At this week’s IPEX 2002 print-publishing trade show being held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England, Creo, a company that builds a variety of solutions for the graphic arts industry, introduced a revved Synapse family of Mac compatible (though not Mac OS X native) software products designed to enable networked graphic production.
There are three members of the Synapse family. Synapse Prepare software lets designers create “perfect PDF files working in languages other than English that meet the printer’s requirements and are production-ready,” according to Creo spokesperson Craig Kevghas. Synapse InSite is an Internet portal into prepress that enables remote job submission, job-status tracking, on-line collaboration, and remote proofing and approval of print jobs in certain workflows. Synapse Link software makes possible the exchange of production data and job status information via JDF (Job Description Format, a CIP4 format) between prepress workflow systems and MIS systems.
Synapse Prepare is now released in four languages: French, Spanish, German, and English. Synapse Prepare allows printers to streamline and optimize their file creation and submission process, eliminating errors and decreasing turn-around time, Kevghas said.
The first version of Synapse Link software will be beta-tested with printers this summer. It Synapse Link software automatically gathers and tracks prepress production information using open file standards such as JDF. When a customer orders a change to a print job that requires a new plate, or increases the print order, the data that records additional material usage and machine time, and job control data are automatically forwarded to the printers’ business systems. This will in turn increase billing accuracy and inventory control, Kevghas said.
The latest version (3.5) of Synapse InSite, the Internet portal into prepress, is now available in French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, as well as English. Print buyers use Synapse InSite for the software’s collaborative, timesaving benefits, Kevghas said. Another new feature enhances automation by allowing the print buyer to select pre-configured processing options. The print buyer specifies attributes of the job in advance by selecting hot folders, fonts, or image search paths.
Communication between users of Synapse InSite has been tweaked by the addition of Job Notes, which allows job specification details to be attached to a job and viewed by both print buyers and production staff. Comments can be added throughout the approval and production cycle for both external and internal communication.
In addition to the Synapse family of products, Creo also introduced new iQsmart professional color scanners and the Veris proofer. The latter is a tabletop proofing system that uses a new patented Creo technology called Multi-Drop Array inkjet to produce consistently high quality proofs with a controlled stream of precisely formed and placed dots, Kevghas said.