At Graph Expo last year, for the first time, a major trade show featured digital printing as mainstream production, not a future oriented curiosity, an "add-on" to " real" printing. In the Heidelberg booth, the most intense presentation and the biggest draw was not around the traditional Heidelberg heavy iron, but around their Digital Press capabilities. The industry has been talking about the move to digital printing for some time, but this was the first time it seemed to be shown and understood as the future of print and at the annual GA Showcase Event, Graph Expo!

With digital printing now recognized as mainstream production and the dominant technology for the future, the rest of the industry from pre-press to bindery and all other elements along the way are fundamentally altered. These shock wave changes throughout the rest of the business were also apparent at the show.

Digital imaging, along with overcapacity in conventional printing, hastens the commoditization of graphic arts consumable products such as film, conventional plates and analog proofing. As these technologies decline, so to do their famous brand names. Reflecting this reality, consumable suppliers had nary a supply in their booths, but they did have lots of equipment made by others. The new "mature model" of bundling, adding value (as the core product is seen as less valuable) and offering "solutions" dominated the traditional suppliers' offerings at Graph Expo.

As part of this same pattern, Computer to Plate technologies overshadowed consumables. Yet, though CtP appeared at Graph Expo as a dynamic and still brand worthy technology, it must be recognized for what it is – the final vestige of "efficiency" and cost reduction necessary to make offset printing price competitive for a few more years.

CtP, Offset's Last Stand

All current digital proofing and workflow technologies fit smoothly into the digital print world, except for CtP itself, which freezes the image on a disposable plate before the image is transferred onto media. Perhaps it is no wonder that the most public of the CtP companies, Creo, has purchased a workflow software company and invested in Printcafe to beef up its efforts in surviving the future decline in their CtP fortunes. (Printcafe plans to be acquired by EFI.)

As the vast majority of B&W print of reasonable length is now produced on digital presses/copiers, so too will the Color world be moving more and more swiftly in that direction. It’s only a matter of time and maturity. There are already an estimated 16,500 establishments that provide digital production printing services (for pay) without including wide format, or desktop/office printing sites.)

Color quality for all but the top 5% - 15% of the work is sufficient and declining print runs, to the point where 66% of all jobs are now below 5000 pages, is the reality of the times. Additionally, 53% of the print runs are less than 2,500 impressions (CAP Ventures.) In fact, recent headlines further claim that "toner" produces more consistent results than offset! Yet, at the recent Print Outlook Conference, most traditional industry experts still don’t include digital presses in their "print" analysis.

Inkjet "Presses"

High-speed, wide format printers are also proliferating. Wider and wider, and faster and faster, we now even see flatbed printers, and many other wide format units are capable to print on thicker materials, like cardboard and foam core mountings, can use outdoor certified inks, produce backlit products, and even print on plastic/PVC. Besides paper, "all" other manner of material can now be printed efficiently at very small quantities.

While the technology is not yet sufficient for large quantities of packaging and Point of Purchase (POP) materials, these printers can clearly provide shorter runs of the most sophisticated marketing and packaging materials imaginable. These new wide format inkjet "presses" add to the range of materials that can be printed in the new manner and begin to take away jobs from the one area where old-fashioned print is still growing - packaging.

Printing large format pages to these devices takes sophisticated front-end systems. All of the prepress and workflow products that have become necessary to efficiently go to CtP are necessary here. Yet, as we’ve mentioned for a number of years, the traditional graphic arts channel makes very little wide format and digital press sales.