Imagesetters Fill Important Niche

For ASU, CTP is not an option for the immediate future.

"It would be nice to be more sophisticated if it would be beneficial to the academic program, but for normal production work, although there could be some advantages in efficiency, this works quite well," he says.

One main benefit of the imagesetting system is the flexibility it provides in the "fluid" university market, where phone numbers and departments heads change frequently. The in-plant keeps a lot of its imaged film handy for revised envelopes. For letterheads and business cards, polyester makes sense due to the low cost to output new plate material compared to the cost of metal plates.