The Mutoh Toucan LT won the 2005 DPI product of the year award. As well it swept up two awards at the 2005 SGIA Digital Conference. Winning Best Poster Print and Best Rigid Substrate. The Mutoh Toucan LT beat out heavyweight contenders such as the Mimaki JV3- SPII and the Roland Sol-Jet Pro II.
“The Toucan LT printer has been tremendously successful and winning this competition validates its best-in-class performance and value,” says Guy Cipresso, Vice President/General Manager of Mutoh America. “We’re extremely proud to have captured this award.”
When Glenn Dewhirst of Prism Creative Inc. (a full-service creative advertising and design shop located in Newmarket, Ontario) was looking to upgrade his previous Mutoh printer, he had no hesitation in settling with the new Toucan LT solvent printer. Glenn and his partner Mike went looking for a printer that would not only increase productivity, but allow them to print on a variety of substrates at a cost-effective price. They found exactly what they needed in the Mutoh Toucan LT printer.
“We choose the Toucan LT 64 printer because of its output quality, and the cost of the machine was very competitive with the market. It was also easy to use and produces very little wasted material or ink on jobs,” said Dewhirst.
“Right away we could see much better productivity. With the Toucan LT, we were able to expand our media options. You can output to virtually every substrate, whether it be adhesive vinyl, vehicle vinyl, backlit mesh banner, perforated window vinyl, various vinyl banners, and a variety of paper stocks. You name it, we have printed on it. The printer is extremely versatile,” he adds. “We never again have to sacrifice quality regardless of the substrate we print on.”
Equipped with a heavy-duty feed system, the Toucan LT is designed to accommodate 220lbs. of media, even during unattended print runs. The Toucan LT is available in Eco-Solvent Plus ink or LT Solvent ink that ensures bright, vivid colors and up to three years’ outdoor durability on every print. With print speeds up to 398 sq. ft. per hour and resolutions up to 1440dpi, the new Toucan LT has the performance power to accelerate productivity.
“The Toucan LT has helped us increase production and profits by allowing us to tackle large jobs overnight, leaving daytime business hours free for more hands-on applications. The unattended print runs have made a huge difference to our bottom line by eliminating manpower in the equation in most cases day or night. It has also improved our turnaround times,” says Dewhirst.
“That feature came in handy on a recent big project for Canadian shopping centre developer Ivanhoe Cambridge for their Oakville Mall location. Prism produced and installed about 4,000 sq. ft. of mural applications in an area where Ivanhoe Cambridge was building a new addition to the mall. Original watercolor paintings were scanned and blown up to, in some cases, 20 x 30 feet. Printing much of the job overnight allowed us to get it done even faster and not fall behind on other projects.”
Continuing from my last article on computer security, this month I’ll show you how to encrypt and digitally “sign” your e-mail to maintain privacy and security. E-mail, being the oldest Internet technology, still accounts for most of the traffic. But did you know that your e-mail is being transmitted in the “clear”? Anyone with a packet sniffer can read your email! Not very secure for sure.
The version of mail that ships with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and 10.4 (Tiger) has the ability to sign and encrypt e-mail messages. This allows us to encrypt email messages and verify the identity of the sender of a received e-mail message – basically giving you the equivalent of a digital envelope to protect your mail from prying eyes.
I’m providing a step-by-step guide for getting started with using these features in mail. Apple doesn’t advertise this, but it’s really quite simple. Just so you know, Microsoft Entourage can also handle encryption, see “Using Mail” in this article on how to enable it.
There are several trusted authorities which can validate a person’s identity in the form of a digital certificate.
An e-mail certificate is used to verify that the sender of an e-mail message is indeed the owner of the e-mail address that the message is sent from. You need a digital certificate to be able to sign and encrypt e-mail messages. In this guide, we will get the certificate from Thawte, a South African based company, owned by VeriSign, that offers free e-mail certificates.
Note: You will need to use either Safari in Tiger, or Mozilla in Panther to request and download certificates. Earlier versions of Safari don’t know how to handle the resulting certificate file.
Ok, here we go! Head over to http://www.thawte.com/secure-email/personal-email-certificates/index.html and create an account by filling out the form provided when hitting the “join” button.
Pay special attention to provide a secure password for your Thawte account. Use the Keychain Access application provided with Mac OS X to store the password and the “challenge-response” questions you provide, as a “Secure Note.”
Once your account is created, you need to log in to prepare your e-mail addresses and certificate requests.
Now you’ll need to request a new certificate for the e-mail address you want. But first you need to tell Thawte about the e-mail addresses you have. Click on “new email address” under “my emails” and fill in the details. Do this for each and every e-mail address you wish to obtain a certificate for. Thawte will send a validation e-mail to each account to make sure you’re the legitimate owner of the address. Follow the instructions in each e-mail you receive to “activate” the e-mail address in Thawte.
Once you’ve entered the e-mail addresses, you can request certificates for each one. Click on “request certificate” under “certificates” and click on the X.509 button. Leave the defaults as-in on the next few screens. On the second page, you can select which e-mail addresses you want certificates issued for. You can save some time by telling it to do all of them if you wish.
Accept the default values on each form page. On the last page choose to “Accept Default Extensions.” When proceeding past the sixth page, a keypair will be generated.
