A growing new software category: I ran into my friend John Sweeney who is now the Director of Business Development for IQ Colour. John gave the 60-second sales pitch as only he can do, and the bullet points which follow sum it it pretty well;
- Key is controls moving upstream
- autmated, color managed workflow
- Trend to RGB workflow
- convert to CMYK at last possible moment
- plate making, cylinder engraving, screen making, etc…
- single DAM, whatever the output
Alwan CMYK Optimizer: Is being represented by Dave Hunter (Booth 4868) which is another product in this category and won a Must See ’em honor for the show.
Both John and Dave stressed that this is not your father’s GCR. Advances in Color Management and color space conversions have made the quality of the resulting file something we could have only dreamed about 20 years ago when GCR came to fame.
The 32% ink savings Dave showed me as an example was impressive. He had print samples along to prove his point. Even more impressive when the ink was pushed by about 10% the grey balance of the optimized image was fine while the conventional image did not look so hot.
The Show Overall: My sense is that show traffic is high and that the people at the show are buyers or at least serious lookers who will be buying. This is good news for our industry!
If you missed me at “The Lodge” last night, it is because I never made it. I think I must be getting old. My awesome wife (also referred to by some as “Raffel’s Wife) joined me in Chicago Sat. evening, and after spending the whole evening eating and drinking too much with her and business associates I needed the night off. (We did make it to “The Lodge” Sat evening, so I used that as my Lodge credit for Sun.)