Prepress
Enabling Automation
Thursday 20. March 2008 - Two days ago EskoArtwork announced that it has acquired Gradual Software and that the Gradual staff, assets and technology are being merged into EskoArtworks Enfocus operations. The resulting new entity is operating as a dedicated business unit within the EskoArtwork group, under the Enfocus brand.
By Peter Camps
Introduction
Two days ago EskoArtwork announced that it has acquired Gradual Software and that the Gradual staff, assets and technology are being merged into EskoArtworks Enfocus operations. The resulting new entity is operating as a dedicated business unit within the EskoArtwork group, under the Enfocus brand.
I joined the EskoArtwork management team as Senior Vice President Enfocus, heading the Enfocus business unit. In this paper Id like to present the rationale underlying the Enfocus/Gradual merger, and share some of my vision for the future of Enfocus.
Need for automation
The professional publishing industry faces substantial pressure to improve productivity, increase predictability, and motivate co-workers through automation of routine tasks. While the industry already features islands of automation, the true efficiencies available from automation can be achieved only by connecting these islands and creating a unified workflow from start to finish.
Need for a novel approach
This challenge is particularly daunting because authoring and design almost always take place in organizations remote from those that handle prepress and printing, and these different organizations often use separate and incompatible software and workflows. Jobs flow downstream to the next stage in the production process, in a variety of standard and non-standard formats, generally with insufficient data to properly inform the process.
The relationship network between the various participants is very complex and differs depending on ones viewpoint; for example a publisher might work with several free-lance designers, and each of these designers might work for multiple publishers. No single-purpose workflow system can provide a complete solution for this heterogeneous network. A new approach is required that supports step-by-step deployment of solutions across multiple participants in multiple organizations using a variety of systems and tools.
This leads to some key attributes of the solutions Enfocus brings to market and plans to develop going forward:
Affordable in terms of purchase price, implementation and training.
Deployable step by step, starting small and with clear benefits after every step.
Highly configurable and applicable to a wide range of pre-media workflow segments.
Highly interface-able to third-party systems, bridging existing islands of automation.
Modular and compatible with the best third-party technology available.
This philosophy differs from traditional print production workflow systems or centralized editorial systems that typically contain components from a single vendor, require a significant initial investment and often remain focused on a single workflow domain. Enfocus aims to fill the gaps not addressed by these systems, serving workflow segments in the publishing process that so far have been left out of the overall drive for automation.
Prerequisites for automation
There are three fundamental prerequisites for enabling automation (in other words, for avoiding the need for human intervention):
An automation backbone to transmit and route jobs.
Jobs (content representations) that conform to certain agreed quality standards.
Appropriate metadata accompanying the jobs to inform the automated process.
Backbone
Our objective is to enable automation for everyday tasks in all areas of the publishing workflow – including for example creative design or editing and assembly, in addition to the actual final-stage production work. To achieve this broader goal, the automation backbone should be easily configurable by the average system administrator or expert user, and it should interface with a large array of frequently used systems, tools and applications, including communication channels.
The Enfocus SWITCH product family has been created with these objectives in mind, and will continue to grow along these lines.
Quality
For users to be comfortable with an automated process, the process should guarantee a certain level of quality in the end result (and sub-quality jobs should be rejected in time for human consideration). Thus setting and enforcing appropriate quality standards (through validation and correction) is fundamental to reliable automation.
The Enfocus Certified PDF technology – and the applications supporting it – serve exactly this purpose. Enfocus Instant PDF facilitates creating PDF files that conform to a certain agreed standard. Enfocus PitStop Server supports automated verification (and often even correction) of PDF files – while they are leaving the design stage, and/or before they enter the actual production stage.
The advanced production editing tools Enfocus PitStop Professional (a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Professional) and Enfocus Neo (a stand-alone application) provide the review and correction capabilities required when something goes wrong – and for dealing with certain complexities that cant be resolved automatically.
The Enfocus CertifiedPDF.net web community facilitates sharing quality standards among various participants in the workflow.
Metadata
Achieving an automated workflow requires a structured exchange of descriptive information about a job in addition to its contents. Such descriptive information is commonly called metadata. Using metadata for routing jobs or for setting process parameters is fundamental to automation, and various forms of metadata must be supported to interface with third-party systems.
The Enfocus SWITCH product family offers job routing and processing based on metadata, including various XML-based standards. The Enfocus Certified PDF technology embeds metadata in PDF files to control quality and to provide an audit trail.
Technology axes
This assessment of enabling automation in the professional publishing industry readily identifies various technology axes important to Enfocus over the coming years.
Interfacing with third-party systems
The capabilities of the workflow backbone must be strengthened by directly supporting technologies such as SOAP communication and SQL database queries. This will allow SWITCH to easily interface with third-party solutions including DAM systems, MIS systems and editorial workflow systems.
Document formats
While PDF is heavily entrenched in the publishing market, it may not forever remain the sole portable document format in use. For example, the XPS format pioneered by Microsoft may become an important player in office publishing environments. At the same time, new PDF-related standards such as PDF/A and PDF/E promise increased use of PDF in new areas including long-term archiving and engineering. It is natural for Enfocus to expand its quality assurance technologies to new files formats like these.
Metadata
Metadata standards such as EXIF, IPTC, XMP, JDF, and other XML-based standards, are common in various areas of the document flow. With the exception of the largest systems however (including those marketed by EskoArtwork), metadata often remains under-used – especially when exchanging jobs between systems. Future Enfocus products will contribute in this area by lowering the barrier for accessing and using metadata.
Quality assurance
Verifying jobs against agreed quality standards remains a key enabler for improved automation. Enfocus will evidently deepen and broaden its commitment towards preflight and correction technologies related to document contents and metadata. Furthermore Enfocus will continue to drive industry standards and specifications in this area.
Partnerships
The open and modular philosophy described earlier leads to an important focus on industry partnerships. The following sections cover two important examples.
Crossroads
Enfocus remains fully committed to the Crossroads community, founded by Gradual Software to bring together an ecosystem of software vendors offering products that can automate tasks in publishing workflows, and to lower the threshold for publishing professionals to start using automation in their environment.
Specifically, Enfocus is committed to cooperating with other vendors, including competitors, to achieve optimal interfaces between those vendors products and the Enfocus SWITCH product family.
Ghent PDF workgroup
The Ghent PDF workgroup, founded on Enfocus initiative in 2002, is an international assembly of industry associations, vendors and experts whose goal is to establish and share process specifications for best practices in graphic arts workflows.
Enfocus continues to be an active member of the Ghent PDF workgroup.
Conclusion
Enfocus renews its commitment to serve content originators, prepress service providers, printers, publishers and print buyers with innovative software solutions, building on the synergies between the Enfocus and Gradual Software activities, and with the full support of EskoArtworks drive and resources.
See www.enfocus.com
Forward-looking statements
This paper contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Enfocus undertakes no obligation to actually provide the products and features discussed, and this paper does not represent any specific product or feature announcement.
About the author
Peter Camps started his career as a software developer at the Ghent-based company DISC, active in prepress systems for forms, labels and packaging. Through a series of acquisitions and mergers, DISC became one of the kernels of the current EskoArtwork group.
In 1993, Peter founded Enfocus Software and acted as its CEO for 10 years while the company established its well-known suite of PDF tools in the market. Then Peter founded Gradual Software to develop automation tools serving the numerous stages of professional publishing activities. The SWITCH product family, which is now carried under the Enfocus brand, is an important first step in this mission.
Peter now serves as Senior Vice President Enfocus in the EskoArtwork group. In more than one way, he says, this feels like “coming home”