Available in early 2013, the sheet-fed HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press brings HP Indigo's true offset-quality printing advantages to a B2 press size format that supports nearly every type of publishing print job.

The HP Indigo 10000 prints 3,450 four-color sheets per hour in its standard production mode, and can provide 33 per cent faster throughput of 4,600 color sheets per hour using EPM. In addition to printing signatures or larger, multipage impositions for standard-size books, the press, with its B2 sheet size, accommodates efficient production of layflat books, coffee table books and large dust jackets.

The B2 format of the press also helps PSPs efficiently adopt "long grain" printing and binding of standard-format books to meet many publishers' binding quality expectations. The HP Indigo 10000's ability to support eight- and 16-page signature layouts also makes it compatible with the signature bookbinding methods many PSPs already use with offset-printed sheets.

HP also announced two in- or near-line finishing options for the HP Indigo 10000. One, a signature folder from MBO, helps PSPs eliminate the finishing make-ready spoilage typically required in bookbinding work and offers fully automated set-up for signature-fold work. The folder also gives PSPs a continuous productivity advantage by automatically reconfiguring to handle the different format of successive jobs printed.

The other new finishing solution, the Horizon SmartStacker, is a slit-merge-stack system that automatically produces collated, stacked book blocks ready for binding.

Faster throughput in A3 size, with new effects for book covers

Building on the success of the HP Indigo 7000-series sheet-fed solutions, HP is launching the HP Indigo 7600 Digital Press. Featuring higher productivity, increased automation and increased flexibility, the HP Indigo 7600 prints 120 A4/letter-size pages per minute in its standard production mode, and provides 33 per cent faster throughput of 160 pages per minute using EPM.

The HP Indigo 7600, which will be commercially available at drupa 2012, also helps PSPs create premium-quality book covers using new special effects features including:

• Raised print, which uses multiple layers of ink to create images raised up to 50 microns from the sheet.
• Textured effect, a feature that allows users to create a mold with the press in three minutes or less for on-press sheet embossing or debossing.
• Digital watermarking, a feature that allows PSPs to create specific gloss differential effects.

For professional photography books and other projects featuring black-and-white photography, the HP Indigo 7600 press offers higher-quality greyscale imaging using standard, process-color black ink and a new, optional Light Black ink in a duotone printing process.

The HP Indigo 7600 press also offers fully automated finishing using Lasermax Roll Systems' PageReady system, an in-line or near-line cut-merge-stack system.

Upgraded SmartStream tools advance digital publishing workflows

New HP SmartStream and HP SmartStream Solutions Partner programme workflow solutions for HP Indigo presses include:

• HP SmartStream Production Center, a new production management system that addresses the challenges of producing and delivering high volumes of short-run jobs, reducing turnaround time and increasing profitability. Available later this year, HP SmartStream Production Center unifies multiple job streams, shows real-time, detailed end-to-end production floor status and enables PSPs to manage job progress and priority.
• HP SmartStream Production Pro Print Server, version 5, a digital front-end solution that supports HP Indigo 10000 B2-format and other high-volume applications with a multi-raster image processing architecture that significantly shortens job processing, batching and streaming. The server has a web-based user interface to manage complex print server tasks, and includes new, automatic ICC substrate profiling and finishing setup features.
• The latest versions of the HP SmartStream Director Web-to-Print solution, HP SmartStream Designer variable-data design and impositioning software, and the HP SmartStream Production Analyzer press monitoring solution.