At first, the status of your new certificates will be “pending” and when the process is finally complete, the certificate’s status will change to “issued.” When the certificate is issued, you can click the link named “Navigator” to be taken to a page where the details of your certificate are presented, and with a “fetch” button to download the certificate.
After you click the fetch button, the download panel will open. Safari may complain about “deliver.exe” being an application. Click “download” to let the certificate come down. Once the download is complete, Safari will automatically launch the Keychain Access application to transfer the certificate. Now you’re ready to start using your new certificates!
If you’re using Panther, Safari will not recognize the certificate, which is why you have to use Mozilla. In Mozilla’s certificate manager, you can export the downloaded certificates and import them manually in Keychain access. Save the certificates with a .cert on the end so Keychain will understand them.
To send a signed e-mail, simply select the sign button (star icon) in the new message window. Similarly, to send an encrypted message, select the encrypt button (lock icon). The buttons show up automatically because mail will match the e-mail address in your account with the certificate it reads from the Keychain. In Microsoft Entourage, you need to click on the security tab in each account you have and select the appropriate certificate (read from the Keychain). Then you can choose to sign and encrypt e-mails in Entourage either automatically or manually.
You should always select both buttons (highlighted in red), if available, unless the recipient of the message has explicitly requested not to receive signed or encrypted messages.
A signed message will allow you to validate the integrity of the message (that it hasn’t been tampered with) and the identity of the sender – but the message is still delivered in clear text, unless also encrypted. An encrypted message will protect the body of the message from prying eyes, but it’s not signed.
If you have a certificate, you can send signed messages to anyone, but you can ONLY send encrypted messages when both you and ALL recipients of the message have certificates.
Mail needs the recipient certificates to encrypt the outgoing message. The easiest way to let Mail know that a recipient has a certificate, and to give Mail access to that certificate, is to have that recipient first send you a signed message (not encrypted, just signed). Mail will automatically store the certificates it receives in the Keychain for future reference.
The encrypt button will not be visible when the recipient doesn’t have a certificate, or if it has one but you don’t have a copy of the certificate stored in your Keychain.
This is what a signed and encrypted message will look like when you’re on the receiving end. The little badge with the checkmark is the seal that ensures that the identity of the sender is known to be correct, and that the message has not been modified since it was signed by the sender.
If Mail can’t verify the message signature (for example, if some text has been added to the message after it was signed), Mail will display a warning to alert the user.
Encrypting and signing e-mail is easy but under the hood something interesting is happening. When you sign an e-mail the public portion of your encryption certificate is embedded into the email. Mail normally hides this but you can see it if you chose to see “raw source” in an e-mail you’ve sent. This public key is what gets stored on the recipient’s end in their Keychain. Your public certificate contains no passwords or personal data, only the encryption data needed to scramble a message so that ONLY you can read the message when it comes back to you.
When a recipient has a valid certificate as well, when they create a new e-mail or reply to an e-mail you’ve sent, they can choose to encrypt the message so that only you can read it. When you receive the e-mail, Mail automatically will use your private certificate to decrypt the e-mail, since it recognizes the public certificate embedded in the email. It’s totally transparent and automatic. You can look at the raw e-mail if you choose to see “raw source.” You’ll see nothing but gibberish!
Here are a few observations based on my experience with other email clients:
• Outlook XP on Windows can read signed and/or encrypted messages sent from Mail but Mail can’t open messages from Outlook XP that has been both signed and encrypted. However, an attachment will usually be present which you can open in a text editor.
• Netscape 7.01 doesn’t recognize signed messages sent from Mail. Upgrading to Netscape 7.1 solves this problem.
It seems that most of the more popular e-mail clients support digital certificates in their more recent versions. The best way to resolve problems with using digital certificates is probably to make sure that you use up-to-date versions!
Since Apple has made it so easy to protect your e-mail from prying eyes, it makes perfect sense to use this free method to give yourself the upper edge and protect your business and personal communications.
On many occasions I’ve been asked about online proofing. There are several products out there offering annotation tools and collaboration through email. Some products you can purchase outright and others are a subscription service hosted by the supplier. There is something for everyone. But, when it comes to online color proofing, the field is narrowed.
Two products on the market for SWOP Certified Online Proofing were compared using their available online demos and free training courses. Integrated Color Solutions (ICS) has two products, Remote Director and PressOK. Kodak Polychrome Graphics supplies the market with their certified Matchprint Virtual Proofing System.
KPG supports these monitors: Apple 20 (earlier version), Apple 20 (newer version), Apple 23, Apple 30, Eizo CG 21 and Eizo CG210. Along with these, ICS also supports the Apple G5 iMac, Eizo® CG22, LaCie 321, Sony Artisan GDM-C520K or Sony 23 SDM P232 W/B. A 24-bit color video card is required for the computer.
Matchprint Virtual runs in an internet browser on a G4 or G5. Remote Director uses a client but runs on both Mac and PC with a 24-bit color video card. Both companies supply calibration equipment and software. The software from ICS, ColorEyes Display, is also sold separately and works with most calibrators. I must say that the new LCD monitors seem much easier to calibrate than their CRT counterparts.
To start with, Integrated Color Solutions provides online interactive training through IC University. They provide training on their client software as well as training for Color Viewing, Profile Creation, Monitor Calibration and Proof Viewing. These seminars have been running weekly since the beginning of the year and are a convenient way to train your customers.
