The Print Report: Prepress and PDF Standards with Dietrich von Seggern, Callas Software

On this episode of The Print Report, Deborah Corn and Pat McGrew are joined by Dietrich von Seggern from callas software to discuss the critical role of prepress and PDF standards in the print industry, trends in print automation, and the evolving needs of the industry. Plus – Dietrich’s takeaways from drupa 2024.

 

 

Mentioned in This Episode:

Dietrich von Seggern: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dietrichv/

callas software: https://www.callassoftware.com

PDF Standards in Prepress Automation: https://www.callassoftware.com/en/solutions/common-tasks/supporting-pdf-standards

Trends in Automation: https://www.callassoftware.com/en/solutions/for-our-industry

pdfCamp: https://www.callassoftware.com/en/events/2024/10/pdfcamp-24-fall-edition

pdfCamp 2023 recap video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTN76jb2vyg

ISO (International Organization for Standardization): https://www.iso.org/

CIP4 (The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press, and Postpress): https://www.cip4.org/

European Color Initiative (ECI): http://www.eci.org/

Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG): https://www.gwg.org/

PDF Association: https://www.pdfa.org/

Pat McGrew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patmcgrew/

McGrewGroup: https://www.mcgrewgroup.com

Deborah Corn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahcorn/

Print Media Centr: https://printmediacentr.com

Partner with Print Media Centr: https://printmediacentr.com/partnerships/

Subscribe to News From The Printerverse: https://printmediacentr.com/subscribe-2

Project Peacock: https://ProjectPeacock.TV

Girls Who Print: https://girlswhoprint.net

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00] DC: Today on The Print Report, catching up with callas software.

[0:00:04] PM: And we’re going to be talking standards.

[0:00:08] DC: Welcome to The Print Report with Deborah Corn and Pat McGrew, all the print that’s fit for news.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:16] DC: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse, more specifically, The Print Report with Deborah Corn and Pat McGrew. I’m Deborah Corn, which means –

[0:00:25] PM: I’m Pat McGrew.

[0:00:26] DC: You are Pat McGrew. It’s so lovely to see you. We are going to be speaking with Dietrich von Seggern. He is the CEO of callas software. Callas software offers simple ways to handle complex PDF challenges for publishing, print production, document exchange, and document archiving. Callas also actively supports international standards and has participated in ISO, CIP4, the European Color Initiative, and the Ghent PDF Work Group, and is also a founding member of the PDF Association. Links for all of that are in the show notes. Patricia, let’s start off by, why does all of that matter in the standard department?

[0:01:21] PM: Deb, I think one of the things that printers know is that color standards are really important, right? If you’re a printer, you are probably aware of things like, G7, and you’re aware of how your brand customers refer to color. Very often, they miss that those PDF files that are showing up in their directories and on their servers, they conform to a standard as well. It’s a standard that has evolved over decades, and it is one that isn’t a one-and-done thing because we keep changing our printing technologies, we enhance them, we add more ink capabilities, we add more texture capabilities, embellishment capabilities. The print file standard has got to keep up with all of that.
Sure, everybody could have their own standard, but then it’s not a standard. What we try to do in the world of print is settle in a PDF universe. We try to make sure that everybody has access to all the information they need so that in the markets they serve, the print files that come to them and that they’re processing follow certain rules.

Now, PDF is one of those things that took off in a lot of different directions, than I think John Warnock originally envisioned. I was working with him when he was working on PDF in the beginning, before it was really called PDF. I know that it was originally built as something to make the advertising industry easier. To make file transfer in the advertising industry easier. He was a visionary. He recognized that transaction people, direct mailers, poster printers, textile, everybody, eventually, was going to want it. The standard kept evolving and evolving and evolving. Over time, we’ve ended up with a lot of PDF standards.

As a printer, there are probably a few you should know about. That’s one of the reasons I was personally so excited when you told me we were going to be talking to Dietrich because I know Dietrich from standards. Dietrich, we want to welcome you to the podcast and thank you so much for agreeing to come and talk with us. The whole catalyst crew was so busy at drupa, I didn’t have hardly four seconds to just wonder why. I missed, actually, getting a chance to have a deeper conversation. We’re so excited to have you here because we know you spent that lovely 11 days at drupa in hall seven, in the drupa next age area doing a stage presentation, basically, helping educate people about why they should be concerned about standards. Thanks for coming on. What can you share about your time at drupa?

