Time Magazine Advances Along the Road to Digital Workflow (Part Two)

The editorial process Time Magazine, like Sports Illustrated and People, also uses QPS to manage content editing. The QPS Dispatch tool prevents two people from editing the same material at the same time. Time Magazine has four QPS Dispatch servers and about 250 editorial users.

Page authoring is usually based on a standard template file, which allocates the space of each page to the appropriate material files and picture files. If needed, pictures can be arbitrarily selected, arranged, and created. The material can also be arranged and edited as needed.

Other magazines operate in a similar way, but use different tools. Fortune magazine and Money magazine still use the P. Ink Press system of the now-defunct P. Ink company in Germany. A few years ago, Time Magazine was very interested in P. Ink's products and even wanted to become a US sales agent for the product. The system used by Fortune Magazine and Money Magazine is a product of that era but will eventually be replaced.

Entertainment Weekly magazine does not use any editing management tools. Authors and editors operate through a designated standard file system, directly instructing people who need to use this system.

Life Monthly Magazine also has no automatic operating system, but it does not seem to be needed. Time Magazine was the first company to achieve 100% through the CTP system.

In short, no matter what kind of editing method is adopted, the final page is generated through Xpress.

Changing Workflow Time Magazine's transition from Atex systems to desktop production is accompanied by the conversion of its editorial pages to all-digital files. Many of the previous production processes were performed by the Impact Center, an online prepress service that Crosfield formed. The page file is transmitted via satellite to the printing plant in the form of a bitmap.

With a Quark-based system, images can be digitized. Most of the time, the images sent are still transparent, but they can be digitized immediately and stored in electronic pages. Time Magazine is gradually implementing the Bitstream Archetype MediaBank system to process more and more digital images.

Use Quark to output the processed pages directly to Postscript imagesetters and proofers, and ensure that all elements are in their original positions. With the accumulation of experience in color management, Time Magazine began implementing a “print by parameter” method that eliminates the need for film-based proofs before printing. All editorial pages (like the digital ads mentioned above) are now sent to the printing point via WamNet in the form of DCS2 files.

From Xpress to printing. The edit page is created from a template and can be divided into text, photo, and image areas on the page. Each page is divided into two pages, one containing text and the other containing picture elements. Then handle the two pages separately. The picture part of the page is processed by the Art Department and goes to the production process before the text. They form incomplete pages during the printing process, blank sections will print the text. At the same time, the text file will form a blank page of the picture by copying the editing process. The two parts are "merged" at the end.

Time magazine's page production steps are done in-house, and some publishers have to outsource to an output center or a printing factory. For 60% of Time Magazine's pages, these steps are very concise (although these steps are not entirely automatic in the current Scitex Prisma workstation used by Time Magazine).

First use Scitex VIP RIP software to convert pages to Scitex format. Text is rasterized into line drawings. The FPO image on each page is replaced by the highest resolution version (this is the OPI process or image replacement process). Then the picture page is processed through the standard trap control program, and the text and pictures are merged into a complete page through Scitex's "final page execution" program. The result of the processing is stored in the TIFF/IT-P1 file format, and a secondary output file specifically set for the Iris proofer is also generated.

This process was completed by a set of Scitex Prisma workstations installed in the past eight years. This process takes a long time and can only handle eight pages per hour.

Part of the content of the remaining 40% of the page requires interactive processing by the Scitex operator.

ArtFlow
Better tools are now available, and Time Magazine is evolving. Time magazine company installed a set of ArtworkFlow, a beta version of Artwork Systems in Belgium, and the company's ArtPro software package a few years ago.

The ArtFlow Batch Workflow System automatically embeds 60% of the relatively simple pages and can be quickly completed. Four pages can be processed in six minutes with beta software installed on a Macintosh G3. If the software is connected to the NT port at the DEC Alpha, its performance will be further improved. Compared to the Scitex workflow, the text does not need to be rasterized, it is vectorized (transformed into a hollow outline). The resulting file is more concise, it can be faster RIP, and it still has the feature of not needing a font at the output.

