ABDick ScanMaster System
Perhaps you want to take advantage of a completely digital workflow with a CTP system. But, you need a simple way to incorporate hard copy work with the least amount of effort, cost and time. The ABDick ScanMaster system is the solution.
ScanMaster works with ABDick and Presstek platesetters that feature the Momentum RIP and provides a modern way of handling hard copy originals. Thought of as “digital paste-up,” it can do everything a camera can do, but has the flexibility to do much, much more.
This system allows you to import and manipulate images, text, line art and tints from hard copy documents directly into your digital workflow. ScanMaster does not merely scan the entire page then send it to a plate. Rather, it allows the user to bring in color and black and white originals, screened originals, text on a tinted area, photographs and other printed items.
It then allows you to integrate and manipulate the various elements to create a digital document – all through an easy-to-use graphic interface. There’s no need to switch between text, scanning and layout programs – it’s all done with the integrated, easy to use ScanMaster system.
- Step and repeat by clicking a button
- De-screen a printed document
- Spot- and four-color separations
- Change the brightness, contrast and color balance of specific areas on a page
- Add color bars, crop and register marks
- Reduce and enlarge text size 30%-200% (note: font styles cannot be changed)
- Place a screen behind a type image
- Add border around a selected image
- Make a plate from a glossy photograph
The Conventional Way
Using conventional equipment, one might use an optical camera or platemaker on a job to screen a black and white original photograph, process it, paste it up with some text, do spot color separations, then shoot a film or plate. This process could take nearly 45 minutes.
If the same job had a color photo, the optical equipment could not be used; it would need to be scanned and re-set on a desktop computer, separated to negs, then plates made. That process could add days to the job, especially if it needed to be sent to a service bureau.
Perhaps you have a digital pre-press department with computers and scanners and highly trained operators. You could then scan the color photo in-house. However, you’ll have to deal with the hard copy text that needs to be digitized. You would have two options:
1) Re-key all the text into the computer then reformat it in a page layout application. This could take hours for a sophisticated layout – and you run the risk of typos and mistakes; or
2) Scan the entire page of text into a image editing program. In this case, you would have a very large image file rather than text. And, the scanner may not be able to reproduce the text with crisp, sharp edges. You would then have to combine the color photo and the large text-page image in a layout program.
Now, what if the photograph was not a continuous tone original, but one that needed to be extracted from an already-printed piece, such as a printed brochure? If you were to scan it in conventionally, you would most likely get an undesirable moiré pattern when you printed it. While many scanners have a de-screening function, they sometimes blur the image to compensate, and the photo may look fuzzy or out of focus – degrading the detail and quality of the printed piece. ABDick has a better way: ScanMaster.
A Better Way: ScanMaster
Today, with ScanMaster, you can scan in the various hard copy elements, from one document or several, compile them and make fine adjustments to each element or area of the page. For instance, you can add brightness to a dim image and define threshold values to get the sharpest text.
This can be accomplished easily since there’s no multitude of specialized layout programs to understand. Just work through ScanMaster’s easy-to-use interface and accomplish things in minutes that could take hours or days the conventional way. And, the quality of ScanMaster output compares favorably to digital files created in desktop publishing programs.