[0:04:07] DvS: It was impressive. I mean, really at the booth, we had zillions of presentations. People were there, we were there with three people most of the time giving presentations in parallel. What I’ve learned from my people, so obviously I didn’t do all the presentations myself, is usually at drupa, you usually have only educated people that are in the industry. Nobody comes by asking, “Oh, actually, what is color doing?” You never have that at drupa. But this time, it was even more qualified, even more concrete questions. Many experienced users already, but also new ones. We really found the quality of the audience even better than in previous drupa events.

The other thing that we’ve noted, it was more international even. In the past, it was Europe and US. Then you rarely had one from South America, maybe, or an Asian guy. But these were not really the type of people that could be interested in a PDF automation solution as what we have. This was different this time. Especially the Asian people were really qualified, they had very concrete questions, and very much into PDF automation. That was not the case. Definitely not the case before in countries where you have rather low employee wages, where you say, “Okay, it doesn’t count that much, whether I have people doing that work, or whether there is an automate like ours doing the work.” This was different here.

Maybe wages have raised over there. Maybe it’s just the number of PDF files is increasing as we see here in Europe. That was the takeaways. For us, it’s color software OEM business is important, so other companies. That was what I personally was doing. I had good talks there, too. I can’t talk about that, but maybe that’s for now for drupa.

[0:06:18] PM: Did you feel like it was a more technical attendee that was coming to drupa this time? Not just the CEOs, but the people actually doing the work?

[0:06:28] DvS: Yeah, the CEOs were there, but they were usually attended by more technical people. That was also, most of the time, or quite often, it were more than just one person showing up at the booth. There were groups of three, four or even more people.

[0:06:45] PM: were you talking to the same people multiple times? I know one of the other vendors said this to me that it’s like, somebody would come over on Tuesday, and then all of a sudden, they were back on Thursday with more questions, and then again on Saturday with even more questions.

[0:06:58] DvS: Yeah, true. Then they brought their colleagues, yes. Then this is interesting, yeah, that happened. Yeah.

[0:07:03] PM: I mean, for me, callas is so well known as an infrastructure provider, as somebody that has the tools everybody wants and wants to OEM. That it surprised me to hear a few people say, “Gee, I just met these people from callas, and I had no idea that there was this toolbox.” Did you feel like there was a wider group that you were talking to this time?
[0:07:26] DvS: No. Actually, not at the booth.

[0:07:27] DC: Really? They came and they knew you.

[0:07:29] DvS: Yeah. They came there out of a reason. Maybe they heard that from other way. I heard that all the OEM customers, not all of them, but a few, some of them also advertise that they’re using our technology. Maybe that is a reason, then somebody, and that I heard. Are you actually aware, or I wasn’t actually aware that these people, and I don’t want to tell names here, but these people are also using your technology. That I have heard more than just once. Then I said, “Yes, yes. I know.”

[0:08:02] PM: They’re a partner and we collaborate with them, right?

[0:08:04] DC: Yeah. Also, I just said, you might also have benefited from the traffic of people going into hall seven itself. I mean, next door, hall eight, where the software was. There could have been actually people who walked by because you were actually facing that corridor. You were in a very good spot for capturing a lot of that traffic, walking to the software people.

[0:08:26] DvS: Right, yeah.

[0:08:28] PM: Dietrich, one of the things that I think is important for people to know, especially the people who weren’t able to make it to drupa and are relying on podcasts like this to figure out what they missed, callas software, I feel like I’ve known it forever. Is just such a, again, as I said, an infrastructure piece. As a company, you’re so involved in standards. You had to tell somebody who knew your name, but didn’t really understand your involvement in the standards community. How would you describe the reason for being so involved to them?

