Kodak, Pressman highlight print and packaging workflow

Michael Bialko, WW product manager, Kodak packaging workflow solutions, said, “Leverage your investment and skill sets in Illustrator and Photoshop so that operators who know Illustrator or Photoshop need no further training to be able to make edits to PDF files. Only the objects that need to be changed are converted to Illustrator native format, reducing the risk of an error during the conversion process.”

Bialko also highlighted Kodak’s DigiCap technology and the IC3D software, which is aimed at offering 3D solutions for packaging. The IC3D is directly integrated into Insite Creative Workflow, which stores and organises assets such as photography, art, editorial content and job specifications for brand owners and packaging printers.

He then emphasised on the benefits of Prinergy Cloud. “The cloud offers 24/7 continuous monitoring, high availability and security. It consists of enabled-analytics for better decision making,” said Bialko.

K Panthala Selvan, founder, Pressman Solutions, focused on the key implementation points during pre-press planning and designing operations. “A pre-press operation starts at the very stage a job is planned.”

According to Selvan, the print production workflow should always end with the quality control process. “If there’s even one percent dot gain on the plates then it will lead to close to five percent dot gain on the press," said Selvan.

Michael Bialko, WW product manager, Kodak packaging workflow solutions

Selvan stressed on the dos and don’ts of pre-press, such as saving files with just one name, the importance of licensed fonts and the utility benefits of PDF/X3. “The depiction of information on the size and folds area is a good option as a backup, also, it is vital to ensure the compatibility of the job with the software version you are running it on,” he added.

In addition to it, he spoke about maintaining the right image quality, keeping track of colours and making changes in the image before importing them. “Use high-resolution and low-resolution appropriately, also the format of image you save it in is essential, I have often seen customers taking huge strides in designing the image, but in the end, they save the image in the bitmap format that deteriorates the image quality during print,” added Selvan.

He also advised maintaining a print specification list that has the basic information about the artwork, stock, inks, packaging/shipping and a record of finished files, amongst others.

Subhrajit Ray of Kodak said, “It is vital that you keep a backup of the data at various locations to ensure a swifter recovery, in case of any catastrophe, Kodak has multiple data backups which are in stored different locations for each specific region, and we are coming up with one in India as well.” 

K Panthala Selvan, founder, Pressman Solutions