Preparing files for printing to a plate or directly to a press is a crucial part of the printing process. It is one of those steps that in general have remained a high-skilled and fairly siloed process specific to a piece of equipment. Ideally, printers need to maintain the flexibility to shift jobs from machine to machine in order to manage the changing schedule, so the lack of a coordinated solution adds complexity. Many companies either manually impose their files or have an assortment of imposition software solutions for different press types. Considering that most printing companies have an assortment of presses, finishing equipment, and product types, having disparate imposition workflows is very inefficient. Not only is it time-consuming, but in many printing services facilities the resultant impositions can vary from operator to operator, putting additional pressure on the press and finishing operators as well as increasing waste.

There are a lot of imposition software solutions available. They can be integrated into the DFE of a press, integral to a production workflow, plugins to Adobe Acrobat or InDesign, and as standalone solutions. An ideal solution would be agnostic, smart, easy, and automated. The first agnostic standalone imposition software was introduced at Lasers in Graphics in 1989 by Ultimate Technographics and it was called Impostrip. While it was fairly manual “green screen” solution on a PC, it proved the standalone imposition concept and began the race to the holy grail of imposition.

Since imposition is really an integral part of a plant workflow, integrating and automating it is important. Research shows that successfully transformed companies across the industry take a much more holistic approach to workflow. By leveraging the value each functional layer in the translation of the customer input to a predictable production process, firms ensure that job information and content are captured accurately and completely before it hits production to enable a more automated workflow. Today there are more than 35 different imposition solutions available that offer a wide variety of features, and while many have tried to copy Impostrip features, Ultimate Technographics just keeps raising the bar.