HANOVER PARK, Ill. (May 16, 2003) – Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Artistic Color Graphics has tripled its prepress productivity with the installation of Fujifilm’s Quattro flatbed color scanner and its Saber Luxel Vx-9600 CTP platesetter, says Scott Spaulding, one of the company’s partners. The four-year-old company had previously used three different service bureaus along with their own conventional prepress techniques. But, because Artistic’s competitive edge with the large commercial printers in the Chattanooga area was shrinking, Spaulding admits that specializing in high color offset printing was just not enough. “We dragged our feet in getting into this area [CTP] because we wanted to see the technology mature a little bit before committing,” Spaulding explains. “We went with Fuji and Enovation because of their knowledgeable people.” Spaulding says the company had worked with other suppliers early on and had minor problems. "We gave Fuji a shot at correcting those problems and the Fuji reps did what they said they would do.” He also said the company went from one person in prepress to three when the Fujifilm equipment was installed. "We had one person in prepress but all she was doing was positioning film and plating. When we moved everything in-house, we hired two more qualified people to deal with scanning, color manipulation and customer file issues. “Now we can produce the same prepress job in less than two hours, when it used to take two days,” stresses Spaulding. “The speed and quality of having industry-leading equipment has helped us to regain a lot of our competitive edge.” Spaulding explains that the transition to CTP with the violet Saber platesetter and Quattro color scanner was smooth and the time was minimal thanks to the professionalism, knowledge and service of both the Fujifilm and the Enovation reps. He says the company is continuing to experience rapid growth in all areas. “We are concentrating on producing high-quality work with ‘yesterday’ speed.”