Why We Went Computer-to-Plate in Our Prepress Department
December 6, 2017Here at Rite Envelope & Graphics, Inc., we have spent the last few decades establishing our reputation as the largest supplier of custom printed business envelopes in the Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and New York areas. During those years, we’ve taken pride in every step of our designing and manufacturing process—including the eco-friendliness of our materials and methods. One of Rite Envelope & Graphics, Inc.’s green initiatives have the elimination of excess and waste. Towards this end, we transitioned away from the use of silver and film chemistry, ensuring a purely digital prepress process.
Why We Transitioned
Customers in areas like New York and Baltimore buy our printed business envelopes with the understanding that we care about every step of the design and production process. It became clear to us early on that we needed to transition from traditional printing and find a way around the costly, and wasteful steps of converting to film. Nostalgic as film is to us, we wanted our company to be modern in its services and technologies. By embracing the tools of the modern printing facility—Adobe Photoshop and other applications, our teams now output directly to the printing plate.
The Rite Science Behind CTP
When a company like ours is contracted to design and manufacture custom printed cards and business envelopes for customers in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, we want to maximize the efficiency behind every step of the process. With CTP, we take advantage of this by shortening the prepress process by one whole generation. In the process, what we produce retains even more sharpness and detail—usually lost during the transition to film and the conversion to plate. Because of CTP, our specialists no longer rely on pin grids aligned separately. As a bonus, all the potential defects that can result from scratches and dust needn’t be feared!
Weighing the Savings and Quality
Because of computer-to-plate prepressing, we save ourselves and our loyal customers lots of waiting. In shortening the printing of our envelopes and cards, we also manage to make them higher in quality, and more energy-efficient than more traditional printing facilities or postal offices. Our specialists at Rite Envelope & Graphics, Inc. love what they can do with all our tools and digital software.