Flexo screening impresses international panel of judges
London (England), September 6th 2012 – Following it’s first showing at Drupa 2012, Smart Screen, the latest development in a range of Prepress tools for the packaging industry has been shortlisted for the FlexoTech 2012 Prepress innovation award.
Smart screen is designed to work with digital imaging devices at standard resolutions such as 2400 or 2540 dpi. It allows extremely small screen dots to be produced, which in essence means that the smallest possible screen dot in the print image is 1-2%
“The power lies in a simple yet clever approach to addressing an age-old problem – the ability to image a digital or analogue flexographic plate with excellent screen vignettes down to an ink coverage of 1%” said Steve Donegan at Graphic Republik. “There is no need for the end-user to change the optics in their existing imaging device and more importantly, no changes are necessary in the Pressroom – Smart Screen simply slots into existing production workflows”
The Flexo plates created for the print sample were produced by Skegness based service provider Print Quest using their Kodak NX system. The final PDF final was rastered using Smart Screen technology, with the resultant Bitmap being imaged as normal on the NX imager. Dave Jarvis, MD at Print Quest commented “The Smart Screen approach is very simple but on the final print, visually very effective. The sample print was a re-run of a previous job and the improvement in the tonal range, particularly in the highlight areas was noticeably smoother”.
From a printing perspective, Brian Yardy, MD at CFN Packaging Group, the company who printed the shortlisted sample made this observation: “We are a busy Printing group with a full production schedule – the fact that these plates made with Smart Screen technology can go straight on press without any changes needing to be made, yet deliver a better quality print is a big plus. ”
The FlexoTech award ceremony, which to be held at the London Hilton Metropole on the 18th October 2012 is one of the industry’s most prestigious international events and is sponsored by some of the sectors leading companies.
Editors Notes
About Graphic Republik
Graphic Republik, founded in 2008 and headquartered in London, England, has a distribution network covering Europe and Scandinavia. Graphic Republik specializes in pre-press, colour conversion and proofing solutions developed specifically for the Packaging sector of the printing industry. The software range is in use across the industry from Design and Prepress houses through to Flexo, Gravure, Offset and Digital printing companies
About the product range:
Star Proof produces high quality halftone proofs on inkjet devices. It’s Actual Dot system replicates original screening and dot patterns at proofing resolutions. This system enables Star Proof to deliver contract quality proofs with a hard dot, sharp images, accurate colour and fine detail – just as they will appear on the press. It has several features developed specifically to meet the requirements of the Packaging industry, together with an automatic spot colour calibration system, capable of matching over 97% of the Pantone library at a Delta e of 3.
The MaxPro suite of applications is a powerful software solution designed for Prepress professionals.
MaxPro allows users to create automatic, semi automatic or manual traps to linework, contone and transparency areas. It has a bespoke monitor calibration system which faithfully reproduces spot colour rendition on-screen and allows for different dot gain curves to be applied on-the-fly.
With Max Step, users have the ability to interactively create bespoke step and repeat layouts, or use pre-defined die cut guides to automatically generate layouts according to the requirements of the printer or converter. It fully supports industry standard formats such as CFF2 and has the ability to produce final layouts for plate or cylinder.
MaxColor has been developed to automatically reduce separations and/or convert CMYK Separations to spot colours. The resultant print uses less ink, with more vibrant colours and a better quality registration whether printing Gravure, Flexo or UV Offset. When used with Digital presses, MaxColor takes advantage of any additional colors available (such as Orange, Green or Blue) to create a unique and vibrant print.
Silver Metallic Pro has been developed to automatically produce special White Ink separations for printing on Metallic foil or board.
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Contacts
PR Contact – Graphic Republik
Steve Donegan
+44 208 851 3703
E-mail: info@graphicrepublik.com
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