Imagine you have a 12pp brochure going through your B1 press. You plan to run six pages work-and-turn on each of two sets of plates, but of course that gives you a 4pp-sized hole on the sheet. Then, just as the job’s due to go into production, you get a 2pp insert and some A5 flyers – same stock, same inks, similar quantities. With a bit of quick work, you can plan them all up on the same sheet, saving two makereadies, a lot of paper, and gaining an extra two production slots on the press. Such scenarios used to be common even as recent as a decade ago. Now the practice of ‘ganging’ jobs is rare, if not obsolete.
Ivor Dixon, managing director of UK software distributor Positive Focus, puts it down to the advent of CTP. “When we were all working with film, it was a skilled but straightforward task to strip in several jobs together on a sheet,” he says. “Now, even though there are basic planning and imposition capabilities in many front-end workflows, it’s a bit of a fiddly process. And the typical pre-press operator isn’t trained to think like that any more. Questions like matching quantities, and whether an imposition will guillotine out, can be quite complicated.”
Dixon also points to the inability of most MISs to cater for ganged jobs: “Estimating modules don’t take account of the benefits, and scheduling modules can’t cope with printing two jobs on the same sheet. So, by and large, people tend to print jobs separately and they imagine that quicker makereadies and faster press speeds will compensate, which they do to an extent, but almost every printer could be more profitable if they used ganging on a regular basis.”
In the beginning
Positive Focus is the UK distributor for Australian outfit LithoTechnics, the brains behind Metrix, claimed to be the print industry’s leading ganging software. Metrix was originally dreamed up by Rohan Holt who, 10 years ago, was a frustrated production planner at a big Australian printer. Holt knew there had to be a way of doing with digital files what he was doing with film, and for a year he spent his weekends creating a piece of software called SuperImpose, which laid the foundations for Metrix. SuperImpose was sold to ScenicSoft, and was later bought by Creo, which of course merged with Kodak, changing the name to UpFront.
To create Metrix, Holt went back to the drawing-board to set up his own firm, LithoTechnics. In the production chain, Metrix sits after the MIS and before the RIP. It is built around a database that holds information on press sheet sizes and the capabilities of post-press kit. Job specifications are brought into Metrix (either as a JDF file from the MIS, or manually re-keyed through Metrix’s own data entry screen) and each item is ‘virtually mocked up’ in a graphic window.
Detailed calculations
Metrix interrogates the user about quantities, and calculates impositions based on the respective quantities of each ganged job. Grain direction is also accounted for – jobs that have to be folded are imposed so that folds run parallel to grain direction – and Metrix is intelligent enough to work out that any non-printed area of an item can, if required, be sited in an area normally left for press grippers.
Metrix then calculates several imposition templates, flows content into those templates and produces a selection of layouts that are fully viable (which means that the sheet is printable on the specified press, finishable on the specified post-press kit, and will guillotine out). The layouts are editable – the user can move items around and Metrix recalculates the layout. Each layout also comes with calculations of overage for each item.
For users who have a workflow using Preps, Metrix can also export a skeleton Preps template for manual flow of content into the imposition. And Metrix also exports a full JDF job specification in a standard output format which can be loaded straight into the RIP, the press and any post-press kit downstream of the press.
Version 1.0 of Metrix appeared in 2004. Initially, it was geared to the production requirements of jobbing printers doing simple flat or folded jobs, and the ganging facility was its big selling-point. Early UK installations went into screen and display printers, where the substrates were expensive, and maximum profit needed to be squeezed from the sheet. Metrix v2.2 will be launched at Northprint next month (to celebrate, Positive Focus is knocking about 11% off the cost of Metrix for the duration of the show), and this is squarely aimed at the average jobbing commercial printer.
The big difference between version 2.2 and version 1.0 of Metrix is the ability to handle bound publications – both stitched, where every 4pp section must fold together, or perfect bound, where several sections are collated together. Again, this uses the virtual mock-up window (Dixon calls this the “worm’s eye view”) where other imposition software uses numbers.
Version 2.2 has an automatic capability to correct shingling or creep, the name given to the way that the inner pages of a section sit further forward than the outer pages, pushed forward by the thickness of the paper at the spine fold.