[0:09:03] DvS: Standards, yeah. We are very much automation. What we want to do is we want to automate PDF processing in prepress. We believe standards are a very important ingredient there. You said that in the beginning, every printer could set up their own rules for PDF files and that would be a huge task. It’s much easier for the common requirements to just rely on a standard, to not specify the nitty-gritty details that you want in a PDF file, the image resolution, and I don’t know, the trimmed size of the page is smaller than the overall size. You want to rely on a standard for that, just to make your life easier. That is why we believe standards are important for automation.

On the other hand, and to say that standards are just one important ingredient, of course, every print production workflow is different from each other. We always recommend start with a standard, start with PDFX, GWD specification, and then build your own requirements on top of that. I mean, we are involved, as you’ve said, at ISO level and PDF standardization and your subset standards, like PDFX, GWG, with their GWG specification that, again, build on top of PDFX4. Sometimes it’s good to be there to just make sure that what, for instance, a printer may come up with can indeed be reflected in a PDF file.

In GWG, where you usually have more user level, it’s good to be there and to say, okay, but this or that is difficult to do in PDF, or you should phrase this or the other way. On ISO level, it’s more the other way around. There, you have all the PDF experts, but they don’t have that much knowledge about graphic art. It’s good to be there, too.

[MESSAGE]

[0:11:03] DC: Are you looking to elevate your game, take your bottom-line customer relationships, and events to the next level? Then, I want to work with you. I’m Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. I engage with a vast, global audience of print and marketing professionals across all stages of their careers. They are seeking topical information and resources, new ways to serve their customers and connect with them, optimize processes for their communications and operations, and they need the products and services and partnership you offer to get to their next level.

Print Media Centr offers an array of unique opportunities that amplify your message and support your mission across the Printerverse. Let’s work together, bring the right people together, and move the industry forward together. Link in the show notes. Engage long and prosper.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:12:05] PM: Just to translate, for folks who don’t know the three letters GWG, what we’re referring to there is the Ghent Workgroup, which is an august body. Dave Zwang runs that organization and is one of my favorite people in workflow and workflow automation. It helps to have these standards bodies, like the PDF Association, GWG, CIP4, because there are a lot of different reasons and a lot of different standardizations of PDF.

If I think back 20 years ago, we were excited at the idea of just having a PDF standard. Now, there’s a lot of them, because packaging’s got its own issues, PDF4, augmented reality has its own issues, 3D has its own issues, textile. As callas, do you balance your, I won’t say work-life balance, I’ll say work standards balance, because it could take up every hour of the day.

[0:13:04] DvS: Yeah. I mean, in general, all these standards share some common basis and also, an ISO level. We work hard to make standards like PDF A for archiving and PDF X for printing and graphic arts as similar as possible. Many of the, literally the text that is in the standard is the same. Then, of course, that makes our work as implementers easier. We have a good process here. How a process, a standard translates into what we call a profile. In fact, much more of our work is related to make the solution then flexible enough to address whatever specific requirements are around in the world of our OEM customers, or print customers.

[0:13:55] PM: When you look at the people that you’re serving today, I would imagine they’ve changed over the years as PDF has become more the lingua franca of print. Does that change how you have to work on your user interface and make it easy for people to use?

[0:14:13] DvS: Yeah. That is actually getting more and more difficult, I have to admit. Making the user interface easy is the almost – we try hard, but it’s not always easy to achieve that for a flexible solution. I have to say, I’m every day surprised how flexible a solution has to be. You have to have so many parameters to make your solution capable of taking in the requirements of every specific print house. We fight hard here about every parameter, but there are so many by now. That is indeed a challenge also for users. We try doing documentation, doing events, and so forth. We are in good contact. But you are definitely right.

What I can say, the quality of requests and the demand is ever growing. I would say, as of today, the print requirements, or making a PDF file compatible to a certain printing workflow is usually not a challenge anymore, at least not for some experienced print houses. Nowadays, they’re dealing with creating white forms out of content, creating bleed where it’s missing, repairing dye lines for packaging and labels. Automation is ever growing and it’s growing even beyond print these days.

[0:15:46] PM: Does it make your mission to automate these workflows harder, more complex, not only from your creating and developing the code side, but making it intelligible to the printers who need to use it?

