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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

Martin Bailey, CTO, Global Graphics Software, and Rob Fay of Digimarc

WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE HERE

Further reading:

  1. What’s the best effective photographic image resolution for your variable data print jobs?
  2. Why does optimization of VDP jobs matter?

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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:

  1. Aim for 300 ppi, however the most appropriate image resolution for digital presses varies, depending on printing heads, media and screening used.
  2. Bear in mind image content; soft and dreamy images can be sometimes placed at a lower resolution.
  3. 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:

The same 12-megapixel image at 3 different sizes

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 edited by Global Graphics Software

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

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

The use of variable data has increased exponentially over the past five years and is emerging in new applications such as industrial inkjet. Yet poorly designed variable data PDF files disrupt production and reduce ROI.

Watch the recent webinar with Global Graphics Software’s CTO Martin Bailey, the author of Full Speed Ahead, a new guide to offer advice to anyone with a stake in variable data printing, including graphic designers, print buyers, production managers, press operators, composition tool developers and users.

In the webinar Martin presents an overview of the guide and highlights some of the key tips and tricks for graphic designers, prepress and print service providers, showing how, when they all work together, VDP jobs can fly through digital presses.

Sponsored by Delphax Solutions, Digimarc, HP Indigo, HP PageWide Industrial, HYBRID Software, Kodak, Racami and WhatTheyThink, the guide is a practical format for easy reference and includes:

• Tips and tricks for making fast, efficient PDF files for variable data printing
• Helpful illustrations, photos and explanatory diagrams
• Real examples from industry

You can download your copy here: https://www.globalgraphics.com/full-speed-ahead

For further reading about PDF documents and standards:

  1. PDF Processing Steps – the next evolution in handling technical marks

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