Overcoming JDF problems
Metrix is JDF-enabled, right out of the box, but JDF – as Dixon points out – has some big limitations, chief of which is an inability to recognise ganged jobs. With this in mind, LithoTechnics has built a subset of XML to wrap around the JDF job spec, known as Metrix XML, to carry metadata on ganged jobs. As a patch, it works well, but in the meantime, LithoTechnics sits on the CIP4 board, and upcoming versions of JDF should be able to cope with ganging in the near future.
Metrix is unable to automatically scan the jobs coming into the factory to see if they are suitable candidates for ganging. Currently, a pre-press operator has to match likely jobs together and feed them into Metrix to see if they’re viable candidates. The reason this process isn’t automated, says Dixon, is that Metrix is further down the production chain than that. “That is really a job for the MIS,” he says.
LithoTechnics has been in dialogue with all the major MIS developers, and Dixon says it may be “quite soon” that MISs begin to include links to Metrix, “both to scope in the cost benefits of ganging at the estimating stage, and to allow for it in planning.”
There are five versions of Metrix, each specified for a particular type of printer, from B3 and digital at the bottom end (MiniMetrix, with no JDF output) all the way up to super-large-format offset and wide-format digital inkjets at the top (Metrix Max). The step change separating each is the maximum number of jobs it can gang together on a single sheet.
Dixon’s claim that most printers would be more profitable if they used ganging on a regular basis is not an idle one. Recently, Positive Focus took some figures for ganged jobs versus separate jobs and put them through a Tharstern MIS with some standard costings (plates £25 each, press £160 per hour, makeready £40 per colour etc). The MIS spat out figures showing that ganging together three A4 jobs of a total 7pp pagination saved £456; ganging together three A4 jobs of a total 16pp pagination saved £317; ganging together four A4 DL-format jobs of a total 38pp pagination saved £512. All these figures represent a saving somewhere between 20% and 40% of original job costs. “And that’s all straight onto the bottom line,” points out Dixon, “to say nothing of the production benefits you get from having more staff time, increased capacity, and speed of turnaround."
SPECIFICATION
Min system requirements
• Intel-compatible PC at 800MHz
• Windows 2000 Professional, XP Professional or 2003 Server
• 256MB RAM
• 1,024x768 resolution
• USB port
Sample prices
• MiniMetrix (B3, no JDF Preps export, no capacity for bound work): £1,548 (£1,348 at Northprint)
• Metrix Commercial (up to 3.6m2, JDF/PDF/Preps output, max 16 jobs to layout): £2,298 (£1,998 at Northprint)
• Metrix Max (up to 3.6m2, JDF/PDF/Preps output, max 160 jobs to layout, capacity for bound work): £6,748 (£5,998 Northprint)
Contact
• Positive Focus, 08456 120246, www.positivefocus.co.uk
THE ALTERNATIVES
Creo UpFront 1.6
UpFront is really an impositioning package rather than a ganging package; essentially it takes the job bag information from an MIS and automates the creation of an imposition ‘shell’. The shell is exported as a template, and a separate package (often Preps, see below) is needed to add page content to the templates.
Min system requirements
• Pentium PC at 233MHz
• Windows NT 4.0
• 64MB RAM
• SVGA video or 800x600 screen resolution
Price
• £7,500
• JDF output module £3,000
Contact Kodak GCG 00 32 2 352 2514, www.graphics.kodak.com
Kodak Creo Preps 5.2
Preps is pretty much the world’s de facto impositioning package but, like UpFront, it’s not really a fully functional ganging package. It does import content, and will automatically match this with an imposition template, but unless used manually, there’s no facility to gang more than one job.
Min system requirements
• Pentium PC at 233MHz
• Windows NT4.0, 2000 or XP Pro
• 64MB RAM
• 1024x768 resolution,
or
• PowerMac G3 or G4
• OS 9.1 or OS X
• 80MB RAM
• 1024x768 resolution
Price
• PrepsPlus £3,000
Contact
• Kodak GCG 00 32 2 352 2514, www.graphics.kodak.com