[0:16:00] DvS: Yes. That is definitely the case. As I’ve said, we need to work hard on making it as accessible as it can be, providing content, educating people about it. Yes.

[0:16:15] PM: Did you see anything at drupa that was net new to you in terms of how people were using print? One of the ones that fascinated the heck out of me was printing on metal, but there were also – there are new inkjet printheads that are printing on glass. There are all these interesting innovations. Did you see anything that new?

[0:16:35] DvS: No. But I’ve heard recently where requirements coming from haptic print, where you want to print several layers on top of your substrate. Then, of course, that brings yet another level of complexity. What do you want in order to make sure that your PDF file actually works according to these requirements? That seems to be something that is really evolving still. Something we will be working on.

[0:17:05] PM: Who knows what substrates we’ll be printing on by the time we get to 2028, right? It could be really quite interesting.

[0:17:11] DvS: Yeah.

[0:17:12] PM: Have you noticed any trends? Did you hear of anything, or since then, or before then for that matter, trends in the adoption of workflow automation? Cause I feel like, in the printing community, there are those that are still convinced that spreadsheets are a good idea. Then there are those who actually understand the power that workflow automation can bring them from a capacity perspective, a labor reduction perspective.
[0:17:39] DvS: Yes. I mean, I would say, our customers usually are already in the automation space. That is not new to them. Of course, you also sometimes have the request of we want to start automation, or this has been done manually. We want to do this or that. Usually, our customers are not starting from scratch with automation. They are already somewhere and OEM customers, of course, as well.

[0:18:07] PM: They’re just looking for the next better tool and that’s how they get to you.

[0:18:10] DvS: Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

[0:18:11] PM: That makes a lot of sense.

[0:18:12] DvS: Maybe it’s more like that. I mean, I’m looking at support. I’m really looking into every requirement and request that we get. But I have to admit, if it’s really basic, then I know that can be dealt with. I’m more interested in requirements that are new. Where I think, okay, there is room for improvements for us, too. Maybe that is the reason I’m looking more at this stuff.

[0:18:37] PM: Deb, one of the things that callas is known for is education, right? Not just participating in standards, but also education. It’s one of these things like, I’ve never been able to participate that I watched the videos is pdfCamp. I love the pdfCamp video. From a printer’s perspective, Deb, it’s the thing that I’d encourage any printer who prints PDF, which I think is everybody, that this is something that they should take a look, even if they’re not a callas customer. They should be taking a look at pdfCamp. What made you decide that that was an important facet of the callas story?

[0:19:15] DvS: Yeah, it was evolving actually. At one point, we thought, okay, there is not enough knowledge about the internals of PDF. It would be good to educate people maybe. But we thought, okay, having an event where just one presentation follows the other, might be not that helpful. It may be better if people bring their own issues, their own questions, their own problems. Then I have to admit, I was nervous the first time because I just didn’t know whether it would start off, but it went very well, actually. We’ve learned also. In the first place, it was much more related to the internal stuff of a PDF file. Today, it’s really more on the user level.
We have usually, and we had to stop once in a while with 30 people because such an event only works with a limited number of attendees. Then we have enough content, they bring content to the event, just questions, ideas, is that possible at all? Then during the event, we work with these people on their questions. Then in this case, we also have a small spreadsheet. We use a spreadsheet, and then we enter the solutions, our findings. We believe this is quite worthwhile for the attendees. We always have very good feedback. People were usually excited if they are there the first time. They say, “I definitely want to get back.”

Also, for us, it’s important to be connected to the market. We are in the end, I mean, I’m a printing engineer, but it’s a long time ago that I’ve seen a print house from the inside or a prepress department. It’s important to stay connected. Such events help us to do so, so to really understand what might be improved, what is not easily understandable, maybe. That is really also for us. I’m always getting back with a huge list of to-dos.

