Digital exchange of graphic arts material: the ultimate challenge

The digital exchange of graphic arts material - particularly advertising material for publications- in an open standardized environment represents the ultimate challenge for electronic data exchange. To meet the needs of publication advertising, the graphic arts industry must be able to transmit advertisements in an open environment where there are many senders and many receivers of the material. The material being transmitted consists of combinations of pictorial material, text, and line art with these elements superimposed on top of each other and/or interrelated in complex ways. The business relationships established by the traditional workflow environment, the combination of aesthetic and technical requirements, and the large base of existing hardware and software play a major role in limiting the options available. Existing first- and second-generation standards are focused on the CEPS environment, which operates on and stores data as raster files. The revolution in personal computer hardware and software, and the acceptance of these tools by the graphic arts community, dictates that standards must also be created and implemented for this world of vector/raster-based systems. The requirements for digital distribution of advertising material for publications, the existing graphic arts standards base, and the anticipation of future standards developments in response to these needs are explored.