Imagesetters - Alive And Kicking

While this doesn't make CTP an impractical choice—Xanté estimates that 40 to 50 percent of small in-plants are considering buying a platesetter in the next two years—it can make it an expensive and difficult choice to master.

"A lot of times what folks need to keep in mind is they might already have facilities in place for imagesetting," explains Kimberly Meyers, marketing manager of CreoScitex. "Whereas if they're going to CTP, now they really need to take a look at the prebake oven, the postbake oven and all the facilities for CTP. In terms of ROI it might be better to keep an imagesetter."