When setting up your customer, you need to explain how the environment, lighting and monitor warm-up time can affect color viewing. A quality control system should be established for them. A standard proof to compare to the screen, prepared by your company, can be given to them on a daily basis.
Both products supply the standard remote proofing tools for annotation and collaboration. They are both hosted, secure, subscription pay-per-proof services. Your Administrator controls user permissions, job jacket filing, and e-mail notification setups. The Matchprint Virtual provides a branding package where your access to the website can be designed for you or your customer.
PANTONE Colors, traps, overprints, online color measurement and hard-copy proofing are supported. Both products give you the power to see separations, RGB to CMYK simulations, have multiple concurrent viewers and allow downloads as well.
From here, Remote Director moves ahead. The ICS product uses a JDF interface. There is the ability to enforce calibration quality by automatically denying approval from a monitor that doesn’t meet calibration requirements. Their monitor calibration software lets you match luminance across multiple monitors (crt or lcd).
The real kicker is the PressOK product. PressOK is a wide-format scanner that captures a high-resolution image of a press sheet up to 27 x 38 in approximately 4 minutes, and transmits it directly to Remote Director for reviewers to check color. Users can zoom in on the press sheet to see registration, dot structure and trap, as if they were using a loupe. They can compare the press sheet with the final proof remotely (side by side).
Both products will fit the bill for online color proofing. However, there may be customers out there who want to host their own site. I understand both companies are willing to work with customers if that’s the case. With both these products, we’re able to have remote color and content approval and press side monitor proofs – and the idea of a remote press approval is finally here.
Bless whoever thought of having the customer sign off on an approval sheet before allowing a job to go to press. I’m sure that thousands of years ago, when the first newspaper was produced, whoever was running the job on the press had the bright idea of making someone else sign off. By having a client sign an approval, which is a standard procedure in the industry, you basically do one thing – defer blame.
If only the rest of life was so easy! We could all walk around with little approval slips in our pockets. “Excuse me honey, would you mind signing this slip stating that you’ll pick up milk on your way home?” And then, at six o’clock, when we sit down to eat dry mashed potatoes without a drop of milk, I could reach into my pocket and serve him with the signed slip, which would clearly state that he had, in fact, agreed to buy the milk.
There would be no arguing as to whose fault it was that the potatoes were dry!
But, no, real life is not so easy. Luckily, however, our business life can be made more efficient and rewarding if we use simple policies such as having all customers sign proofs on all jobs all the time.
When you’re simply responsible for outputting a document, you need only “flip” the art files onto a proof sheet (or these days, a PDF) and send it off to the client for approval. When you have had no input into the file, it’s not necessary to proofread everything as obsessively. However, it’s still a good idea to give it a quick once-over in case you can save your client from printing a flawed file. Have your graphics department ensure that the files are set up properly before printing.
It’s when you’re responsible for the artwork and layout that things can get tricky. That’s when it’s our responsibility as graphic arts professionals to check, verify, read and re-read. One mistake can not only cause tremendous problems all the way down the line, but can also be costly and affect your health (trust me…sleep does not come easily when an erroneous file has been sent to press).
As with most things, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So, even if your client is legally responsible after signing off on a project, you still have a moral responsibility to review it.
A checklist can help designers make sure that they’ve followed all technical steps to ensure that all images, fonts and measurements are included properly. If you’re coordinating the project, whether it’s for an in-house promotion or a customer’s project, it’s well worth the time to review it carefully. Even if it’s technically the client’s responsibility, it’ll just be more headaches for you if there’s a mistake. When it’s time to review the text, it’s best to sit alone in a quiet area where you won’t be disturbed and look over everything carefully. Here are some tips that may help. You can even encourage your clients to follow the same procedures.
1. Work with a printed-out copy rather than working directly from your screen. Use a brightly coloured pen to mark corrections.
2. First review the most important information, such as phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses and dates. Compare the information on the file to the information that was given by the client and to the copy that was approved by the client.
3. Read text from back to front to check spelling. This will prevent your eyes from naturally “sweeping” over text and not actually reading it.
4. Check the information off-line by line as you approve it.
5. Let a trusted work associate review the project.
6. Put the project down and take a break before returning to give it a final proofing.
7. Even if it’s a project that you have done several times, always re-verify all information. You never know when someone could have accidentally used the wrong file or re-typed something.
No one is perfect and unfortunately, mistakes do happen. When they do, you need to be pro-active and figure out a solution immediately. While a re-print is sometimes necessary, you can always get creative with other solutions, such as reprinting one colour only over a specific area to change some important information, covering a mis-print with a sticker or embossment, or trimming the job to cut the error right off (yes, it has been done!).
If the mistake is in the right place and you use your creative powers, you might be able to save time, money and produce a job on schedule, while “fixing” the error so that most consumers wouldn’t even notice it.
A printing firm’s workflow was determined by its equipment and the products it specialized in. Labels? Camera-ready art to separations, to film, to stripping, to step-and-repeat, to press, to die-cutting. Direct mail? Camera-ready to film, stripping, to plate (paper, plastic or metal, depending on the quantity), to press, to collator, folder, inserter, then address labeling. It was a complex, but mechanical process.
Back then, workflow problems mostly concerned speed bottlenecks, where the slower speed of one machine compared to the others could delay a whole job.