[MESSAGE]

[0:21:19] PM: McGrew Group can help you with assessments, RFP reviews, education content, and surveys. Plus, our consulting practice to offer guidance on your best business workflows and integrations. McGrew Group is ready to help you grow, expand, optimize, and thrive. Drop us a note on LinkedIn, or at our website, mcgrewgroup.com.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:21:44] DC: You have a pdfCamp coming up in October, which we will put a link to the show notes there. If you guys don’t mind, I’d like to go to pdfCamp right now, because I’m a little confused on a couple of things. This is bringing it back down to, can Deborah understand this? Okay. We haven’t mentioned the garbage in, garbage out thing yet. I’m a little confused. I just want to understand how this works, okay? No one’s mentioned the word Adobe, which is the only way I make PDFs. Now, I’m confused as far as, are those standards coming to me somehow? Is that why I see 90 different choices for saving PDFs in my Illustrator, for example, with by the way, no explanation at all to the end-users, like me on what any of that means. I either pick X, or I was told to pick the latest one by somebody. Then I’m assuming that the printers have to deal with my file after, right? I want to confirm that.
Then the second thing, and sorry, I’m a compound question person, but this will be the last one. Are you guys saying that if I create a file for, let’s just say an eight-foot by four-foot in America feet banner, I know that I have to create the art in a certain resolution at a certain scale? Then I pick one of my PDFs. I do a PDF lottery and pick one, save it, high-quality printing, PDF X, whichever one I’m in the mood for that day because no one has ever told me which one I should use. I send it to the printer.

What you guys, I believe are saying is that there is a standard now that that PDF has to, or should conform to, so that it prints out the best on a white format device. Is that what you’re saying, Patricia?

[0:23:39] PM: Dietrich, take it.

[0:23:40] DC: Okay. Somebody.

[0:23:43] DvS: First question, yes, a friend of mine is creative, working in creative and he once told me, “Okay, I’m on the good side. I’m creating PDF X. I’m opening the PDF in Acrobat, use pre-flight, save as PDF X, and then I work as long as I don’t see any red crosses anymore. But I don’t really understand what I’m doing there.” Then that is always an example for me. That is somehow the issue. The requirements that the printer has are not always understandable for the creator of the PDF file and the creator of the PDF file happens to be the customer. It’s even more difficult to get along with each other.

What I believe is it’s good and every person working in graphic arts on the creative side should know about problems of print and should be educated. In the end, it’s the task of the print house to make sure that as long as possible in any case, the PDF file can be improved, so that it can be printed according what the customer probably might have expected. That is where our solution kicks in. I think in the days of when we started to use PDF in prepress, it was we need to educate the customer creators so that we receive good PDF files.

I think that we’ve all learned that this is a difficult thing to do. What we say, a printer should double check when he receives the PDF file, whether there are any serious issues, any serious issues, like fonts is not embedded, the image quality. Maybe image quality not even is a real issue. Maybe the files, the page dimensions do not meet what he has ordered. Not at all. Slight different, you may still get along. But if it’s a four and he has asked for a letter, that might be an issue. That needs to be reported to the customer as soon as possible. Everything else need to be repaired on the receiving side in the print house.

These days you have solutions that can do that. The only task that you have at the print house is to make rules. For instance, if we have the slight difference from the final print product, you have to decide whether you want to add content, where you want to slightly scale the page, whatever. These decisions, the printer has to make. Not to send the file back, until it gets perfect to the print house. By the way, no printer would do, because nobody wants to send away his customers.

[0:26:29] PM: That’s where the toolbox comes in. That’s where from the prepress department standpoint, we know what’s coming in is probably the best the creator could do to their level of understanding. But they don’t know our equipment. They don’t know our CTP system. They don’t know our inkjet system, our toner system. They don’t know our devices, how we operate. They don’t know our rips. That’s where the printer takes on the responsibility of making sure that what comes in gets transformed, morphed, managed into what the output devices can handle. Yeah.

[0:27:07] DC: Just to go back to the example I used. On my end, I’m just creating a file, whether it’s a three by two-and-a-half business card, or whether it is a three by two-and-a-half-inch file that is actually built one inch to one foot and is going to be a big banner. On my end, that makes no difference as long as if I am, for some reason, want to be a lunatic and put art in the background that that art is big enough and it will actually print out versus using vector art. That’s my big concern at the moment.

