Work in Progress

A prepress workflow system is not just a set of products, but an ongoing process that strives to streamline connectivity and collaboration with clients. That said, the best front-end prepress systems require flexible tools along with a team mindset for integrating the right components to fit an operation's specific needs.

"Workflow is knowledge—period," says Michael Jahn, self-described PDF evangelist and marketing director for Agfa's workflow solutions group, which manufactures the company's Apogee Series workflow systems.

Bill Tupper, product marketing manager for Creo's Brisque, Prinergy, and newly launched Network Graphic Productions workflow systems, stresses that a printer's workflow must continue to evolve along with technological advancements. Savvy prepress managers, no matter how small their shop's IT infrastructure, need to keep an open mind to new solutions as they are introduced, he asserts.

"The first step is to show printers exactly where their shops are at with what they have in place, and then get them to examine possibilities for the future," says Tupper. "We try to get them to see that at some point they may need, for example, to add an ERP [enterprise resource planning] system, or they may want to implement a strategy that allows for more connectivity with clients in terms of remote proofing, job submission, and collaboration.

"They need to know that, starting with the heart of a workflow solution, they can grow with that system and add onto it—that it's not a closed-loop system."

When it comes to deciding between one-stop shopping with a vendor or mixing and matching competing vendor solutions to piece together a hybrid workflow, Tupper says that there are two camps. The first consists of larger shops that are willing to integrate because they can, meaning that they have the IT resources to afford and support this integration.

"But the growth opportunities today are with the second camp: the printers that aren't very large, where the IT guy is also the prepress guy, and he's also probably doing the invoicing," states Tupper. "With a complete solution, you don't have to go through all of the effort required to find a system, specify every piece of it, and then turn around and implement it yourself. Furthermore, it's not an all-or-nothing buy, because a modular, open-architecture system allows you to provide the various links along the way."

At the Print 01 event in Chicago, CreoScitex—which officially renamed itself Creo, Inc. last month—launched an entry-level system related to Prinergy 2.0 called Prinergy Direct. While it can be scaled to a full-blown Prinergy Connect end-to-end output workflow management solution, the product offers customers that are moving toward a PDF-based workflow a less expensive solution that also can work with existing systems.

New enhancements to Prinergy 2.0 include automated versioning, job import/export with CFX format, Web growth compensation, CT/LW and PDF/X-1A direct input, PDF OPI support, and PDF and vector PostScript level 2 output.

In Creo's Brisque product line, Brisque Extreme 4.0 now supports a single digital front end (DFE) driving multiple output devices while performing additional workflow tasks. It is targeted at existing Dolev users that can now easily migrate into a computer-to-plate environment while minimizing the cost and complexity of multiple DFE systems, says the company.

Creo also introduced Brisque Extreme Variable, an option that affords streamlined versioning control and production.

Available for customer delivery last month, Heidelberg's new MetaDimension workflow system has been designed to offer a more economically feasible solution to smaller shops that can't justify a fully loaded system. Essentially a PostScript RIP/PDF renderer, the system is based on modular hardware and an open architecture, and includes all of Heidelberg's familiar screening technologies (IS, HQS, Diamond), the same color management system as in Prinergy and Delta, and many optional in-RIP processes.

MetaDimension product manager James Mauro says the new workflow system option exemplifies Heidelberg's new commitment to giving customers as much or little of a complete workflow as they want or need.

"Companies might not need the database module, or already may be trapping in TrapWise, or may be using some other components available to them," Mauro explains. "Breaking the workflow into separate modules allows a company to pick and choose what it wants to make its own workflow system."

A major selling point for both the newly launched MetaDimension as well as Agfa's Apogee Pilot Series 3, the latter of which is in field-testing stages, is that they are Job Definition Format (JDF)-enabled. With the CIP4 consortium's recent finalization of the initial version of the JDF standard, many vendors are working to incorporate the file format into their solutions for its ability to streamline workflow.

JDF, an XML-based set of metadata tags, offers a set of process control definitions for monitoring and managing the entire workflow from the time a customer places an order to the delivery of the final printed materials.

