X-Rite Inc.

Business success can be the result of many factors. Sometimes it’s the result of an entirely unique product; other times it’s as simple as being in the right place at the right time. For most successful companies, however, it’s the result of hard work and a focus on what they do best. This latter approach describes the success achieved by Oaks, Pa.-based Global Packaging, Inc., which focuses on flexographic printing—wide-web flexo printing to be more specific. Further, it combines its expertise in flexo printing with a focus on its customers. “Our operating philosophy begins and ends with meeting customer expectations,” says Debbie Hobbs, sales

PALO ALTO, Calif.—HP has completed the PANTONE Goe licensing for the HP Indigo Ink Mixing System, making HP the only company among both digital and analogue press providers to offer both on-press simulation and an ink mixing solution for the PANTONE Goe System. Additionally, HP has developed what it says is the industry’s first swatchbook for on-press PANTONE Goe simulation. The new HP Indigo PANTONE Goe simulation swatchbook will be included in Pantone and HP’s new version of the Digital Color Toolbox for the PANTONE Goe System, a two-swatchbook bundle that offers a convenient way to compare solid PANTONE Goe Colors with their

Brand recognition and integrity depend on packaging. The need for faster makeready, on-time delivery, and reductions in cost and waste places a premium on predictable results and comparable quality independent of location, substrate, or printing process. The primary goal of color management, therefore, is to reproduce predictable, repeatable, consistent color across a range of devices and media from the time a file enters the workflow until it is reproduced on press. Because proof, plate, and print must deliver identical results, color management touches every part of the print or packaging workflow. As such, it relies on a range of tools including calibration devices, prepress

Agfa CristalRaster for PostScript-based stochastic screening technology for true photographic quality color reproduction. Write 209, Visit www.agfa.com J ANDERSON & VREELAND Anderson & Vreeland offers Digital prepress workflow systems, including Artwork Systems, RIPit Systems, Agfa Apogee Series and Xitron. Write 210, www.anderson vreeland.com, See Ad p. 8 Artwork Systems NEXUS provides total integration of the Artwork Systems leading front-end, back-end technologies. Write 211, Visit www.artwork systems.com J BETA INDUSTRIES BetaTab data acquisition software effortlessly captures calibration data and images to improve calibration, communication, and collaboration. Write 212, Visit

Industry experts lend their advice on the best ways to approach remote proofing for packaging. IT HAS BEEN observed that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except that she did it backwards and in high heels. It's the same with proofing (Fred) and remote proofing (Ginger). Throw in the complex proofing requirements of packaging printers and a straightforward series of dance steps becomes an intricate high-wire act, in which the accurate long-distance reproduction of graphics, text, placement, and structure—as well as the matching of special brand or logo colors—can make or break an important job. Like commercial printers, packaging printers can save

Extended color printing could be the next best thing to the eye of the beholder in the package-printing industry. PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING, THE exact nature of color may be in dispute forever. As far as brand owners and the package and label printers who work with them are concerned, however, color is a concrete, measurable reality and the most critical component of print quality. If the job of the packaging or label designers is to create shelf appeal and ensure brand recognition, the job of packaging and label printers is to lock in those attributes by reproducing those designs as faithfully, efficiently, and affordably as

Using knowledge of how humans see color, along with data from instruments such as densitometers and spectrophotometers, color can be mapped just like DNA. THE CONCEPT OF color management is fascinating, and more than a little controversial. To those of you that took exception to the suggestion in last month's story (Proofing By the Numbers, August 2003) that color management was easy enough for a college student, I humbly concede. There is a wider body of knowledge, and more tools available for controlling color than ever before. Even so, that does not make the theory of color any easier to understand. Color management can

Dunwoody College of Technology proves that matching a color proof to the press isn't purely academic. LAST FALL, DUNWOODY College of Technology instructor Pete Rivard and his students set out on a mission. Armed with a new color halftone proofer, spectrophotometers, and color management (CM) software Rivard set out to prove just how close a proof can match a press—in this case a narrow-web flexo press, running UV inks on pressure-sensitive label and paper stocks. Rivard's experiment is meaningful for a number of reasons. First, he showed that yes, it is possible to define a set of conditions under which a proof can match

These products and companies were the most sought-after in 2002 by packagePRINTING readers. Top 10: Prepress Equipment 1. Creo—PDF-based packaging workflow Prinergy Powerpack, copydot scanning systems, film imagers, and CtP devices 2. Agfa—Workflow and color management systems including the AgfaScan XY-15 Plus, Sherpa 43 Inkjet system, and Lithostar plates 3. Kodak Polychrome Graphics—Offers Digital and conventional plates, film, and proofing and color technologies including the Kodak Approval XP unit 4. BASF—Offers Nyloflex® and Nyloprint® equipment combinations for processing photopolymer flexo and letterpress plates and sleeves 5. MacDermid—Broad range of sheet, liquid, digital, and water-wash photopolymer plates, platemaking equipment, sleeves,

At prepress trade shop Southern Graphic Systems, "to measure is to know." by Terri McConnell, Prepress Editor Last December, I was tickled to see Denny McGee—a man named one of the 1990s' "ten most influential people in the packaging industry"—address a room full of his peers with a giant piece of cheese on his head. McGee, hosting the Educator Seminar Series, was playfully hammering home the point that someone has been messing around with the printing food chain. Markets are moving, demands are changing, and we can't expect to find our profits in the same place we found them yesterday. No single group of