Today, however, jobs move through a printing operation in a digital format; print jobs remain in a digital, rather than a physical format for longer and longer. “Workflow” now means the movement of digital files from one file server to another, and from one digital processing application to another —layout to PDF rendering, colour separation, trapping, imposition. The workflow can vary from job to job, depending on the quantity to be printed, the type of output (offset press, wide-format printer, high-speed colour laser printer, for example), what kind of plate-making equipment the printer has, and the client’s preferences.
Bottlenecks no longer occur at particular machines, but rather within servers or networks. Managing the workflow is a critical part of ensuring that your shop remains productive. Software that shows the manager where bottlenecks are occurring in the digital production stream, and to do something about it, is a growing field.
According to printing industry analyst firm CAP Ventures, print production software, particularly workflow management software, is going to grow very fast. The company is predicting that this sector will achieve a compound annual growth rate of 8.3 percent per year between 2003 and 2008. The biggest category within this sector will be software that controls hybrid digital/offset workflows, which will grow by 98 percent—starting from almost nothing in 2003.
If your shop doesn’t have a graphical computer application that allows you to set up automated workflows, moving PDF files through colour separation, page imposition, trapping and RIPping at the click of a single button, it soon will. The boost to productivity and the reduction in errors is just to great to ignore. But for the long term success of the business, the ability to track and monitor print jobs may prove more important.
There are several workflow management systems available on the market today. In this issue, we’ll look at a few of them.
Most of the graphic arts industry has adopted Adobe’s portable document format (PDF) as the standard. It makes sense. A PDF contains all the information that high-quality, high-resolution printing (or other output) requires: text, graphics, photographs, fonts, colours, resolution, page information—all the specifications that the printer needs to create the final film or printing plate. In a computer-to-plate workflow, the PDF file fills the same role that final film did in the older workflow. PDF files can be distributed electronically, through e-mail or posting onto a Web site, as well. Small wonder that PDF is the file format of choice for all workflow software, not just products from Adobe.
Acrobat 7.0 can create PDF files with a single click from almost any file format—word processing, spreadsheet, slide-show, drawing, page layout and many more. Both Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect contain a Print To PDF command, making the creation of PDF files even easier.
Acrobat PDF Distiller converts PostScript files into PDFs using a file server, which means users or workgroups can do this conversion to remote files over a network, even the Internet.
Adobe has a real interest in creating efficient workflows that can process PDF files. However, it has taken somewhat of an arms-length stance. Its PDF JobReady application allows users to create and manage customized workflows based on PDF, even workflows that use the Internet. However, they sell the product as a software development kit, or SDK, which allows other companies to develop the actual workflow software. It’s a smart move: it gets many other companies, among them the biggest in the industry or the world, to do the work of creating workflow-creation systems; the more that do so, the greater the market for PDF and PostScript.
Heidelberg’s Prinect workflow system brings together components that were developed over the years by various companies that Heidelberg has acquired or had deals with, including Hell, Linotype and even Creo. Heidelberg has done a remarkable job in integrating the components into a whole system.
The Prinect Printready System is based entirely on the Job Definition Format (JDF), a standard file format for describing printing job specifications and instructions, developed by the CIP4 Consortium.
The Prinergy system connects the various stages of the print production workflow, from prepress even to press controls and bindery systems. SignaStation, the imposition workstation that originated in the Linotype-Hell days, is not a key software application in the system. PrintReady Cockpit allows users to set up their own workflows to suit their particular operations, and then can start jobs moving through stages such as preflighting, trapping, imposition and colour-space conversions.
Other modules in the Prinect PrintReady System communicate JDF job ticket data to help set up presses and bindery equipment, and even to the management information system (MIS) to help automate at least part of the billing and accounting system.
Prinergy workflow suite also contains components from companies that Kodak has acquired over the years. It begins with the Prinergy Digital Master, which is an electronic equivalent of the original film from the pre-digital days. A Digital Master is a PDF file in CMYK colour format, ready for offset printing. Along with the PDF of the content is an electronic job ticket that contains all the information needed to print the job—customer, quantity, number of pages and so on.
Prinergy Connect allows users to set up an automatic flow of print jobs from one station or application to the next, and to add components as you need them.
OneFlow is also a PDF-based workflow automation system. A graphical interface allows users to build their own prepress workflows, right up to platesetting. Drop job files, in a variety of creation formats, into “hot folders,” and OneFlow converts them to PDF, PDF/X, Postscript, EPS or TIFF/IT, then starts preflighting, trapping, imposing and proofing.
One advantage of OneFlow is that you also get EFI’s ColorWise software to keep colour within specifications. There is also a Job Tracker application that allows you to check on job status or total workload from anywhere with an Internet connection.
With relatively little market share in North America, Dalim’s Twist “intelligent workflow automation” software offers more than 150 different software tools to allow users to create exactly the workflow configuration they need. It allows for automatic conversion of files to PDF (for instance), applying ICC colour profiles, trapping, imposition, and even very complex, rules-based workflows needed for publications. Branching and filter tools help users to develop more sophisticated workflows.
Twist even allows users to combine several different file formats, such as PDF and CT/LW in one workflow.
Agfa’s :ApogeeX software, like its competitors, integrates well into a complete prepress production suite. Agfa stands apart from most of the other major prepress players in workflow, however. Rather than buying smaller companies, it has signed deals with them to integrate their technology into Agfa systems. For example, the :Apogee system uses Adobe’s CPSI RIP (raster image processor) and EnFocus’s PitStop Preflight Engine, among other third-party components.
