David Watson is the founder, President and CEO of Ultimate Technographics Inc, the company that “invented electronic imposition software in the late 80s.” Ultimate’s Impostrip has much experience in delivering imposition solutions to the market. Ultimate has delivered more than 12,000 imposition packages to the market. Ultimate has done this through dealers, direct sales and OEMs.

Ultimate not only invent imposition software, but has continued to deliver innovative, new solutions to the market. This has taken the form of ever-more advanced features in Impostrip, the original product, but also in new forms for the market. Ultimate says it’s the only real client/server imposition software and the only complete implementation of CIP3 PPF. Ultimate implemented the first post-rip workflow with Scitex, the first on-demand imposition solution, IMPress with Agfa and the first post-rip imposition for on-demand with Scitex, now Creo. Ultimate has also launched the first interactive and automatic ganging and scatter-proofing product, Full Plate, with a special version for Kodak. Ultimate also has developed software for trapping, Trapeze, print management and OPI severs, Print Desk and workflow servers, OnQ.



On November 6th, Consolidated Magna Ventures announced an agreement with Ultimate Technographics to co-develop the SkinnyServer software platform for the client side of the SkinnyScript workflow. Magna will purchase complete OEM versions of Ultimate's PDF workflow applications into which Magna will incorporate its proprietary SkinnyScript technology for significantly reducing the size of graphic files, with no loss of quality.

A prototype of the SkinnyServer was demonstrated at the Graphics Canada 2001 Trade Show in Toronto between November 8-11.

First, tell us about your primary product, Impostrip.

Even if electronic imposition has been around for more than a decade, the vast majority of printers in the world are still doing stripping by analogue means. Many that are doing something electronic are doing it "manually" in products like Quark. They have to "mouse around" with the job in some very inefficient ways. Using software like Impostrip gives printers much more precision and speed in doing the work. This not only saves cost, but also saves time in being able to get the customer’s work on press more efficiently. Impostrip also offers an alternative to printers who have tried other imposition software that is less featured and slower to use.

You have large and small print firms using Impostrip. Describe how they differ in their use of the product.

What the clients have in common is that they print something that requires imposition, but this is not limited to a particular stratum of printers. We have users among the largest and smallest printing operations in the world and everything in between. Large printers with multiple web presses are using our client/server architecture to have multiple imposition stations tied to a server where the actual imposition of page files occur. Smaller printers use our Impostrip Solo product for complete flexibility or our IMPress product, which is designed for ease of use with small presses and digital printing devices. IMPress is the only imposition software that can be completely automatic. Impostrip can also work with many different workflow products; it can output templates for Prinergy, Brisque, Apogee, Rampage, and Heidelberg’s Metadimension. IMPress is built into Xeikon’s Intellistream and Creo’s Spire color server. Impostrip is the heart of our own OnQ Sever that combines imposition, trapping and OPI in an integrated workflow that will interface with any output.

What's your take on PDF workflows - is it becoming mainstream?

After years of hype it seems that hype is finally becoming reality. PDF is being used in production on a much wider scale then it was even a short time ago. This is because it has solved some of its inherent limitations for print, but not all of them. Printers now live in a world where they might get PDF, PS, EPS, Tiff, Tiff/IT, or application files from their customers. No matter which, it seems the files are too often not ready for print and require the use of preflight software and repair of the files. For imposition software printers need the flexibility of dealing with it as they get it. Impostrip can combine all these file types on a single plate, as the printer needs. There is a tendency among printers to try to standardize on using PDF files and the new Impostrip 6.5 allows them to maintain PDF pages uninterrupted all the way through the final digital plate.

Trapeze offers a trapping workflow that traps a PDF file and inserts the trapping information as a layer into the original PDF file, which maintains it’s integrity. Trapeze combines the power of raster trapping, while maintaining the original PDF.

How does Impostrip converge in a ctp environment?

Impostrip will support any kind of CTP workflow environment. Impostrip supports the conventional PS/PDF workflow to a RIP in front of a CTP machine, or any of the proprietary workflows that are sold in front of CTP machines by various vendors. These workflows, however, sometimes trap printers, because they only support a particular CTP machine. We find that many printers want the flexibility of building a workflow that can output to any film machine, proofing device, or CTP machine they have. This is a problem that is getting larger with all the mergers and consolidations in the industry, where printers find themselves with an array of equipment.

Now - on to SkinnyScript. We have been investigating this innovation and Magna since September and have been impressed with their progress thus far. What is your take on the product?

