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LightJet 5000 prompts massive client conversion at triangle reprographics
Customers who usually have their wide format images produced on inkjet and electrostatic printers are lining up to get their work done on a Cymbolic Sciences LightJet® 5000 wide format photo printer at Triangle Reprographics. Little more than a year after purchasing the LightJet 5000 printer, the digital imaging lab is outputting half of its clients' wide format requests on the device.
"The bulk of our wide format work used to be done on inkjet, electrostatic and Iris printers. But the superior image quality and speed of the LightJet 5000 photo printer has led to a massive client conversion," says Reg Garner, general manager of Triangle Reprographics. He notes any work done on the LightJet 5000 is completed in 24 hours or less, even complex files.
The LightJet 5000 photo printer uses laser technology to image large prints directly from digital files on backlit and reflective photographic media. With the Long Length Option, the printer produces images up to 49x97" / 124x246cm at 305 dpi / Res 12. These continuous-tone images have the apparent resolution of a 4,000 dpi half-tone image produced on an inkjet printer.
Triangle expects its recent acquisition of the Long Length Option to prompt even more clients to want their work produced on the LightJet 5000 instead of an inkjet. Notes Garner, "One of our most prominent clients, Lockheed Martin Electronics and Missiles, already gets all of its work up to 50x50" / 127x127cm done on the LightJet 5000. With the Long Length Option, we'll now be able to shift production of Lockheed Martin's super wide graphics over to the LightJet 5000 printer from the inkjet."
Lockheed Martin relies heavily on the power of super wide graphics to draw prospective clients into its trade show booths. The company often butts together several 9x15' / 2.7x4.5 meters panels which become an integral, visual backdrop to its interactive multi-media productions. Says a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, "We want the crispness and high quality resolution of a digital photo printer to produce these images, but up until now we've had to compromise that quality by relying on an inkjet to get length. We're very excited about getting length and quality."
And, for Lockheed, speed has become an added bonus with the LightJet 5000. While it could take up to four hours to produce a super wide graphic on an inkjet, it's done in 19 minutes on a Cymbolic Sciences wide format printer.
Triangle Reprographics is a leader in producing high-end presentation and display images for advertising and corporate agencies and the film industry. In business for 26 years, the company pioneered the use of large format color work in the reprographics industry in 1991.
Colorworld Seeks to Carve Out New Market
Photo lab switches focus from social lab to the exhibition display market in Scotland and the North East of England.
Colorworld hopes to make the world of direct-to-photo printing its oyster. With the purchase of a LightJet® 5000 wide format printer in November 1997, the company became the first photo lab in the North East of England to invest in the cutting edge technology.
Says Terry White, Managing Director of Colorworld, "Everyone else in our market area has inkjets and electrostatic printers. I wanted us to be the first to leap into direct-to-photo printing." That boldness is already paying off. More and more of Colorworld's customers, who typically get their graphics produced on an inkjet or electrostatic printer, request LightJet 5000 output instead.
"They've seen the difference in image quality and they're really impressed," White explains. "When you look at an image off a LightJet 5000 printer,
it's absolutely pin sharp, edge-to-edge, and so is the text. We haven't seen that anywhere else."
The LightJet 5000 wide format digital printer exposes popular reflective and backlit display media from Agfa, Fuji, Ilford and Kodak. True continuous-tone images up to 305/406 dpi are printed from digital files. A 305 dpi continuous-tone print has the apparent resolution of 4,000 dpi on a half-tone, inkjet printer.
Ad agencies with major industrial clients, like Forbo-CP, ICI Imperial Chemical Industries, Berghaus and Vickers VSEL, are now on Colorworld's growing list of wide format clients.
Historically focused on the people or social lab market, a shift in marketing strategy had a lot to do with Colorworld's installation of a LightJet 5000. Explains White, "The social lab market is becoming static in this country. The traditional big wedding and family portraits aren't as popular as they used to be. Not as many people are getting married as 20 years ago and the birth rate is falling off."
So White turned his sights to nurturing a new market -- exhibition display wide format graphics. The 500 kilometer (300 mile) area served by his business has a very buoyant industrial commercial advertising base needing exhibition and point-of-purchase displays. Traditionally, that market has been served by screen printers but the digitization of imagery is now opening up that market to other image providers, like Colorworld.
Founded in 1966, Colorworld is a one-of-a-kind photo lab in Britain. It's modeled after the US lab system -- its fully computerized administration system runs on Bremson software. The company is one of Britain's top 10 portrait labs. Employing 82 people, its annual sales are about $US 3.75 million.
