X-Rite is introducing the IntelliTrax News auto-scanning system, a newly developed hardware-software package, to help newspapers reduce ink usage, press time and paper waste, while improving the quality of printed colour images.
The new software is primarily designed to monitor and control colour density and gray balance. IntelliTrax News (ITX News), which has been running in what X-Rite describes as large regional newspapers, includes a newly developed spectrodensitometer.
“With prior systems, newspapers had to manually align gray bars of printed sheets to take measurements, which creates extra steps and opportunities for errors if press operators don’t position everything correctly,” expained Steve Mattingly, Senior VP of Sales and Marketing at Southern Lithoplate Inc., a Wake Forest, N.C. manufacturer, distributor and provider of printing plates and associated products for targeted print markets. “With the ITX News system, our customers will get accurate, consistent measurements in a single pass, giving them a high level of confidence and managing waste in an industry that is continuously challenged to track, manage and lower costs.”
Pressroom personnel, according to X-Rite, can use the ITX News system to scan the gray bar of a full broadsheet in about 10 seconds and generate graphics that summarize data and can used to adjust ink flow at press consoles.
X-Rite continues to explain that ITX News can closely monitor the density values of cyan, magenta, and yellow inks on any of the columns being run on newsprint to reduce the time and paper needed to produce sellable copies. The graphics shown on the system’s touch-screen monitor for gray balance allows press operators to make the necessary adjustments to maintain process control throughout the press run.
In addition to reading C, Y and M values, the instrument concurrently can read black patches embedded in the gray bar so pressroom personnel monitor both colour and black text with one measurement. An earlier version of the product could not measure both colour and black values on the same sheet at the same time.
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