SkinnyScript represents one of those necessary revolutions in the business. Because of the large size of most files for print, printers have had to continue with a kind of "sneaker net" with their customers, or maybe we could call it "FedEx net." As more and more customer files are electronic both the customer and the printer would like to transfer them electronically. Image dense pages have simply been too big for dial-up modems and internet transfer. We would like the convenience of e-mail for these transactions. Size has prevented this.

The first attempted solution was OPI. It is still very efficient but it is predicated on the publisher using the printer or trade shop that outputs his film to scan and retouch his images and the publisher could use a low resolution version for placement and cropping in the DTP application of choice. Today the reality is that publishers often do their own scanning, retouching and proofing and skip the film stage by going to printers with CTP and may need to send them to several printers at the same time. There have been attempts to deal with this through proprietary point-to-point solutions that have been expensive to use and lacked the flexibility of universal distribution. None of these offerings have thrived, many have gone out of business, or probably will.

SkinnyScript solves this problem by reducing the size of PS or PDF file to a small enough size to use conventional electronic transport. It also solves another growing problem for publishers and printers and that is the ever-increasing size of storage requirements. Even if the price of storage has declined, the demand for it in printing operations never seems to have a limit.

But compression is nothing new, are there not other solutions?

Indeed there are, but the most common have not had the necessary quality on decompression. Some attempts have been made to use wavelets and fractals to increase the quantity and quality of compression. Different approaches have their merits but they require a separate process of compression and decompression that requires an extra step and do not work inside of Acrobat and RIPs. Skinny is not this kind of compression, but rather a special encoding of the image data that minimizes loss to be outside of the range of most printing applications and works with standard PS/PDF workflow products.

How did you and Magna get together?

We saw the announcement of Skinny on WhatTheyThink.com and we called and asked them for some files to see if it would work with our products. Daniel Walters replied that he knows that Skinny works with Impostrip and Trapeze because he uses these products in production. He said: "We are both Canadians and both technology pioneers we should work together."

What exactly is your relationship with them?

Ultimate has created a special version of our OPI server software that uses Skinny technology instead of OPI. This gives the user a robust serving environment that makes it as easy as printing to create a Skinny PDF. The server publishes itself as a chooser level device and automatically Skinnys the image from Photoshop. The publisher can then use this image in a DTP application like Quark or InDesign and then send it back to the server to automatically create a PDF of the whole page or job and automatically route this to disc, to an output device or to be telecommunicated.

Recently, you both were at Graphics Canada 2001 Trade Show in Toronto. How did the Mac demo version perform at the show?

The Mac version performed very well because it is based on proven technology. There was a lot of interest from publishers, printers and equipment manufacturers because Skinny Server solves a real need in the business.

When will the windows version be ready?

We concentrated on the Mac version first because most desktop publishers still work on Macintoshes. The first stage in using Skinny is to get the publishers to send their files as SkinnyScript. They do not need a special windows sever installation to do this. They can use any Mac on Ethernet or AppleTalk to Skinny their work. The windows version is being worked on, but a release date has not been set.

Is SkinnyScript officially out of beta and just waiting on you to work up the servers to go worldwide?

It is just going into beta, but we do not expect a long time because it is based on proven server technology and the Skinny technology is very robust.

As an expert in prepress solutions and software, can SkinnyScript be duplicated by others to make it better? From your experience, does Magna have this “patently wrapped up?”

Patents and trade secrets are both ways companies can protect technology. I cannot comment on what Magna will do to protect their technology. We are "bottlers", we do not need to know the secret formula for Coke to put it in the bottle and we do not need to know the secret of Skinny to put in a server that produces PDF files that are dramatically smaller than they were before. As to what other companies might do is a matter of speculation. As of today, nobody else is talking about doing anything like Skinny. Printers and publishers should use it and let the rest of the industry catch up to themselves and Skinny.

Finally, going into 2002, what do you predict in terms of the economy as it relates to the sales of your products?

The sale of our products is impacted by the downturn in the economy and in the printing sector in general. If printers are buying fewer CTP machines, they are buying less workflow software to drive them. But I think there are important growth areas next year. More and more of our sales are to small and midsize printers around the world. The big guys have implemented CTP, but now the little guys are more and more. This coincides with lower priced machines in the market.

We also see a brisk business in replacing software that customers are not happy with. The important increase in business, however, is going to be for the digital on-demand printing market and for proofing machines. We see strong growth in these areas. As the quality of digital print increases and the cost per impression declines, more printing will be done by these services and often by in-plant printing operations that are becoming digital print shops. This will result in a significant increase in the number of companies doing "printing" in a wider sense. We are moving to a world where the distinction between photocopiers and printing presses is declining. The barrier between document creator and producer is coming down and this opens up a much wider market for workflow products.