I send my PDF to the printer. Are you guys saying that a different standard for output needs to be applied on the printer’s end to output a business card, then for it to go into a wide format device, which technically is now printing with bigger dots. I still think of it as dots. Is that the case? It’s getting separated on the other end. That’s where I’m confused now.

[0:28:09] DvS: Yeah. I mean, effectively, yes. That is not all in standards. You have a standard GWG. Ghent Workgroup has a specification for large format. Large format would usually take into account the viewing distance and the scaling factor. Usually, you would apply a scaling factor and being printer viewing distance. Then that creates the limits that you want to use for small text, whether it’s still readable for lines, whether it’s still visible for image. This is where you have a minimum image resolution, so you don’t see the – not too much pixels visible.

These standards exist. For a large format printer, it would be good to at least know GWG and maybe base his internal workflow on this standard. For a business card, you don’t have that. You don’t have a viewing distance for a business card. There, you only have a minimum resolution, image resolution that is always the same. Other than that, for a business card, you might want to have different size of bleed than for a large format. There are other such rules. In the end, I would think, yes, indeed, the print house should take care of the file that he receives from you, that she receives from you, that it works according to their production capabilities. You can do that with software.

[0:29:36] DC: Excellent. What I’m hearing from you is that, if I’m a printer and I’m now going to start adding services, maybe I’ve only been doing business cards and I realize I must be doing more things in wide format now. If I understand correctly, you could try to figure this out yourself every time a file comes in, or you can apply the approved wide format standard for that press, or that technology automatically through your software solution. Is that correct? That’s what I’m trying to understand.

[0:30:10] DvS: It’s at least a starting point. I mean, for a wide format, you will have to have another printer, a printer that normally doesn’t print business cards, so you’ll have to have a printer. You’ll have to learn how to use that printer, how to parameterize it, to adjust it, to whatever comes in. Then you will also have to learn requirements for the PDF file that is being printed. Their standards are a very good starting point and addressing many, many of the common needs. But they don’t address the particular requirements of your particular printer. You usually have to go beyond the standard. You will usually have to add your own additional rules if you are in automation, into your automation engine, so that it prepares really for your printing device.

[0:31:01] DC: Well, that seems awfully complicated and you have to have the exact right people in place in order to do it yourself, versus working with someone like you who already has all of this covered.

[0:31:14] DvS: You will have to have a solution like ours. If you can’t open the PDF file and it takes editor and adjust it to your needs. You’ll have to have higher-level access to the PDF file. Then what we would do, if a customer would say, “So, I’m going to large format.” I would say to him exactly what I’ve just said to you. I would then say, “Once you’ve learned what you need to do, send us a list of requirements and we can get back to you in support with a profile that does exactly what you’re asking for.”

[0:31:46] DC: We’re in a whole new level of automation that Patricia and I don’t usually drill down into. I just understand the importance of a PDF workflow and making sure that – and the pre-check and all, flight check and all that stuff, because again, I have print customer brain. But this is fascinating to me, because I have no idea, because again, I’m on the end of this, which is just give me a file. I’ll do whatever you want, just give me a file. There is no going back and understanding why these things are all different and why you want to work with a printing partner who can manage this in a way that keeps things moving through the print shop. Patricia?

[0:32:29] PM: I think, Deb, you’ve encapsulated it really well. I think the power that the callas toolbox, the callas PDF toolbox brings to the story and their participation in standards, and everybody who participates in those standards meetings gives their time, gives their brain power to it. I think that it’s an essential element of being able to grow your business going forward. If you as a printer haven’t investigated the tools that can help make you more automated, more consistent, you should do that today. You should talk to the vendors you’re currently working with. If they don’t have good answers for you, you should be looking at folks like callas to help you navigate your way towards creating the most efficient workflow you can, so you can make more money no matter what your print product is.

