Prepress

Independent study confirms improved speed of Enfocus PitStop Pro

Friday 10. December 2010 - VIGC research confirms significant improvement in PDF opening and preflighting times with latest versions of Enfocus PitStop Pro

A recent study carried out by VIGC, an independent Belgian organization focused on the graphic arts market, has confirmed that the PDF opening and preflighting times of Enfocus PitStop Pro have dramatically improved compared to earlier versions of the software. Customers using newer versions of the popular PDF preflight and editing tool can now preflight PDFs in half the time or even one third when working on PC. The opening time of PDFs also went down drastically.
In today’s demanding prepress environment, print service providers are continuously seeking ways to streamline their production processes – and output more jobs in less time with fewer errors. Preflighting tools, such as Enfocus PitStop Pro, are instrumental in controlling the quality of PDF files for print and significantly reducing the time required to perform this critical task. Over recent years, Enfocus has continued to invest heavily in further improving the speed of the PitStop family. Results from research, carried out recently by the Flemish Innovation Center for Graphic Communication (VIGC), have confirmed that the latest versions of PitStop Pro offer a dramatic improvement over older versions in both PDF opening and preflighting times.
“Some customers with older versions, like PitStop Pro 7 and 08 did find the opening times of Certified PDF files to be slower than other PDFs. A few also felt the preflighting of PDFs seemed to take longer than expected. We took this feedback on board and invested significant time and resources over the last few years to improve the speed of PitStop Pro,” says Elli Cloots, Director of Product management at Enfocus. “We felt however it was important to ask an independent third party to validate whether these improvements can be seen in practice. We are extremely pleased with the results of the study, which confirms our internal testing. And the good news is that customers with older versions can now upgrade to take advantage of the improved speeds.”
Research conclusions
VIGC carried out the research with different versions of Enfocus PitStop Pro on different platforms and Adobe Acrobat versions. For each combination, several tests were performed and each test was done three times.
The results show that instead of 5 to 6 seconds when using PitStop Pro 7 and 08, it now only takes 2 to 3 seconds to open PDF files with the latest versions of the software. There used to be a significant difference between opening a random PDF file and a Certified PDF file. This difference has also declined considerably. The research also confirmed a dramatic improvement in the preflight time itself. With recent PitStop Pro versions, the time to preflight a PDF file has halved compared to PitStop Pro versions 7 and 08. On a PC it is even faster – needing only one third of the time.
Upgrade path – limited time only
To take advantage of the improved speed, Enfocus offers its customers an easy upgrade path. Customers using PitStop Pro 7.x can upgrade until December 31, 2010 at the special price of EUR 259. From January 1, 2011 upgrades are no longer available.