Creative Type Uses LightJet 5000 to Wage War on Inkjet
In pursuit of the inkjet market, Creative Type purchases three more LightJet 5000 wide format printers.
"I was dancing in the back room when they put in the first LightJet," says Troy McGinnis, Operations Manager at Creative Type in Dallas, Texas. McGinnis envisioned using the Cymbolic Sciences LightJet 5000 wide format digital photo printer to take over the inkjet market in his area when Creative Type installed the unit in May 1998.
Since then, the high volume digital imaging and service bureau has installed three more LightJet 5000s, bringing its arsenal of photo printers to four -- two at its main location in Dallas; another in Austin, and one in Fort Worth. "If we have to line up 10 LightJets to take over all the inkjet business in the Southwest, that's what we'll do," declares McGinnis.
Ever since Creative Type started servicing the wide format digital imaging market with inkjet and electrostatic printers four years ago, the company has been avidly looking for the right direct-to-photo printer. Explains McGinnis, "We were tired of saying stand 10 feet away from a print, or never mind those inkjet lines. We were looking for the ultimate true continuous-tone, photographic print. And finally we found it with the LightJet 5000 wide format printer."
According to McGinnis, the stochastic dot pattern of the inkjet's half-tone technology prevents it from ever matching the sharpness and color saturation of direct-to-photo printing, especially in wide format images. "When wide format digital imaging first came out, it didn't matter if the images were fuzzy because the technology was new and the prints were eye popping. But now our clients' expectations have grown. Even clients wanting enlargements of family photos want their images to be continuous tone."
McGinnis says given the lower material costs of the LightJet 5000's technology and its faster turnaround (a 127x127cm inkjet image takes 45 minutes to print on an inkjet versus 8 minutes on the LightJet 5000), he can sell LightJet prints at the same price as inkjet prints.
"I'm able to lay down an inkjet print of the highest quality and a photographic LightJet print next to it and say, I can do it for the same amount of money. Which do you want? Of course they're going to pick the photographic print," says McGinnis. Within days of installing its first LightJet 5000 printer, Creative Type was printing 30 to 40 prints a day. That volume is increasing daily.
One of the five largest graphic arts service bureaus in the US, Creative Type has seven locations in the Southwest. The company employees 80 people and does about $US25 million worth of business a year. It produces everything from high end art and trade show graphics to family portraits.
EarthSat Pursues More Accurate Satellite Imagery
The world's largest commercial provider of enhanced satellite imagery installed a LightJet® 5000RS wide format digital photo printer this fall. It wasn't a snap decision for Earth Satellite Corporation (EarthSat) based in Rockville, Maryland. Says Jim Fry, EarthSat's director of defense intelligence programs, "We're not a company that runs out and buys a lot of hardware or software. We're very careful with what we buy, and when we buy a product we're confident we're going to use it for a long time."
That was the way EarthSat felt about its Cirrus film recorder for years. That is until the reseller's clients started pushing for higher quality hard copies of remote sensing imagery. With the trend towards relying more on digital data to evaluate land use, environmental changes, surveillance activities, geological deposits, and weather patterns, hard copies of digital data are becoming more crucial. "When you're looking at high resolution data on a computer screen, you can only see a small portion at a time. You need a large scale mosaic to assess the big picture and that's where hard copy output is indispensable," explains Fry.
However, the prints need to be as geometrically exact as the digital data -- something that isn't achievable with a film recorder, especially when dealing with multiple magnifications of pixels as small as 10 microns to create mosaics as large as 49x97" /124x246cm or more. The conventional enlargement process results in image distortion and a loss of image sharpness that could be problematic in the field. Elaborates Fry, "You're not going to be very confident in a print if an identical 500 meter feature is one length on the right side of the print and a different length on the left side."
Fry is quick to note EarthSat's imaging products have served the company well for most of its 29 years. But, with the advent of direct-to-photo digital printing, much higher geometric accuracy and image quality are achievable.
According to EarthSat's vice president of image processing, Dr. Jon Dykstra, the Cymbolic Sciences LightJet 5000RS wide format digital photo printer provides superior geometric accuracy over competitive products. Attests Dykstra, "With the LightJet 5000RS we are counting on being able to give a client up to a 50x96" /127x244cm print of remote sensing imagery that will be exactly the scale specified plus or minus one millimeter anywhere on the print."
Using three laser technology, Cymbolic Sciences' LightJet 5000RS outputs images onto photographic media directly from digital files. It images a 1.27x1.27m/50x50" print at 305 dpi (Res 12) in under eight minutes. Adds Dykstra, "With this kind of performance, we anticipate a significant increase in our productivity."
