PREPRESS FOR AGENCIES
"A Challenge M server running Torque's RIPServer outpaces Agfa's Star Plus RIPS by as much as a factor of 10."
The CPS Group is the in-house prepress production facility for Bozell Worldwide in New York, one of the largest advertising firms in the world. Bozell's motto is "Close to the Customer." For CPS (Custom Production Services), this means constantly looking for ways to afford the agency shorter turnaround times, and beat the bottlenecks. Hot lead gave way to software, and the drawing tables gave way to the desktop. But with deadlines going from "First thing Friday" to "Five minutes ago," the need for speed has only accelerated.
In the beginning, CPS used a proprietary, PC-based typesetting system along with a darkroom and a team of mechanical artists to produce camera-ready advertising artwork. But each job required so many steps and so many hands, the system itself was a bottleneck. About two years ago, the PCs were abandoned rather abruptly when the fan in their server went down and took the rest of the server (a networked PC clone) with it, including the "fail-safe" mirrored disk. From one moment to the next, all workflow was directed to a handful of Macintosh(R) machines. While the server was eventually replaced, the incident brought home to CPS all the efficiencies of Mac(TM)-based operation: graphics firepower, ease of use, and plug and play peripherals. And CPS learned to appreciate having confidence in their hardware.
Turnaround improved significantly with the move to a Mac-based system where typesetting, page layout and photo imposition were all handled on screen. When Local Talk(TM) transmission times became a bottleneck, CPS simply moved to Ethertalk(TM), but other bottlenecks emerged which were beyond the scope of Mac-based technology. Opening and editing large image files made the CPS Quadra(TM) systems feel sluggish. And outputting files with large graphic components led to inordinately long RIPping times to their Selectsets(TM). Lack of processing power was holding CPS back. They recognized it, they researched it, and they turned to Silicon Graphics.