Agfa Colour Proofing's Total Systems Integration

London's Clement and Foster has built upon its recent £0.5m investment in a new press and CTP equipment, with the installation of Agfa Grand Sherpa digital colour proofing.

London's Clement and Foster has built upon its recent £0.5m investment in a new press and CTP equipment, with the installation of an Agfa Grand Sherpa digital colour proofing system.

The contract colour proofer and printer has linked its £25,000 Grand Sherpa 50 with Creo Brisque workflow and Lotem 800 B1 CTP which, Agfa believes, demonstrates its claim to provide open solutions and colour proofing accuracy.

Clement and Foster runs Heidelberg 6-colour presses supported by an in-house prepress department.

It aims to achieve high quality on fast job turn-rounds for clients including large companies, retailers and design agencies.

Clement and Foster's production manager Roger Meads, who was in charge of the transformation from conventional film production to CTP said: "In this competitive environment we could not afford to get it wrong.

Our experience with Agfa led us to install the Grand Sherpa to protect a major investment that demanded integrity of data workflow from input to plate, proof and press.

In a fast moving situation it is essential to secure an accurate early customer pass with a quality, colour proof." Meads believes that Agfa's colour management system with Color Tune and its Open Access software were crucial factors in specifying the Grand Sherpa.

The colour management system takes the data from Brisque and operates as an input filter to the Grand Sherpa, transforming the proprietary file into a postscript or PDF file maintaining data integrity through to plate output.

"We will soon use the system to operate with our CIP software on the Heidelberg presses - few companies other than Agfa - could achieve this level of seamless integration.

It is essential for the continued success of our business," added Roger Meads.

Agfa's colour management and proofing specialist Steve Collins said: "We are succeeding in our aims of becoming the leading supplier of contract quality, ink jet digital colour proofing systems." He believes an increasing reason for increasing Grand Sherpa sales is software such as Open Access and the Apogee Proofing Converter that enable systems integration.

That makes it possible to do contract and colour proofing from third party workflows, such as Heidelberg Delta, Creo Brisque and Harlequin based systems, even for printers already other manufacturers' CTP systems.

Back to top