Imaging Puts East, West in the Picture

A color photograph of the Newport Beach pier flashed onto a computer screen as a Japanese attendant said, hai, hai wakarimashita (yes, yes I understand) into a telephone in Santa Monica. He pressed a button, and within three minutes the image was electronically transmitted to Toppan Printing Co.’s office in Tokyo.

Twenty minutes later the photograph reappeared on the screen, but the pier was gone and in its place were pillars and a silver car. The computer produced a negative that yielded a full-color, high-quality, high-resolution print.

The system allows for “a creative dialogue,” allowing one art director to make changes on the work of another, explained Takeo Hayano, vice president and general manager of Toppan Graphic Arts Center/West.

The Santa Monica company, which is owned by Toppan Printing Co., Japan’s second-largest printing company, hopes to use its new $25,000 Israeli electronic imaging system to help West Coast advertising agencies and their Japan-based clients.

The technology of the Scitex system, however, is not new. Crosfield Electronics of Glenrock, N.J., and Hell Graphic Systems of Port Washington, N.Y., have similar machines that can transmit images electronically. Edward T. Chrusciel, product manager at Hell Graphic, a unit of Siemens of West Germany, said there are 600 image-processing systems in place in the United States.

Time Magazine, for example, used Crosfield’s Pagfax system to transmit photos from the Winter Olympics in Calgary to various U.S. printing sites.

But Hayano is specifically targeting the West Coast ad community because he says a good deal of U.S. advertising for Japanese firms originates here. The Scitex system allows for images from different locations to be synthesized in one place.

But Hayano admits that Toppan must create a niche for the service. “The new trends in graphic design are here,” he explained. “In California, people like to try new things.”

Meanwhile, NHK, a Japanese broadcasting company, will use the system to send photos from the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, next month to Toppan in Santa Monica, which in turn will distribute the pictures to U.S. magazines.