:ApogeeX 2.5 also comes with an In-Render Trapper, a PDF Trapper and PDF Flattener components. The software supports smooth blends from QuarkXPress 6, duotones, spot colours and various proofing choices, including remote proofing.
Like most other workflow applications, :ApogeeX allows you to create your own workflow configuration and to edit it as you need. You can add tasks or processes, monitor job status and save settings and even imposition templates from Creo’s Preps imposition software.
M-PReS Workflow is designed for busy production shops with shifting teams working on several documents or production jobs at one time. A central file repository for text, layouts, PDFs, images and other files allows not only sharing of digital resources but also easier communications between production team members.
Users can set up and coordinate production processes as series of tasks in particular orders. Authorized people can perform the steps in the right order. The software tracks processes, changes and approvals.
Xitron’s Xenith Extreme software allows users to create workflows for either PDF or PostScript files. Based on job tickets, Xenith Extreme is compatible with CIP4’s latest version of JDF for standardized control right to the press. It can automate imposition, late page replacement, colour separation, trapping, RIPping and preflighting.
OpenRIP Symphony is, as you probably guessed, a RIP, and RIP-It has added a number of features that automatically take care of a number of the tasks required for offset printing: scanning, trapping, screening and imposition.
Your choice of which workflow system will probably be determined by the other equipment: Heidelberg shops will use Prinect, while those with Agfa platesetters will probably go with :Apogee. But don’t forget that there are several other choices available, more than the few we managed to cover in these pages.
Look for systems that give you the amount of flexibility that you need, but also have some “standard” workflows built in —something that you can customize. Test it to make sure it’s compatible with your equipment and the way you like to work. And look for the ability to automate as much as possible.
Pantone has released a new product for monitor calibration called the huey, developed in conjunction with GretagMacbeth. The interesting part of this story isn’t that we have another monitor calibration program in an already crowded market, but that it costs less than $100 (CDN). This is bottom-of-the-barrel pricing for a monitor calibrator. Previously, the lowest priced unit available was the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Display2 for $265. The purpose of this review is to determine how well this product compares to more expensive calibrators. Is it up to the challenge?
The first thing that I noticed was that the device is very small, not much bigger than my index finger. It does feel cheap compared to the more robust Monaco or Gretagmacbeth products, mainly due to the thin USB cable and its light weight.
Another interesting feature is the ambient light monitoring option. When the huey is placed in its cradle and connected to the computer via the USB port, the software will compensate for changes in room lighting. I can see this being a positive option for gamers or web shoppers, but not for photographers or graphic designers who need more consistency. A changing component in the process is asking for trouble.
This is the by far the easiest calibration software I’ve ever used to calibrate and profile a monitor. Anyone can calibrate his or her screen with no understanding of colour management. It only takes a total of 5 minutes to complete.
Once the huey software is installed, you can’t use another calibration package. Huey takes over your ICC profiles and will always use one of its own profiles, even if you try to change to another vendor’s profile. The only way to use other profiles is to uninstall the product Testing was limited to the Mac.
You can’t calibrate two monitors on one system—huey can only control one at a time. You can use huey to calibrate another monitor on a separate computer, then disconnect the device and return it to your main display.
This product is not aimed at the high-end user looking to save a few bucks. If you’re serious about your work and the quality of your product, then this isn’t for you. Huey is targeted to the mid-range consumer looking for a quick and easy fix. Consider the cost to regain a client’s confidence and then consider if $300 is too much to spend so you can have confidence in what you sell.
My evaluations have been restricted to LCD monitors, as this is the trend in displays. The first profile was done on a new Dell 17” LCD. I evaluated both Mac and PC platforms. The end result was a profile that I could not use. The area of highest concern was the abrupt transition at the shadows. Posterization is the word that comes to mind. Colour was too green as well.
The second monitor was a three-year-old Mac G4 Powerbook 17”. This one was not as bad as the Dell LCD, but again it was not a profile I could use. The biggest area of concern was that the overall colour was too yellow, as seen in the gray balance.
The last monitor was a 2.5-year-old 23” Cinema Display. On this monitor the huey did a decent job. Colour was similar to the Monaco OPTIX XR Pro. The gamma was a bit higher resulting in a brighter representation on screen. The grays were neutral and it could be used for informal colour-correction work.
Based on the four systems and three monitors tested my, conclusions are that the product works well on a high-end monitor and not so well on less expensive LCD’s. The dilemma with this product is that those owning less expensive monitors will be the ones that purchase – and that may lull those not familiar with colour management into a false sense of security. “I’m calibrated because I have used my huey.”
Sure, it can make your screen look different, but four out of five monitors that I tried looked worse—to the point were I could be making some very inaccurate adjustments. If I wasn’t so involved in colour management (verifying images, evaluating gray scales calibrating over 200 monitors in the last few years) I would give the huey two out of five stars.
Not everything today is brand new. Take the fundamental goal of printing, for instance. Historically its goal was, and still remains, the dissemination of information. And not only that, but one of the most essential business strategies for printers – configuring their tools and production processes to provide information to customers in ways customers want – has been around forever.
In 1455, Gutenberg streamlined production of the Bible using different tools and a different process (in his case a printing press with moveable type) so the information didn’t have to be disseminated by laboriously hand-written manuscripts any more and could reach more people.
