Prepress
EFI and Pantone Broaden Strategic Relationship, Customers Benefit from the Most Accurate Color Possible
Sunday 01. June 2008 - EFI, the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced the newest elements in the company's strong relationship with Pantone, Inc. to provide customers with greater accuracy and consistency in communicating color.
Unique in the industry, the EFI Fiery platform provides combined RIP (raster image processing) and digital output device calibration, which ensures customers that their entire printing system is PANTONE Goe System calibrated. This calibration delivers the most accurate color possible, tailored to specific printer devices and their media. EFI is among the first vendors to support PANTONE Goe Systems new uncoated components launched by Pantone at drupa (Dusseldorf, Germany, May 29 through June 11). This support extends across the EFI Advanced Workstream Solutions portfolio and is in addition to the companys already comprehensive support of PANTONE Goe and PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Libraries. EFI and Pantone have also partnered to make the PANTONE Goe library available to customers for free via download at http://www.efi.com/dm/pantone_goe/.
At drupa EFI will highlight PANTONE-enabled features for high-end process-color matching of spot-color printing in its Professional Color Capability workflow demonstration. The company will also feature integration of the new PANTONE Goe Color Library part of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM., EFI will demonstrate the ability to custom tune any out of gamut Pantone color through Spot-On, an intuitive easy to use spot color editing tool, as well as the ability to print PANTONE Reference Charts from Fiery-driven digital output devices. This 19-page downloadable PostScript file of color patches shows CMYK equivalents for each installed PANTONE Library, indicating what the final output color will look like from the Fiery-driven printer.
“With the Fiery platform, EFI was one of the first to implement PANTONE Calibration for digital color devices, and our collaborative partnership has been delivering tremendous benefits to color-conscious customers ever since. EFI now implements the highest levels of PANTONE support across their product line,” said Andy Hatkoff, vice president of Advanced Color Technology at Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries. “Todays announcement further supports our shared goal of providing technology that heightens color creativity and impacts the success of print service providers.”
Print service providers are able to get the most out of their digital print production engine when their engine is driven by the next-generation EFI Fiery platform. Renowned for its intuitive user experience, the new Fiery platform features: a powerful, unique Visual Workflow that optimizes productivity by providing job progress at-a-glance; built in “how-to” guides to address a wide range of operator expertise; and the most open, powerful VDP workflow capability, including support of VDP languages Fiery FreeForm, industry standard PPML, and a host of legacy proprietary languages, and collaborations with the leading VDP software vendors. With Fiery Spot On, users can create accurate color matching for logo colors and other spot colors in an automatic, application-independent workflow. This feature allows the management of named colors on the Fiery, including all PANTONE names in PostScript or PDF documents. Spot On Color Search provides an intuitive graphical user interface for creating and editing named colors directly.
“Our collaboration with Pantone helps our customers print to win, taking color matching to a new level,” said Judy Lin, general manager, Fiery Division, EFI. “With Fiery PANTONE Goe System calibration PANTONE Libraries are directly integrated into the Fiery workflow, and operators can readily print the full color swatch libraries from the Fiery-driven output device. Print service providers are able to show their customers actual Fiery-printed-Pantone-calibrated swatches – providing accurate color representation from the actual device that will print the job.”
The Fiery platform comes with PANTONE color libraries built-in, including the new Goe system, achieving optimal output whenever a document containing a PANTONE color is printed. RGB, CMYK and PANTONE color charts can be printed directly from the Fiery, helping users to understand the color capabilities of the printer during the design phase.
EFI provides a direct path to Pantone libraries from several EFI Advanced Workstream Solutions, an extensive portfolio of world-class products, services and support that drive EFI customers success: the Fiery color digital print server platform; Fiery Central, a powerful, modular, PDF-based production workflow solution; EFI Splash RPX-iii Mac OS X-based workflow solution; MicroPress raster-based color and black and white workflow solution; and Bestcolor-driven proofing and production solutions Colorproof XF and Fiery XF. EFIs Pantone support provides increased accuracy and flexibility across a wide range of print media – for customers in creative and printing environments producing color documents.
Print service providers and graphic arts professionals deploying Pantone-calibrated EFI solutions are more efficient and accurate as they save time by eliminating manual input of color definitions, which also reduces inaccuracies in the final output. The PANTONE Goe System features more than 2,000 new PANTONE Colors, and includes tools and interactive software to improve versatility in an increasingly global, multimedia environment. New PANTONE Goe system uncoated components announced today include: a PANTONE GoeGuide uncoated, a color selection and specification guide printed on an uncoated paper; PANTONE GoeSticks uncoated, a book of adhesive-backed chips printed on an uncoated paper; and myPANTONE palettes software, interactive software for color selection and palette building.
By incorporating the PANTONE Color definitions into EFI Colorproof XF and Fiery XF, customers can simply process print jobs including PANTONE Color separations and automatically produce a color-accurate output of the complete print job. Colorproof XF transforms inkjet and laser printers into powerful proofing and production systems and is renowned for providing customers with outstanding performance, color quality, flexibility and a highly intuitive interface. The XF Server on Mac OS X makes the system a complete cross-platform solution. With its client/server architecture and modular concept, Colorproof XF offers an unprecedented level of customization to fit print service provider’s individual needs. Fiery XF provides leading-edge technology for superwide format printing for production and proofing requirements, delivering high-speed processing, exceptional color quality and increased productivity.
Availability
PANTONE Goe System-calibrated EFI Fiery solutions are available through EFI’s EOM partners. EFI Bestcolor Technology-driven solutions supporting the PANTONE Goe System are sold through certified EFI dealers and distributors worldwide.