Macy's West and Rods & Cones Team Up to Deliver State-of-the-Art Inkjet-Based Digital Proofing SANTA CRUZ, Calif.--May 14, 2002--When Macy's West decided it was time to supplement their digital proofing system with an inkjet-based system, they turned to the Epson 10000, BestColor's Screenproof software, and digital workflow integrators Rods & Cones. Macy's has one of the largest corporate prepress departments in the western U.S. They make aggressive use of new technologies to produce 6500 printed pages per year with a department consisting of 13 employees. The prepress department uses Apple G4 design stations, two Heidelberg Chromagraph drum scanners, a Harlequin RIP, a Screen TrueRite six-up and a Kodak Approval two-up digital proofing system. Macy's looked for an inkjet-based proofing system for three primary reasons - 1) to reduce consumables cost, 2) to proof on a wider variety of media, such as newsprint, and 3) to reduce proofing time. In addition, Macy's produces a lot of images of clothing, so they needed a proofing system that could simulate the dot pattern found on press. This enables moire patterns to be detected at the proofing stage, before they turn up on press. While saving money was the big motivation, Macys was clear that there could be no sacrifice in quality. This was no small hurdle for proofing system that cost around $35,000 for the printer, RIP software, RIP station, and installation. Rods & Cones built a custom calibration and profile for every paper used with the Epson, as well as a reference profiles for each the two presses Macy's prints to most frequently. A variety of sophisticated edits to these profiles resulted in a simulation of similar quality to the traditional proofers. Additional edits, including selective color edits and paper white simulation, yielded superior results. "At first I was a bit skeptical about this software's ability to match our other proofers' quality, but the cost savings was so compelling I decided to give it a try. Rods & Cones put a lot of work into this, and they now have the Epson simulating our presses even more effectively than our high end proofing systems. We've reduced our consumables costs by over 80%, and we even get to use the Epson for in-house poster printing."