problems have emerged, they are quickly resolved. The main obstacle for PostScrip is that due to the large number of blocks of text, most of them rely on encoded data to transfer. Because of the variety of types and versions of the conversion platforms, it is difficult to introduce products that customers expect in the printing environment.
Especially in the operation of the CTP, the above problems have affected a large number of problems caused by the printing plate production, and thus a work flow utilizing the ROOM (RIP One Output Many) view has emerged. The raster data (Raster Data) is used in the intermediate data for color management, overprinting, page numbering, and the like. The advantage is that the output result provided by the output machine does not change. In actual operation, the resolution of the rasterized data during production must meet the requirements of the output device, and the text modification and change processing after RIP takes time. Although it can be transferred to the outside, there are still problems with large-scale text (excessive data). This is because the intermediate data is generated by various manufacturers. Even open workflows that use RIP Postscript data as intermediate data cannot guarantee sufficient openness.
In this case, irrespective of the operating system, application software, and version, it is necessary to consider the advantages of being able to obtain the same result (openness), being able to fill in data in the data, and transferring the data to the outside, etc. The workflow adopted as intermediate data is available, and the digital data input in various data formats is all converted to open PDF intermediate data at one time, and output processing and format conversion are performed. However, the current PDF as the intermediate format of the workflow has not yet constituted a de facto standard. In Japan, it takes time to fill in Japanese fonts, and POstscript has the same instability. As a result, manufacturers use PDF as RIP (rasterized data) or outline PDF (vector data), which will be closer to the final output PDF (CEPS PDF) As an intermediate format, this kind of workflow has improved the guarantee of output and flexibility to some extent. So far, the ideal PDF has become more and more useful as a standard intermediate data, but it will take time to universally use it. (To be continued)