Westendorf Printing Company Spotlight
“The biggest advantage is the faster turn-around which gives us added flexibility in our schedule. We can have a 48-page, 5-color book on-press within three hours of approval!”
Mark Ferguson
Prepress - Westendorf Printing
Customer Profile
Westendorf Printing is a high-quality commercial printer producing 2-up and 4-up jobs with up to seven colors.
System Configuration:
RIP: Xenith Extreme Workflow 3-platform Cluster RIP with In-RIP Trapping
Output devices: Mitsubishi a2500 Violet Platesetter
Proofers: 2 Epson 7600’s
Imposition: PREPS
Previous system:
RIP: Xitron Navigator
Output Devices: AccuSet 1000
Proofing: Navigator XPR driving Epson 7000
Trapping: TrapWise
MANUAL STRIPPING AND TURN-AROUND TIME
Westendorf was an existing Xitron customer using the Navigator Harlequin RIP when they starting looking for a more automated workflow. They wanted to tighten their turnaround time and cut down their hours on the stripping table. With Xenith they are able to use Post-RIP imposition to virtually eliminate manual stripping.
The biggest advantage to the new system was the improvement in the turn-around time, giving them more flexibility in their schedule. “We can send out proofs of a 48-page 5-color book and have it on press within three hours of approval,” said Mark Ferguson, of Westendorf. “Before we installed Xenith, we would send out digital proofs; then when they were approved we’d have to RIP and output single page films and strip them together. We might be able to get the job on press the next day on the 2 nd or 3 rd shift.”
Xenith has also improved Westendorf’s correction cycle. Previously, if there was a late change to a page, it had to be re-RIPed and the new film was stripped into the flat. Now corrections are made using Enfocus PitStop, or new pages are dragged-and dropped into the Xenith imposition template well before output.
PROBLEM FILES
Like most commercial printers, Westendorf receives customer files from a variety of applications and platforms. “We can now handle just about anything the customer gives us,” says Ferguson. “We can correct problems in the Normalized PDF without having to go back to the native application and we can correct anything from font and color space errors to content-based issues using the Enfocus PitStop tools. We have almost forgotten how to modify jobs in the native applications because we use Xenith to fix all the problems files!”
As an example, Ferguson points out the issues associated with the new transparency features available in Adobe Illustrator or In Design. Process colors work fine with transparency, but spot colors do not. With the ink re-mapping tool in Xenith, spot colors convert to process on the fly and the jobs output properly.
Similarly, MS Word and MS Publisher files are properly handled through the automatic conversion to PDF, where RGB data is properly mapped to CMYK. While most files are converted into a digital master through this process, about 35% of Westendorf’s work still goes through the system as native PostScript, further demonstrating Xenith’s flexibility.
TRAPPING
According to Ferguson, Xenith’s In-RIP trapping is excellent and very fast. He reports no problems in the first six months of use. With their previous manual trapping solution they could not overlap Trap Zones and sometimes the application would spread colors in the wrong direction. Some files took up to 11 hours to trap; Xenith traps these same files in a few seconds.
PROOFING
Westendorf outputs proofs to the Epson 7600’s using the Xenith proofing plug-ins. Ferguson labels the proofing workflow as very efficient. “We normalize the PDF files and create thumbnails for imposition, RIP the composite files for proofing and the separations for plates all at the same time. This is much more accurate and leaves less room for errors than our previous workflow. There was nothing more frustrating than sending proofs to a customer and two days later outputting plates only to find that something flowed incorrectly or there was a missing font during final output.”
CONCLUSION
Ferguson summed his company’s overall satisfaction with Xenith in one sentence: “Xenith has streamlined everything and the accuracy is fantastic.”
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