“In other words, people had ready access to the information they wanted,” says PrintLink’s Managing Director Myrna Penny. “The same process is still happening for the same reasons today – no matter what the transportable medium. Though printing is a process of custom manufacturing, it has also always been a service industry – one that succeeds by identifying and meeting customer needs,” says Penny. “A successful company keeps its eye on the customer ball and recognizes that value is defined by the purchaser, not the seller.”
Gutenberg’s customers were all those people outside 15th-century royalty and the Church’s highest echelons who wanted to be able to read the Bible in an accessible, more affordable form. (Gutenberg’s Bibles sold for 300 florins each, a sum then equivalent to approximately three years’ wages for an average clerk. But it was significantly cheaper than a handwritten version that could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe! As the industry has continued to evolve, this one motive remains constant: the desire to make it easier to disseminate information to an ever-increasing number of recipients.
Customer choice remains one of the biggest drivers in communications today. As an example, in a November 2005 presentation for OPIA, Hugh Dow, president of M2 Universal, confirmed that methods of accessing information are evolving in response to consumer demand. He demonstrated how such novel technologies for information transmission as gas-pump monitors and cell-phone video screens are rapidly becoming mainstream vehicles to provide information to customers wherever they want to receive it.
Media consumers are favouring more specialized and targeted focus and consumer control, said Dow. They are moving from mass media (things like network television and mass-circulation newspapers) to specialty TV channels, commuter newspapers and consumer-generated Internet postings such as blogs and podcasts. Similarly, growth in magazines and magazine advertising is tending away from general-interest and towards special-interest and niche publications. And young radio audiences are migrating toward choose-your-own-repertoire Internet options via iPods & MP3s. The same principal is evidenced in the growth of variable imaging and one-to-one marketing.
Now more than ever before, printers need first to identify their key customers, then identify those customers’ business objectives. But most importantly, printers need to figure out what they can pro-actively offer to facilitate their customers’ communication needs. Can you offer tools, production processes and services to help them disseminate their message more effectively to their own customers, thus solidifying the partnership between you and them?
Next, look at how you can continue to meet the needs of your key customers through your staff. Your customer-focused improvements may require a realignment of staff duties and responsibilities. Make sure the job descriptions and skills of existing staff continue to meet customer needs. Identify the gaps and what it will take to fill them.
Don’t forget that competent managers and supervisors are critical to the process of successful staff development. Do you have them in place and are they up to the task?
Additionally, the current electronic revolution has not only given us more sophisticated tools of the trade, it has also put some significant business, production, process control, analysis and cash-flow management tools at our fingertips. Does your staff currently include qualified information-systems specialists who understand the integration of management and production?
A. There are a couple of issues at work here. Pantone colours are not swatches to use in design work. In fact Pantone (aka PMS colors) are ink colours to be used as “special colors” or “spot colours”. Many colours in the Pantone® library cannot be reproduced using CMYK ink combinations – so the Pantone Matching System (PMS) was developed to create a standard reference for these exceptional colours. The commercial printers can then mix their own inks and print these colours in addition to CMYK combinations to achieve the look you need in your job.
When you choose colours in your designs from the Pantone libraries your application renders the colour to best match how the “special” ink will look. Pantone supplies Adobe, Quark, Apple and others with the definitions of these inks. The application translates the color into RGB on your monitor. The problem is that the RGB rendering of the colours is sometimes quite different than the CMYK breakdown (also supplied by Pantone).
Here are two different Pantone colours:
They look completely different on screen yet are very similar printed on a colour (CMYK) printer. You should convert your pantone colours into CMYK if you intend to print them – so that you can see them as they will print – if you’re not intending to use them as spot colours on press.
The second problem you are experiencing has to do with the introduction of Pantone colours defined in the “Lab” colour space in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Lab is a device independent colour space where colours are defined as measured scientifically. Lab colours will then have to be converted into RGB or CMYK based on settings defined in your working environment. The monitor you use, the ambient light in your office, the ink profile of your printers, the colour or your printing substrate and several and other factors can influence the way that a particular color will be separated and rendered.
If you need to use the old definitions, Adobe and Pantone have supplied a separate library in Photoshop called “Solid to Process” which have already been defined in CMYK. It’s only a matter of time before Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and QuarkXPress also adopt the Lab defined Pantone colours.
A. Six months ago Apple announced that the Macintosh computers would be switching to Intel. The IBM/Motorola built PowerPC processor has reached its peak. The PowerPC cannot be made to run cool enough to be put into a laptop. Apple has only been able to put the fourth generation CPU into the laptops. As a result, they are falling behind the speed of the G5 Macintosh. At MacWorld in January Apple introduced the Intel based iMac and the new MacBook Pro earlier than anticipated.
