Marketplace: New Products & Upgrades

By: Jim Rosenberg WoodWing Software (www.woodwing.com) Enterprise publishing system will support Adobe viewer technology for tablets, smartphones and other devices. What’s new: Working closely with Adobe, WoodWing sought to ensure that its tablet creation tools and flexible, collaborative workflow for multimedia content “can also be used to publish to the Adobe viewer when it arrives later this year,” said WoodWing President Erik Schut. More about WoodWing’s support is expected when Adobe publicizes details of its new technologies. WoodWing also will continue to enhance its Reader App for publishers needing an efficient solution now or wishing to work with CS4 “can move forward while safeguarding their investment,” said Schut. Services will be included to “deeply customize” the Reader App. QuadTech (www.quadtechworld.com) Image-based, closed-loop color control system with Accucam to achieve consistent quality while reducing labor and waste costs. What’s new: To help newspaper printers diversify into semi-commercial products, the system optimizes control over an entire image by comparing values of the live image with target aim points derived from a prepress file, obviating color bars and gray scales to free up space for editorial or advertising. Unlike RGB-based alternatives that compare sample image areas, QuadTech’s system uses L*a*b* data with its full-image values to overcome challenges of holding grayscale tolerances and aims to ensure accurate corrective steps are taken to maintain targets. Supports up 36 towers with webs as wide as 96 inches. Six-channel spectral sensor for each surface detects discrepancies and issues ink-key adjustments. AccuCam sensor also allows for inline inspection for plate verification, transposed colors, wrong pages and scumming. Low-pressure air across the lens ensures clean image capture. System operates through QuadTech ICON platform, which runs multiple press controls from a single operator interface. Eastman Kodak (graphics.kodak.com) Provision of process color for the Prosper S10 imprinting system. What’s new: Creation of a worldwide network of system integrators to enable part- and full-page variable color print inline with a web offset press or finishing line so that customers can benefit from offset’s specialty printing capabilities to create a “high-value shell” that can then be customized with process-color digital printing inline at production speeds. The program will connect Prosper users with integrators to upgrade offset presses with digital inkjet color. Kodak said its color ink developments enable full-color, dynamically versioned content for versioning, short runs and personalization. With flexible mounting options, the S10 integrates with presses and finishing lines to add variable data at 600 dpi to offset-printed materials. ORDERS & INSTALLATIONS Harland Simon (www.harlandsimon.co.uk) Replacing Goss Metro controls with press in full operation at a third Dow Jones Local Media Group daily, the Mail Tribune, Medford, Ore. What’s new: Puts all ink, dampening, registration and folder controls in a central location. Will replace main controls, install two Prima 6000 operator consoles, and supply a suite of management-system modules to include direct ink presetting, production planning, monitoring and reporting. Proprietary communications will be replaced with an Ethernet/IP network connecting dual (includes back-up) Press Master PLCs and remote I/Os at the units, reelstands, compensators and drives, with serial interfaces controlling new CGI digital inkers and Ryco dampeners. Earlier this month Harland Simon also contracted with Dow Jones to transfer its Prima RTS newsprint allocation systems from shuttered plants to five Local Media Group sites. Mediaspectrum (www.mediaspectrum.net) Implementation of Web-based ContentWatch CMS at Britain’s Mirror Group Newspapers. What’s new: Enables multimedia newsrooms at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People. For producing content across multiple channels while ensuring each title retains its identity. The plan to transform the newsrooms includes outsourcing some copyediting, merging each title’s news and features into single content units, shrinking of the workforce, creating “super pools” of reporters and writers, and merging digital and print publishing teams while ending editionizing of Mirror titles in Scotland. Anygraaf (www.anygraaf.com) ImageEd automatic color-correction system taken live at The Barbados Advocate, Bridgetown. What’s new: After images are color corrected using site-defined parameters, they are converted to CMYK or grayscale, according to the channel chosen for each image, creating a more streamlined and organized process and tonal consistency. ImageEd works in three-dimensional color space for accurate adjustment, optimizing colors to preserve detail in fully saturated image areas, while analyzing sharpness and noise levels and adjusting details accordingly. In manual mode, its easy-to-use interface enables users to fine-tune images. Goss International (www.gossinternational.com) Sale of a Goss Community SSC press in Vancouver, B.C., and refurbishing an inactive Mitsubishi press in New Jersey. What’s new: As part of an investment strategy to improve revenue and print quality, the 40-unit press will provide Glacier Media the capacity for contract printing of The Globe and Mail for distribution in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The web reduction and addition of digital inking and ink presetting on the press at North Jersey Media Group supports its contract to print Gannett regional dailies in Westchester County and Poughkeepsie, N.Y. manroland (www.manroland.us.com) Installation of a 75,000-cph Regioman doublewide, one-around press for Sweden’s Pressgrannar AB. What’s new: Straight-only press will replace an older press next year with six towers, six reelstands and two folders to print the International Herald Tribune, free publications, commercial tabloids and several Swedish dailies, among them the local Norrköpings Tidningar, the country’s oldest still in publication and among the world’s 10 oldest newspapers. Koenig & Bauer AG (www.kba.com/en) Sale of four compact Commander CT presses and ancillary equipment, valued at $145.5 million, for new Westferry Printers plant in Britain. What’s new: The equipment will permit Westferry’s parent company’s Express and the Star to join the country’s other national dailies in putting full color on every page, while providing both coldest and heatset capacity for contract newspaper and semi-commercial printing. The five-year project is to see the first coldest phase operating in 2012. The 90,000-copy presses will comprise 22 reelstands, 22 towers (with automated plate changers, roller lock adjustment and print-pressure adjustment) and four KF 7 jaw folders, with an automated paper logistics system. KBA ErgoTronic consoles will feature Print scheduling and presetting software from EAE (www.eaeusa.com). Towers will be equipped with web-cleaning systems and Maxima spray bars from Baldwin Technology (www.baldwintech.com <http://www.baldwintech.com> ). The parent company has an option with KBA for a further 12 units and two folders of the same CT for its other print company in Preston, along with an additional unit for the site’s existing Commander.