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Printing Facilities

Hard Copy Service will Remain Available at CSC

by Joe Lee

The Hard Copy Centre was founded in February 1994 to mainly provide colour output services to staff and students of the university. It was then combined with the Design and Production team of MPU to form the Media Production Service (MPS) in September 1998. According to the recent management re-organisation, the MPU (including the MPS) was merged with the University Press and was moved to the Festival Walk Office on 1 March 2003. In order to provide multimedia production services to users, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) resumes the original functions of the Hard Copy Centre under the name of Hard Copy Service (HCS).

Why we have the HCS?

Nowadays, with software like CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Freehand, Microsoft PowerPoint and many others, users can easily create high quality and attractive documents and presentation materials on their desktop computer. However, with ordinary colour printers, it is not easy to produce the desirable printouts. Also, it always takes users two hours or more to print just a few pages of printouts and/or transparencies of photo-quality. Furthermore, users may experience difficulties when they want to

  • include some photos, slides or negative film in their presentations,
  • print a poster as large as 4' x 12',
  • capture video and sound from DV/video tape,
  • print plastic name badge for their department or conference,
  • duplicate a large number of CD-ROMs.

To help staff and students overcome these difficulties, the HCS has equipped with advanced input and output devices, which are usually found in professional print shops. These devices include a 5000 dpi color scanner, 600 dpi color laser copier / printer, 60" width plotting device, CD duplicator and so on.

Scope of Services

The followings are provided by the HCS:

  1. Printing Services
    • Color Laser Printing
    • Large Format Poster Printing
    • ID card printing
  2. Scanning / Capturing Services
    • Color Image Scanning (including slides, negative films, and photos)
    • Sound Capturing
    • Video Capturing
  3. Other Services
    • Color Laser Photocopying
    • CD-ROM recording
    • Foam board mounting
 

For more information, please call the HCS at 2788 8257.

Future Direction

In addition to providing multimedia production services, the Hard Copy Service will assist staff and students to create high quality and attractive presentation materials. In the past, the HCS launched the Clip Art Library and the CityImage, which provide users with attractive clip arts and photos for enhancing their presentations easily.

The HCS will constantly review its production processes, services, and equipment to meet users' needs.