The transition to the Intel chip is going to be able to support most of the current Mac OS X native applications using Rosetta an Apple built emulator. The Intel Macs will not be able to run “Classic” applications. We were able to run the older Mac OS 9 applications on the PowerPC Macs because of Classic – which runs Mac OS 9 in an emulator, but Rosetta will not run Classic applications. (In case your wondering, you will not be able to run Windows operating systems on these Macs because they are not the same as Intel PCs.) For a growing list of programs that don’t run on Intel Macs visit: http://www.macintouch.com/imacintel/rosettacompat.html
So to answer the question – it may be prudent to wait if you are dependant on Classic applications. Adobe’s Creative Suite applications do run but with some slow downs. (www.adobe.com) QuarkXPress will be shipping version 7 sometime in March. All of the Apple applications work of course – so you will be able to surf the Internet and receive mail, etc. Overall, the MacBook Pro is four times faster than the fastest PowerBook G4 and as time goes by more applications will become available. You should also consider that many people have already ordered the new Macs and the backorders (as I write) are considerable. If you’ve wanted a laptop for a while, you can also expect that used PowerBooks will start to appear – when they are usually scarce. It will be interesting to see what Apple will announce on April 1, 2006 – Apple’s 30th anniversary.
A. As a matter of fact, you already have an application on your Mac. You can open Microsoft Word files with Apple’s TextEdit application. If you’re on a Windows PC you can use WordPad to open MS Word files.
Frequently, employers feel that they come out of a termination experience worse off than the fired employee. After paying severance, legal fees and an expensive judgement, their perception is correct.
This doesn’t have to be the case. Employees can be terminated for just cause and the employer does not have to provide the employee with any settlement. However, the courts have set a very high standard for determining what is “just cause.” Employers have gone into court with what they thought was an open-and-shut case and were shocked to find that the courts determined that they were wrong. A costly settlement with accompanying expensive legal fees has often been the result.
Preventing a costly termination starts before an employee is hired and continues until the employee signs a release form.
Prior to hiring an employee, the employer needs to determine:
i) What work will the new employee be expected to do? Does the job description properly describe what will be required?
ii) How long will the job last?
iii) What skills, technical and interpersonal, are needed?
iv) What personal traits (detail orientation, dedication to the job, common sense, etc.) will the employee need to satisfy you?
v) How will the new employee be managed?
When hiring an individual, it’s important to match the conditions that have been determined in the pre-employment plan with the skills and attributes of the candidate.
Obviously an interview is one step in determining whether there is a good match. However, effective reference checking is high on the list of importance in the hiring process. What a person has done before will often reflect what they’ll do in the future.
Too often the focus of orientation is filling out forms and meeting people. The critical issue should be to make sure employees understand what’s expected of them.
Ensure new employees know the rules of conduct, the required standards of performance and other expectations necessary for them to be successful.
During an employee’s probationary period, it’s important to review on a regular basis what the company expects from them in quality and quantity of work, conduct and other work-related requirements.
Once a new employee has completed their probationary period, it’s important to maintain regular communications. Keep the employee informed as to whether his or her performance is satisfactory. In cases where there’s a need for improvement, this should be clearly explained.
The manager should keep a written record of what areas have been discussed and what improvement has been requested. Any such request should be followed up in an appropriate period of time.
If performance fails to improve, or if an employee continues to violate company policy, some form of discipline should be initiated. Depending on the severity of the offence, the discipline could range from a verbal warning to a short-term suspension.
It’s important to maintain a record of breaches of performance. If an employer has maintained a record of poor discipline that constantly needs to be corrected, the chance of establishing just cause in the event of a termination is much greater.
Without a record of progressive discipline, the courts are reluctant to support an employer’s claim of termination for just cause. It’s difficult to succeed with firings that occur as a result of a single incident. Often, these terminations are carried out in anger without a lot of thought.
There are of course, cases where single incidents do lead to termination for just cause. However, before taking this course of action, consult an employment lawyer to get advice as to the potential success of your stand.
When terminating an employee, it’s important to remember that he or she has personal pride and self esteem. There have been cases where the courts have ruled that when an employer has been insensitive in the way they conduct a termination and/or carry out subsequent actions related to it, they are subject to punitive damages.
A plan that includes a choice of site, time of day, who should be present and the amount of the settlement, should be developed prior to the initiation of any termination.
A discussion with a competent employment lawyer prior to instituting any termination is an example of excellent risk management.
Maybe you’re considering purchasing some income tax preparation software and attempting to do it yourself? For some that may be a viable option, but tread cautiously – you may be putting your financial well-being at risk.
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has offered Canadians the option to file their tax returns via the Internet for several years now. This service has quickly become popular. When it was first offered, the CRA received 443,000 individual tax returns via the Internet. In 2004, it received close to four million.
Taxpayers who prepare their returns themselves and send them via the Internet must use NETFILE. This service offers several benefits including: Security and confidentiality; Quick refund, usually within eight business days; Greater accuracy (fewer transcription errors occur when tax preparation software is used); Nothing to be mailed; No receipts to be submitted, unless requested and immediate acknowledgement of receipt of the tax return. The CRA says that it actively encourages individuals to e-file and that it’s taking steps to process 75% of all tax returns electronically in the coming years. This all sounds good in theory. The only problem is, how can you be sure that you’re getting the best deal when it comes to filing your taxes?
Most do-it-yourself tax preparation software promises the same things – to minimize the amount of time you spend on your return, to maximize your tax savings, and to allow you to take control of your tax preparation. Saving time on tax return preparation is always a good thing, but are you really saving time when you have to install and learn new software which you’ll probably only use once, and then it’s obsolete?
When they promise that you’ll maximize your tax savings, that assumes a certain amount of knowledge of your particular circumstances and the options for reporting and filing which will generate the most savings for you. That involves knowledge of the rules and of your financial circumstances. That’s a lot to ask of a piece of software that uses canned questions to walk you through the preparation of your return.
