FullSpeedAheadPDF – Global Graphics Software blog

May 6, 2021May 19, 2021

The Print Report with Deborah Corn and Pat McGrew

Martin Bailey, distinguished technologist at Global Graphics Software, joins hosts Deborah Corn and Pat McGrew in this special episode of The Print Report. Together they discuss the innovative methods used at Global Graphics to solve complex and common printing problems using software.

Martin highlights the award-winning PrintFlat™ technology, which gives smooth, uniform tints and accurate tone reproduction via a simple ‘fingerprint’ calibration of the screening process, and the value of creating optmized PDF files so they don’t slow down your digital press and disrupt the production process.

Tune in here:

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March 15, 2021September 21, 2022

The Digimarc interview: Fast, efficient print production with variable data printing

The impact of poorly constructed PDF files on production schedules has increased as press resolution, colorant count, speed, and width rise – greatly increasing the data rate required to drive them.

This increase in data places additional demands on the processing power of the DFE and risks slowing down the digital press: a delay of half a second on every page of a 10,000-page job adds 90 minutes to the whole job, while for a job of a million pages an extra tenth of a second per page adds 24 hours to the total processing time.

In his guide: Full Speed Ahead – How to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press, Martin Bailey, distinguished technologist at Global Graphics Software, gives some technical recommendations as to how you can make sure that you don’t make a PDF file for a variable data job that will bring a digital press to its knees. It provides objective information for graphic designers, print buyers, production managers, press operators, owners of PSPs, and developers of digital presses and composition tools.

Martin has just released a second edition of the guide and in this film he talks about the updates to Digimarc‘s marketing communications manager, Rob Fay. Digimarc provides additional functionality to Global Graphics’ software platforms and is a sponsor of the guide.

Topics in the interview include:

The guide’s purpose and target audiences
Background on updates related to the standards PDF/X-6 and PDF/VT-3
Differences in the various VDP applications: traceability; trackability; and personalization
Recent improvements in DFE (digital front end) technology that are enabling more advanced VDP

WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE HERE

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February 10, 2021February 3, 2021

Second edition now available: Full Speed Ahead: How to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press

At the beginning of 2020, in what we thought was the run-up to drupa, Global Graphics published a new guide called “Full Speed Ahead: How to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press”. It was designed to complement the recommendations available for how to maximize sales from direct mail campaigns, with technical recommendations as to how you can make sure that you don’t make a PDF file for a variable data job that will bring a digital press to its knees. It also carried those lessons into additional print sectors that are rapidly adopting variable data, such as labels, packaging, product decoration and industrial print, with hints around using variable data in unusual ways for premium jobs at premium margins.

Well, as they say, a lot has happened since then.

And some of that has been positive. At the end of 2020 several new International Standards were published, including a “dated revision” (a 2^nd edition) of the PDF 2.0 standard, a new standard for submission of PDF files for production printing: PDF/X-6, and a new standard for submission of variable data PDF files for printing: PDF/VT-3.

We’ve therefore updated Full Speed Ahead to cover the new standards. And at the same time we’ve taken the opportunity to extend and clarify some of the rest of the text in response to feedback on the first edition.

So now you can keep up to date, just by downloading the new edition!

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

What’s the best effective photographic image resolution for your variable data print jobs?

It goes without saying that the final quality of your printed piece is paramount. But when speed and time constraints are also critical, what can you do to ensure your files fly through the press and still reward you with the quality you expect? Optimizing the images in the piece is a good place to start, but if you’re creating a job with variable data, where there are thousands of pages to print, each with a different image, how do you know what a sensible effective resolution is for those images that will ensure your PDF file doesn’t trip up the print production workflow?

In his latest guide, Full Speed Ahead, how to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press, Martin Bailey, CTO at Global Graphics Software, advises not to ask the print workflow to do more work than necessary if that doesn’t change the look of the printed result. Images are commonly re-used within a VDP job, so being able to process each image only once and then re-use the result many times can significantly increase the throughput of the digital front end. On the other hand, some images are personal to every recipient and must therefore be processed for every single recipient, slowing the workflow down.

Martin offers the following tips for setting appropriate effective photographic image resolutions:

Aim for 300 ppi, however the most appropriate image resolution for digital presses varies, depending on printing heads, media and screening used.
Bear in mind image content; soft and dreamy images can be sometimes placed at a lower resolution.
Don’t use a higher effective image resolution for photographic images than the output resolution as this is often not productive. The example in Fig 1 below illustrates how easy it is to use an image at several times the required resolution:

Fig 1: The same 12-megapixel (4000 x 3000 px) image placed on the page at three different sizes. Source: Full Speed Ahead, how to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press.

When an image is placed onto a page the original resolution of that image is largely irrelevant; what matters is how many pixels there are per inch on the final printed page. As an example, if you have a photograph from a 12 MP compact camera it’ll probably be approximately 3000 pixels by 4000 pixels. If that’s placed on the page as 3 inches by 4 inches (7.5 x 10cm) the effective resolution is about 1000ppi (4000/4). That would usually be about three times as much as you need in each dimension.

A variety of tools are available for optimizing image resolution, and some composition tools can also do this automatically. To find out more about the best effective resolution for your images, and to pick up more tips for optimizing your images for variable data printing, download the guide:

Full Speed Ahead – how to make variable data PDF files that won’t slow your digital press.

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