This edition of Graphic Arts is all about small presses and copiers. Our feature article, starting on page 20, looks at the shifts in the market for these categories of printing equipment. And in the News, TrendWatch Graphic Arts reports that colour copiers are doing more of the kind of “robust” variable printing work that supposedly is the preserve of high-end digital presses.

Are toner-based colour copiers with RIPs for printing digital files taking over some of the printing market from offset presses? The answer seems to be both yes and no.

Colour copiers are accounting for a lot more short-run colour output than ever before in North America. But it seems that much of this is “new” work — printing that just wouldn’t have been done on an offset press, because it would have been too expensive.

It also seems that printing companies that adopt this new technology and make room for it in their production floor, and in their sales efforts, find new work for their offset presses as well. It seems that print customers like the idea of a printing company that can handle all their printing needs, short-run, stationery, point-of-purchase and more. Having a machine that produces short runs of colour cheaply can also convince a corporation that the printer will be able to handle their longer-run needs, as well.

Still, there’s little doubt that some of the work that was once done by small offset presses is being done by colour copiers. And as TrendWatch found, supposedly less capable colour laser printers are producing pretty sophisticated variable colour printing, even though they may be slower and produce output with lower resolution than the Indigo, iGen or Nexpress.

And that brings up the next question: what is quality in the eyes of the printing customer? Graphic arts professionals build their businesses and their careers on attention to “quality,” but do the customers care as much as we do about Pantone colours, resolution, grey component replacement and colour management?

So tell us at Graphic Arts magazine: how much do your customers care about colour quality? Do they insist on colour matching to their corporate standards? What about matching to colour proofs? And how discerning are they? How much do they know about colour management and how able are they to tell whether your output is close to their originals?

Tell us by e-mail (scott.bury@graphicartsmagazine.com) whether your customers’ focus is more on quality, timing, or price.