The Income Tax Act together with regulations is almost three thousand pages thick. Within those pages are a myriad of options for filing your personal income tax return. It’s impossible to condense all that information down to a few screens of questions and expect to generate a complete, well-thought-out tax return.
For basic returns, that is, for people who have a T4 slip from employment, a T5 slip for some interest income, and generally have basic information to file, the tax software is great. It checks itself for logic errors and helps you pop the numbers in the right boxes and prepare an accurate tax return.
Using a licensed tax preparer is probably the best thing you can do to ensure that your return is prepared correctly and accurately, and to satisfy yourself that all the tax savings options specific to your situation have been considered. For people with basic information to file, any software and preparer will do, however when you start to get into issues which require judgement and a knowledge of the rules, you need professional consideration and competent help.
Take for example self-employed individuals who may be at a point where incorporation makes sense. How about the payment of salaries to dependents who help at the business? What about income splitting with spouses, out-of-pocket expenditures which are business related, deducting the expenses related to your home office. How do you deal with losses? Are the losses on capital or on income account? Are the losses currently deductible and is there any carryover allowing recovery of taxes paid in prior years? How about limited liability with respect to business operations?
These are just a few of the multitude of considerations that require some thought. Most preparers will run through a mental or written checklist to ensure that options appropriate to your financial situation have been considered. The judgement of an experienced tax preparer will give you comfort in determining whether you should expense 75% of the vehicle you use for business, or perhaps a higher percentage should be used given your circumstances.
The tax sofware is pretty good at calculating numbers, but it’s only as good as the input. If your numbers are wrong, then the answer your software generates will be wrong and you may not find that out until you get a Notice of Reassessment with a Balance Due indicated. That starts a whole new chapter in that you may have to file a notice of adjustment or notice of objection, or just roll over and write the cheque.
For self-employed individuals, business owners, investors, people with losses both capital and non-capital, people with discretionary deductions such as medical expenses and alimony, there are more considerations and options than a simple “question and answer” form can cover. When you consider the cost and time to prepare your return by yourself against the possibility of the cost of overlooked benefits, it’s no contest – you should seek out a competent tax preparer to help you.
With all the change around us in our daily lives, it’s no wonder we resist it whenever we can. Hardly a week went by last month where I didn’t read an article which indicated that people “think” Variable Data Printing is here to stay. As a 23-year veteran of this industry, my mother is very pleased to hear about her son’s career choice.
Prices at the gas pump change every day. It seems that every time I find some food I like, when I go back to the grocery store, it’s changed. Now it only comes in the super-size can or sugar-free. My toaster (which lasted me over 25 years) used to toast bread quite nicely, simply dark or light on two sides. My new one, does one side or two, on a scale of 1 through 8, can do 4 slices at once, braise and broil and the timer gently “dings” which now allows me up to 30 minutes of toast burning.
Little did I believe back in October of 1983 that I would make the change of selling web offset and setting lead type from a California job case, to understanding merge/purges, ASCII formatting and non-impact printing. But I did – and to be honest, it’s no different (or scarier) than installing a new 8-colour inkjet wide format printer or a faster folder. Remember the Ditto Machines and Gestetner?
If you look at CRM, the driving force behind most of this change for the past 23 years (get the connection?), the reports and articles on why it fails, insist it’s because the employees and managers don’t buy in. Not the customers – it’s your staff! They’re resisting change. To them it’s easier not to do it.
It took almost ten years before the salespeople went to the marketing gurus – and only then did they realize that people didn’t even understand the principles, let alone the terminology and technology. It was sold as “this is what it can do to build loyalty with your customers.” It’ll give you the information to keep your customers.
No one included the employee people factor. It’s technology run by your people. People that are already working 12 and 14 hours a day, have little time for themselves and feel unappreciated and neglected. It’s not that they’re not loyal, but when did the company do a little extra for them?
They look around and see salespeople taking customers out to lunches and giving them golf shirts. The same customers who complain to you about late orders. When was the last time a sales rep came up and said thanks, or even gave you a company pen or notepad.
Your employees are your best form of advertising. You’ll get more mileage out of an employee wearing your logo on his or her golf shirt, than a client that might wear it once and then throw it in the back of his car.
Why do you think every Fed Ex or Kinko’s employee has that corporate shirt or hat? You know they work there. Corporate apparel is still the number one advertising specialty. When you go to a trade show, count the number of companies that have booth staff all wearing corporate logos. They are recognizable. They’re a walking, talking billboard.
Last year I received a golf shirt from a supplier at a trade show. Since I was travelling and it was appropriate, I wore it at the show the next day. When I went by my booth, they were so excited, they took my picture with a couple of their reps. While I was standing with them, several customers stopped and asked how I like it. Of course, it was a positive response and their interest was immediately rewarded with samples of their own.
Our customers are changing every day. We can no longer just be their caretakers. The same with our employees. We have to motivate both of them and show that we appreciate their loyalty. Think of the companies that you deal with that go that extra mile to get your business.
Every time I go to a lunch or meeting, I carry a pocket full of premiums. Some days I give out a pen, calendar or pack of custom imprinted gum. Some days I don’t. Sometimes it goes to a new contact, sometimes to the President’s assistant. Every day is different. Every day is changed from the day before.