The "Man" Behind the Curtain

EFI (Electronics For Imaging)

With its Fiery RIP entrenched in the wide-format market, users find it painless to move across to EFI’s workflow control solution. More wide-format PSPs are considering MIS investments to streamline workflows and lower costs in the form of less consumables waste and more efficient productivity. This theme clearly was evident at drupa as well as at the annual EFI Connect user group meeting one month before the big show. A Las Vegas highlight in April was the Digital Workflow Experience—a live demonstration that showed an integrated workflow from submission to output. The demo followed a job from submission using EFI Digital StoreFront web-to-print solution, to both EFI Pace and EFI Monarch print MIS systems, to EFI PrintFlow, to a Fiery production RIP server, and then to the VUTEk GS3250LX and/or the new EFI R3225 printer, illustrating how a seamless workflow can save time, while reducing errors and waste.

ErgoSoft US

PosterPrint Version 14 is ErgoSoft’s PostScript RIP for production in large-format print and print-and-cut workflows. V14 combines its JobComposer layout interface with the automatable color management tools for spot color replacement, allowing for production with minimal waste. Optional features include contour cutting, variable data, and production features for job costing and estimation.

At drupa, ErgoSoft and Tucanna presented a complete and fully automated workflow solution, from job submission to preflight, color management, and through RIPing. The system is based on Tucanna’s tFlow and ErgoSoft RIP V14.1. tFlow is a client/server solution that runs on Mac OS X and Windows allowing for cross platform integration, and includes all tools for workflow optimization and automation.

“The combination of high quality color management and preflighting tools, as well as the ‘ease of use’ strategy of Tucanna, allowed our users to build a scalable and fully configurable workflow to meet their growing needs,” said Hans Peter Tobler CEO of ErgoSoft.

GMG Americas

At the FESPA Digital show in Barcelona in February, GMG launched into the wide-format market with a solution that offers flexibility and the application of precise color management to a variety of output devices. Its ProductionSuite is a flexible model, allowing an upgrade path for single-user, single-printer environments all the way through to much larger operations. It comprises an editing suite, a RIP, a profiler, and PrintStation. The firm’s heritage in color management packages means that spot colors, whites, and silvers are incorporated neatly within the workflow; it also carries over features from its established solutions in the production print space, such as integrated preflighting, last minute PDF corrections and workflow optimization.

ONYX Graphics

ProductionHouse X10.2 is the firm’s premiere RIP software that creates custom color media profiles and uses a combination of inks and output devices such as grand-format, large-format, and flatbed printers, as well as cutters. ONYX is the only HP RIP partner to achieve HP Professional Pantone Emulation certification.

ONYX PosterShop X10.2 offers support for production printers allowing a singular and uniform approach to controlling color printing. It includes two wide-format (up to 60 inches) print drivers out of the box, with the option to add extra printer licenses.

SA International

In February, SA International (SAi) introduced PixelBlaster print-to-finish software, an end-to-end system that covers pre-flight to production. Modular and scalable, the PDF-based program is a single solution delivering a customer-selected suite of workflow applications that can drive an operation’s entire large-format print hardware line up. PixelBlaster has been designed to reduce bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and increase profitability. A template-based Variable Data Printing option personalizes text, graphics, and images.