[0:33:18] DC: Yeah. By the way, it is a great thing to share with your customers and the ones that you want to be customers by saying, “Hey, anytime you want to reprint this, we’ve got you.” Because it was printed out in the standards. Versus, “Well, I’m going to print it here and that. Well, it doesn’t look like it looked last time.” By the way, it’s a difficult conversation, because I have the same file. I’m sending the same file and I’m all confused about why does my blue look a little purple, instead of the blue that I wanted?

[0:33:53] PM: It becomes essential for multinational brands, also national brands. Think about multinational brands, where you might be printing in Australia, you might be printing in Brazil, you’re printing in Japan, you’re printing in Malaysia and you’re printing in India and then you’re printing in Germany and Denmark. I mean, think about just the challenge of managing all the elements, not just the color elements, but all the elements of a print file across multinational boundaries and different devices, right? That’s where standards make your life a lot easier.

[0:34:26] DC: Yeah. Honestly, I mean, as you know, it just brought all the entire picture together for me, because most of the time, we’re speaking about the same press number, printing on the same press number anywhere in the world, if they have those numbers dialed in and this and that and the other thing, it should – look, they say it should. It should print correctly. But this seems like the way to guarantee it as close as possible.

[0:34:52] PM: Get you closer.

[0:34:53] DC: Yeah. Look, if everybody follows the same chocolate chip cookie recipe, right? It’s going to be different for me in Florida than it is for you in Denver up there, a mile high from sea level, but you know how to make the adjustments, but we’re still using the same recipe, so it can be replicated.

[0:35:13] PM: Absolutely true. Absolutely true.

[MESSAGE]

[0:35:18] DC: Like what you hear? Leave us a comment, click a few stars, share this episode, and please subscribe to the show. Are you interested in being the guest and sharing your information with our active and growing global audience? Podcasts are trending as a potent direct marketing and educational channel for brands and businesses who want to provide portable content for customers and consumers. Visit printmediacentr.com, click on podcasts, and request a partner package today. Share long and prosper.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:35:52] PM: I think, Deb, as we try to wrap this up and bring it home, Dietrich, if you have a piece of advice that you would share with printers about what they need to be ready for today, but also, what should they be watching for coming down the road? Standards keep changing and enhancing themselves. What do they need to be watching for?

[0:36:13] DvS: If you understand, or if you’re, as I am convinced, believe that automation is important, I would think automation is never at its end. These days, automation capabilities grow, print is evolving, so not just digital print. We are seeing more and more files being printed today. Packaging label is growing. We’ve seen individualization. We see variable data prints. Requirements grow, grow, grow. Automation of the pure print file, I think it’s pretty far, but automation evolves these days beyond print. It goes into post-print processes into the full production. That is what I think printers should look at and it’s individual to each printer. If you start, you want to have an expert in your company that helps you automating the most common things. Once you’re there, you will start looking ahead. What’s missing? What’s missing still? What tasks can I automate in addition to what I have today, which are still happening more or less every day? Then from there, just growing.

That is what I’m seeing with our bigger customers, or the online printers. They don’t stop. They don’t say, “Okay, this year is a year of automation and then we are done with it.” It’s an ever-evolving, ever-growing process. It’s a mindset, too, in the print houses. Then, of course, it’s industry. Requirements are different in variable data print with everything is about performance, than in packaging, where color is important, where technical colors are also important, dye lines. Fixing dye lines is a common issue. Yes, look around. Look at your production. Have experts in your house, and probably, also, a few experts outside that your experts can refer to and then try to grow.

[0:38:25] PM: That’d be great. Deb, as you know, I’m a big assessment fan. I think that for every printer that is looking at their operation, identifying bottlenecks, identifying gaps, keeping track of customer dissatisfaction because of the print output color and quality, this is the time to be looking at these types of tools to help them solve those challenges and help them further business.

[0:38:52] DC: Excellent. Well, Dietrich, thank you so much for joining us today. Everything you need to connect with Dietrich and callas and get information about the PDF workshop, the pdfCamp, which doesn’t only happen in October. If you’re listening to this after October, connect with them, look for replays, things they have on their site. But you don’t have to worry. Links for everything you need for that are in the show notes. Until next time, everybody, print long and prosper.

[END OF EPISODE]

[0:39:24] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com. We’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.

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