The Digital to Business (D2B) swatches, launched alongside Antalis McNaughton's new digital2business.co.uk website, are intended to become a printers' "bible" for digital substrates.

Antalis has developed one guide for dry toner and one for HP Indigo liquid toner presses. Both guides contain a mix of unprinted samples of coated, uncoated, speciality and creative papers.

James Jarvis, product marketing director at Antalis McNaughton, said: "Paper merchants sell a hell of a lot of substrates and in the early days of digital people used to lump everything together, regardless of what sort of digital equipment it was aimed at.

"What we've done now is to group the substrates by the output device, so that printers can quickly identify what type will work best with their machine and where to get it from.

"It's a very similar range for both dry and liquid toner and we've laid them out in the same way but the products themselves are slightly different because they have to be to take the different printing technique."

In addition to the unprinted samples, Jarvis said that the D2B guides included a number of printed samples on some specific substrates in a separate pocket at the front of the guide.

"We've included printed samples to give an idea of different products printers could be offering with these papers," he explained. "Everytime a printer can provide another solution to their customer, that's helping them to add value and to gain new business.

"It's incredible what you can do with some of the speciality and creative papers, things like Creazy pre-creased sheets, which you can run through laser printers and Indigo presses to produce things like commemorative wine boxes for your top 20 customers."

Printers can register online at the digital2business website to request a swatch or contact their local sales agent.