JDF input to Apogee Pilot Series 3 promises to connect to MIS or production planning systems via the exchange of JDF job tickets. It also defines up front how PDF jobs need to be processed, starts jobs earlier in the overall workflow, and describes all required parameters in advance, including spot color policies and the pages that need to be processed.

"JDF enables users to plan and monitor jobs from start to finish, providing a more complete vision of workflow than ever before," says Agfa's Michael Jahn. "Most printing organizations still spend a great deal of time struggling to make other systems work together accurately and predictably, and while they may have achieved automation in some areas of their workflow, other systems remain disconnected.

"JDF replaces isolated islands within the workflow where automation applies only to specific areas, thus bringing the entire workflow together."

New enhancements to Agfa's Apogee Series 2 offering with its new PrintDrive system allow for much greater flexibility to handle versioning, last-minute changes, and even the support of external output workflows.

Agfa's latest product, Apogee Create, takes the core Adobe Normalizer used in each of the Extreme-based output workflows, and combines it with a PDF job ticket editor and Enfocus PitStop plug-ins [see sidebar on page 39], thereby enabling users to create a "bulletproof" PDF file that ideally can be sent to any Apogee (or other) system that accepts PDF input, says the company.

Apogee Create includes the necessary technology to overcome many of the more troublesome aspects of PDF production, including spot colors, multi-tones, gradients, colorized TIFFs, trapping (if used with a system that supports Adobe in-RIP trapping), and trim and bleed.

This spring, Fujifilm says that it plans to release CelebraNT Extreme 2, a full PDF-based workflow system that employs a distributed architecture by adding multiple RIPs.

In addition to multiple RIPs, RIP Once Proofing, remote client access to RIP set-up, and full OPI compliance, the new CelebraNT Extreme 2 version, currently in field testing stages, has a newly incorporated color management tool.

"CelebraNT Extreme allows up to three RIPs to be used at any time to distribute the architecture of the files to multiple output devices or a single device," explains David Smith, electronic imaging software product development manager for Fujifilm. "The advantage of this design is speed. Also, it gives the customer the option of adding to the system without always having to buy a second or third RIP."

Artwork Systems Group N.V. offers its PageFlow workflow solution, which supports the imposition of signatures using any off-the-shelf imposition program. Pages that already have been RIPped by the firm's AutoTrapper solution can be imposed using the low-res file created by the PageFlow signature server, which is a significant advantage over imposing high-resolution PostScript files, says the company.

Barco Graphics has upgraded its FastLane next-generation automated workflow solution with the company's NOWN (Normalize Only When Necessary) philosophy. The NOWN concept, which Barco says is employed to normalize only the files that need to be normalized in order to guarantee predictability, reduces duplicate data that often needlessly serves to clog prepress servers.

DALiM has enhanced many of its core workflow software packages, including TWiST, with more than 125 tools to accommodate a very large set of workflows, and SWiNG, its newly introduced Linux-based workflow manager offering full PDF 1.3/PDF-X support.

Global Graphics Software introduced at Print 01 Version 3.6 of its open-architecture MaxWorkFlow offering, which automates workflow routing and tracking, offers real-time reporting, and provides OEM developers with new tools to support third-party products.

New modules in Version 3.6 include a pre-RIP offering that can generate and affix a bar code to any output media, and a Page Splitter module that takes a multi-page PostScript file and splits it into smaller files in PDF, EPS, or PostScript format for every page.

At Print 01, Purup-Eskofot, which announced its purchase of Barco at the exposition, introduced its FlowDrive workflow system for commercial printers. As an open and modular client/server-based system, FlowDrive features a central database for sharing data among multiple RIPs.

Rampage's RIPing System workflow solution features automatic in-RIP trapping, interactive object-based trapping on the Macintosh platform, page-independent post-RIP imposition, and job profiles or job tickets.

Screen has added some enhancements to its new Trueflow PDF-based output workflow solution. Using a simple system of job tickets and hot folders, Trueflow offers preflighting, trapping, and imposition functionality as well as RIPping and output control. Running on Windows NT-based computers, Trueflow can be configured with multiple CPUs if required.