CTP in Practice at Talcott Communications

Company: Talcott Communications, Chicago

Production Director: Dave Seng

Publications: Monthly four-color tabloid Giftware News (160 to 300 pages) and two four-color, standard-size monthlies, Chef and Fancy Food (~64 pages)

Equipment: Apple Macintosh work-stations; Agfa Duoscan and Arcus II flatbed scanners (95 percent of editorial scans are done in-house); Nikon slide scanner, two Netware file servers

Software: QuarkXPress

Data transfer: Via Jaz disks

Computer-to-plate (CTP) is the darling of graphic arts technologies, and by now most publishers are familiar with CTP's potential to shorten production time and output first-generation quality. However, as the experiences of Talcott Communications will attest, CTP is neither a panacea for production problems, nor is it an all-or-nothing proposition.

In November of 1996, Talcott Communications began utilizing a Gerber Systems Crescent 42 digital platesetter for two or three 16-page Giftware News forms each month. The move was prompted by Giftware News' unusually tight production schedule. Typically Talcott only had seven working days to design, correct and ship disks for film output for anywhere from 10 to 20 forms.

"We used CTP for two or three forms that I knew would be the most design-intensive," Seng recalls. "We found it was a superb means of smoothing out our production workflow. We were no longer working 12-hour-plus days."

Talcott also used the Gerber CTP system for easy output of special trade show sections with good success.

Talcott's initially positive experience with CTP led to a decision to adopt a 100-percent CTP workflow for Chef as a full-issue test last May. At the same time, Talcott sent 50 percent of a 232-page Giftware News issue to the Gerber machine. Unfortunately, CTP didn't improve cycle time as expected, but not because of any fault in the Gerber system. Rather the printer's bindery could not keep pace with CTP's advances.

"We were very satisfied with the quality, but the magazine 'choked' the system," Seng explains. "That much work requires massive storage; Giftware News is 56 percent ads and the editorial is graphically very intense."