Newspapers can
Save Ink and Money
as well as
Visually Improve Color Registration
An interview with Harry C. Pontius
Director of Operations, the Daily
Press, Victorville, CA
24th
January, 2008: Newspaper publishers, along
with all other well-managed businesses, are concerned about increasing the
quality of their products, reducing their carbon footprint and impact on the
environment, and reducing their costs.
One such newspaper, Freedom Communications’, Inc.’s
the Daily Press in Victorville,
California (www.vvdailypress.com) an American state recognized for its
commitment to reducing pollution, has taken steps to reduce its ink
consumption.
The constituent parts of newspaper printing ink
varies, but resins and petroleum oil, as well as soybean oil, makes up for more
than 60% of its volume and cost. Any reduction in ink usage is therefore sound
economic sense, as well as sound environmental sense.
A further benefit is that a reduction of ink on
newsprint can mean increased visual quality for readers and advertisers.
The solution found by the production
management team at the Daily Press
was ProImage
OnColor ECO ink optimization software (www.newsway.com/oncolorECO.html). This
is a software solution that automatically reduces the quantity of CMY inks and
increases the proportion of K used while maintaining an identical color
reproduction. OnColor ECO retains the original colors using Smart Input Space
Recognition (SISR) technology that performs the ink optimization calculation
and color transformations in a fully automated process.
The result is improved print quality whilst using
less ink.
We asked Harry C. Pontius, the newspaper’s director
of operations, about his experiences using the solution. Here are his answers:-
Q. Why did you choose to install OnColorECO
software?
HCP: The obvious reason for choosing the OnColor ECO
is ink savings, however it was not the only reason for our interest in OnColor
ECO. The other is the fact that the black plate becomes more dominant and the
details are more pronounced. This in turn tends to hide some color registration
issues.
Q. Has it met
your expectations?
HCP: Yes, it has met our expectations. We are still
testing and changing but on the whole we are happy.
Q. How many pages
/ copies do you print each day?
HCP: We do not have a set number of pages that we
run daily due to all of our different products but on average we run 94 pages
daily with a daily average of 2,175,227 impressions.
Q. Approximately
how much ink is being saved?
HCP: Like most newspapers we saw a drop in
circulation and in advertising that in turn equaled a decrease of 4% in press
impressions in 2007 compared to 2006.
Taking these decreases into consideration and having
the OnColor ECO software in operation for only the last five months of 2007 we
were still able to see a 15% savings in ink consumption.
With becoming more familiar with the OnColor ECO
system and by making some minor setting changes at the beginning of 2008 we
expect to see an overall savings of between 30% and 45% in color ink
consumption.
Q. Has there been
an improvement in print quality?
HCP: With the advent of 27.5lb paper that many
newspapers are running it has allowed us to not have to saturate the web as
much as before. This in itself makes for a much cleaner sheet.
Q. Can you state
the approximate financial saving?
HCP: Working with the OnColor ECO software takes
finesse. Every installation will be different and the customer needs to
constantly work with the system to find the right setting that gives them the
best results.
Our system was installed in August of 2007 and during
those five months we were able to see a savings of roughly $17,000 dollars in
ink expenses. After making some software setting changes (at the beginning of
2008 we went from a medium setting to a high setting) and running the software
for the entire year we expect to see at least a $50,000 savings in ink expenses
for 2008.
Q. How does
OnColorECO fit into your workflow?
HCP: We were using ProImage NewsWay prior to
the OnColor ECO installation and this enabled the transition to be almost
transparent to everyone involved in producing the products.
Q. Have staff
found it easy to use?
HCP: Only one person has been involved in
adjusting and testing ECO, and yes, he has found it user friendly. There are a
few issues where we think more improvements can be made and we plan to look at
these in the future.
Q. What would they
say have been the major benefits?
HCP: The savings in ink consumption and expenses,
and the overall improved appearance of our newspaper.
Q. What other
comments would you like to make?
HCP: ProImage has been one of the most professional
companies to deal with in the industry. Always willing to answer questions and
to help whenever necessary.
More about OnColor ECO:
OnColor ECO software
intelligently applies Gray Component Replacement (GCR) to replace the right
amount of "Cyan", "Magenta" and "Yellow" ink
components for "Black". By reducing color and potentially
increasing black it also reduces color registration issues of both images and
text. The result, better quality and significantly reduced ink costs.
The solution intelligently recognizes ICC and non-ICC
based CMYK source spaces by building dynamic device links from any source to
output content. It then automatically correctly restores ICC color management
and normalizes all color content in both graphics and text. OnColor ECO also
optimizes CMYK separations without any change to custom or industry-standard
profiles.
Hardware
Requirements:
The recommended minimum hardware
configuration for using the OnColor ECO should be: Dual Xeon Processor (duo
core), 3.0 GHz, 4GB DRAM, 80GB HD running Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 Server.
Contacts:
Daily Press New
ProImage America
Harry
C Pontius, Director of Operations Rick
Shafranek, VP of Sales
Tel: 760-951-6224 Tel:
919-363-0413