be showing at drupa. Link is part of HP’s strategy of, said Murphy, “merging physical and electronic content into a single medium. As all things in the world become part of the Internet of Th ings, we believe printed materials should as well.” Users embed invisible watermarks in images via Link Creation Studio which then can be read by the LinkReader mobile app. HP is targeting Link not just to content developers and end users, but also print providers, who can use it as a workfl ow tool to track jobs in production, much like they use barcodes today. But the real action is in end-use products. “We think Link can be applied to printed books, direct mail, corrugated packaging, transactional and transpromo invoices, and the like,” said Murphy. In packaging applications alone, he added, “it can increase user engagement aft er the purchase.” Th ink sweepstakes, giveaways, and other perks. Th ere is also one other advantage of Link. “Th is technology is as close to free as possible,” said Murphy. “We want to make this ubiquitous wherever there is print. We have this crazy fantasy—that we think will become a reality—that everything that is printed will be connected to the Internet.” AR You Experienced? AR—regardless of the specifi c implementation— is typically (to the extent that it is typical) part of the content creation 22 Printing News ® June 2016 process. “In the production print world, agencies are usually involved in AR development using whatever technology they decide to trigger the AR content,” said InfoTrends’ Bullock. And the challenge isn’t necessarily the mechanics of adding AR, but generating the actual rich media content that the AR triggers. If you want to launch a video, you have to shoot and edit the video. If you want to launch 3D animation, you need to create the 3D animation. Developing the rich media can be costly even if the AR development soft ware is inexpensive or free. (Indeed, Storyboard magazine has discontinued using AR for cost reasons.) It’s likely that AR is gong to be one of those “it takes a crowd to draw a crowd” technologies, and as more and more examples turn up—Lego and Hallmark have been experimenting with AR, the former using shape recognition to have Lego spaceships virtually “take off ,” the latter creating interactive greeting cards—more designers and content creators will be interested in taking advantage of it. Understanding how AR works, how to develop it, and whom to partner with, may be one of the best value-added services a print provider can off er. Find this article at PrintingNews.com/12192141 Layar Cake Iexperimented with Layar’s Augmented Reality platform to test how easy or diffi cult it can be to add AR to print. To my surprise, it was pretty easy to use. More importantly, it worked! Once you set up an account with Layar, you create a campaign through Layar Creator. This campaign can be just about any print application. Once you select your campaign, you upload an image and Layar analyzes it and stores what is a map of that image. When the mobile app scans a printed or other electronic version of the image and looks it up in the Layar database, it’s recognized and triggers the action associated with it. For my test, I uploaded a PDF of the cover of my most recent book. Once the image is analyzed, you then “edit” it, adding what it is you want the AR to trigger. It can be a website, a video, a “like on Facebook” button, an e-mail, or a “Buy” button. I chose “website” since my AR trigger was going to send the user to the book’s Amazon page. In Edit mode, you format the icon that the end viewer is going to see when they scan the page with the Layar app, as well as add the URL to which to send the end user. Test the AR by aiming your Layar app-enabled mobile device at the screen and scan the image. The app fi nds the AR trigger, and, when it’s tapped, it goes to the proper URL. If the test works, click the Publish button, and the campaign is stored on Layar’s site. Once the “image map” is stored, any time the Layar app comes across that image, it will trigger the AR. So I went and scanned the physical book cover with the app—success! Then I scanned the image on the Amazon page—success! I created a one-page fl yer, imported an image of the cover, then printed it on my ancient desktop printer and scanned it—success! As long as the image is not altered after Layar scans it, it can be added to any print or electronic application and anyone using the Layar app can trigger the AR. How long did it take? About 10 minutes. How much did it cost? Nothing, although I was limited to one campaign that is only active for 30 days. There are for-pay plans that offer more functionality and longer active time. —Richard Romano To add an Augmented Reality trigger to an image, import it into Layar Creator, have Layar analyze it, then add what specifi cally you want to trigger.
Printing_News_June_2016
To see the actual publication please follow the link above