Postscript optimization. ArtFlow can also reduce file size via the "Postscript optimization" feature (as do interactive ArtPro products). For example, it can eliminate objects or parts of objects in a file, but it cannot be used for printing because they are completely covered by other objects. The file produced by ArtFlow is usually one-third smaller than the corresponding Scitex output file.

Workflows can be initiated through hot folders, each with a series of special processing steps and specifications. Operators using the ArtPro software package can also transfer individual files directly without using a hot folder. ArtFlow can support conversions to multiple file formats, but Time Magazine initially used only DCS2 and Iris formats.

The ArtFlow-based approach also simplifies the process of transforming the US version of Time magazine into something more appropriate for the international market, including converting units of measure and interpreting issues involving local customs (for example, to say "Long "Suburbs of Island, New York", not just "Long Island").

PDF is one of the formats for ArtFlow output, and Time Magazine will eventually use this feature. The current situation is that there is no simple way to see the contents of the entire magazine (including advertising and editorial content) before printing. Through the PDF file, Time Magazine can create a combined file.

ArtPro's mission. ArtPro Repro software can store 40% of pages that require operator mediation for longer periods of time. These pages often include illustrations that require special treatment with a small amount of shadows, black outlines, or vignettes. Switching the illustrations to the Scitex environment requires RIP processing to the Scitex raster format, so the process is slow. On the contrary, ArtPro software vector files as raw file formats can be quickly converted from Postscript without RIP. The software is faster and more interactive than the currently used Scitex software. Some of ArtPro's strengths, such as creating light shadows on light colors or other image elements, can greatly increase the speed of orders-of-magnitude speed improvement.

income. The combination of ArtPro and ArtFlow saves Time's time and money. Time plans to spend $800,000 to complete this process, but this investment can save more than $600,000 annually. The biggest savings are in the labor force (including overtime) because Time Company expects to be able to produce pages at the current half of the average time. One-third of the savings are in other areas, such as maintenance contracts for Scitex, depreciation of Scitex equipment, and outsourcing costs that are limited by current system capacity.

At Time Magazine, saving time is important because the last edit page that requires 50 to 55 pages (part of the multiple cycles to enter Scitex processing and proofing) is the most stressful and must be completed within 8 hours, which is more indicative of the current device's limit. In the case of unexpected news, Time magazine's work was even more tense: the last page was completed at 3 o'clock in the morning every Sunday, and printed on the machine at five o'clock in the afternoon.

The transition to CTP technology will not directly change the deadline for final publication. At present, the new generation of CTP systems can usually be compared with the traditional plate-making time, but can be improved in many aspects. They can start faster and print less.

Currently, 100% of footage edited by Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, Life, and Money is digital. The proportion of digital advertising in these publications is only 30% to 80%.

Conclusion Until now, CTP has not been fully successful in the field of magazine printing, mainly because of the problems with advertising film provided by customers. Time has taken the lead in resolving this issue and persuaded most advertisers and advertising agencies to provide digital files. At the same time, Time also adjusted the editing and production process so that the new open digital file editing tool can give full play to its advantages.

Other publishers may not have the funds and influence of Time Magazine, but they will also benefit from the above examples. In particular, Time Magazine has released a series of detailed document transmission guides on its website for the entire industry. If you follow these guidelines carefully, you can use digital files to produce high-quality advertisements.

Time Magazine’s guides are based on Postscript files (created through Time Magazine’s own PPD file) and TIFF/IT-P1 files, while file transfers from Time Magazine to its printing house go through the DCS2 file. These choices are significant and they provide a very valuable service for magazine publishing.

The same file transfer problem also appears in many other publications. Time magazine expanded the company's goal to provide accurate color management of PDF files and pursue greater applicability.