Agfa Advantage, Arktitex at New York Times Co.

By: E&P Staff Agfa's Graphic Systems announced a five-year strategic alliance with The New York Times Co. that makes Agfa the publisher's preferred supplier of complete workflow software solutions and violet computer-to-plate equipment. The agreement covers all Times Co. newspapers, including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, and The Regional Media Group.

Expanding a previous three-year arrangement for consumables, Agfa and the Times Co. will share information on industry trends, challenges, and technologies, enabling both to master current and future needs.

The first purchase under the agreement is an Arkitex transmission system, Courier, replacing the company's current technology. The deal also includes 20 Advantage violet computer-to-plate systems, to be installed at most Times Co. sites around the country. Arkitex Courier will "help in the distribution of the pages of The New York Times to the company's U.S. printing plants," David Thurm, the company's chief information officer, said in a statement.

"This will give us the opportunity for the future expansion of our production capabilities and increased value for our customers," Marc Kramer, Times Co. senior vice president for circulation, said in the same announcement. Four of the new platesetters will be Agfa's newest violet system, the Advantage Xs, which the Times Co. will be the first to use. The rest will be a combination of fully and semi-automatic Advantage systems.

Arkitex, Agfa's PDF-, JDF-, and XML-based newspaper workflow system, integrates equipment and production tasks from advertising and editorial through to press. Arkitex Courier, Agfa's fourth-generation newspaper solution, provides control and automation in transmitting files quickly and easily to any number of print sites. The file-format independent system can be integrated with a range of external planning systems.

Agfa's new Advantage Xm (manual) and Xs (semi-automatic) computer-to-plate systems were designed for "newspapers with limited investment capabilities or medium throughput requirements," as backup systems, and for printers that also produce semi-commercial work such as supplements and catalogues.

Both models are loaded manually, can move 85 plates per hour, and offer multiple resolutions (1000 to 2540 dpi), can image any plate format up to 41 x 25 inches panorama using a 3-point FleX registration system, and work with Lithostar silver-based or N91v photopolymer plates.

The Xs offers online processing using Agfa's LP68/85 or VPP68/85 processors.

Both models are managed by Arkitex Newsdrive software to optimize engine speed and reliability. Agfa also created specific Arkitex workflow packages for page pairing, tracking, imposition, and RIPping to match the needs of Advantage Xm/Xs users.

New Arkitex features include: user-defined page adjustment for fan-out by plate template and color (with page-size scaling available in a PostScript/PDF workflow); furniture placement on the plate based on page color content or other variables, such as page number, high/low imposition, even/odd); automatic page positioning on a sheet to adjusts for creep (when center pages stick out farther than pages closer to a cover); automatic user-defined hard-copy proofing needs based on page, color, editorial, and/or advertising content; automatic splitting of a PDF into separate page files; enhanced imager feedback, improved messaging between systems, auto re-conversion from color to monochrome, and separation ordering in XML workflows.