Benefits of CTP

There is no doubt that deadlines rule the publication market segment. Even the power wielded by advertisers and advertising agencies at some point must give way to the march of the calendar if the next edition is to get out. Gaining an extra day to sell or to get late ads in can make a world of difference in profitability. There are many benefits of Computer to Plate (CTP) technology but one that garners the most attention is the time savings.

Read further to learn of the many ways you can benefit from going CTP.

Quicker Production Cycles

CTP eliminates steps from the production cycle. Even in a Computer to Film (CTF) workflow it can take five steps from having the copy in digital form to having it imaged on a plate: film imaging, film processing, stripping, contacting, and finally plate processing.

In a CTP process four of these steps are fully removed. Each step eliminated from the process reduces the overall time required to get plates to press. Not only were these steps time consuming they were also very labor intensive. Labor is not only costly but by virtue of the human element, performance of these tasks may lead to quality and consistency problems.

In some cases as much as a week can be shaved off production cycles depending on the type of workflow currently used. Quicker production cycles equate to longer selling cycles. In addition, this gives your advertisers more time to submit their ads.

And we all know that time is money.

Lower Production Costs

CTP eliminates the need for film by imaging the page directly from the computer to the printing plate, which, as already mentioned, can shave as much as a week off production cycles but also can save up to 20% in material costs.

According to Catalog Age magazine, a cataloger, for instance, can save $50-$100 per 16-page signature, or form, in film costs. Add the elimination of the film-based proof, which can cost $150 a signature, and a cataloger can reduce the prepress expenses of a 96-page book by $1,200-$1,500. Of course, these figures can vary and for that reason it is a good idea to ask your Sales Representative how much you can be save by switching to CTP production methods.

Sharper Print Quality

CTP allows printing presses to print cleaner and crisper images by way of eliminating dot gain in the prepress process. In a conventional prepress workflow, dot gain from photomechanical processes of imaging plates from film can increase overall dot gain as much as 6% on press. In a CTP workflow, first generation dots are imaged to the plate eliminating dot gain in prepress. This also gives the press more latitude for printing higher ink densities without "plugging up." The benefits are richer, fuller, better saturated color printing.

Better Registration

Film is comprised of a polyester substrate that is subject to changes in humidity and temperature that can cause it to stretch or shrink. In a single page film based submission method, strippers are responsible for ensuring that all pages on a form are in register. Film is taped down to clear polyester that may have different tolerances to temperature and humidity than the film. Some press forms can contain as many as 16 or even 32 pages. If one color of one page is not properly registered the integrity of the entire press form can be compromised. In some cases, because of film and stripping base stretching or shrinking, all the plates of a given form have had to be re-made because one color of one page was not registered properly. When registration becomes a problem on press, make-ready times go up and deadlines are compromised.

In contrast, CTP excludes the use of film negatives or positives. CTP plates are imaged on highly accurate platesetting equipment on aluminum substrates that are very resistant to changes in temperature and humidity. Even imposed computer to film workflows cannot come close to offering the accuracy and stability of registration that a CTP workflow can provide.

Easier Revisions

Before CTP, revisions were cumbersome and time consuming and even more sensitive to the registration issues mentioned earlier. Film had to be output and stripped in. With an all-digital workflow it is simply a matter of making the needed changes to the pages, deleting the old pages, and placing the new pages in place through the use of automated electronic imposition techniques. Elimination of steps in the revision process also means that when a job on press requires a revision it takes less time to make corrections and get the job back on press.

As you can see the benefits of CTP are numerous. In summary, there are fewer variables in the production process, productions cycles are shorter than production cycles that involve film and CTP prepress production costs are lower. Isn't it time you started to reap the benefit of CTP.

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