Inkjet & Digital Printing

KODAK NEXPRESS Photo Platform Delivers Comprehensive Retail Solutions at Photokina

Thursday 20. September 2012 - With live demonstrations, Kodak will show photo retailers how to make the most of their picture merchandising opportunities

At Photokina 2012, Kodak will showcase its latest photo solutions to help retailers, professional photo labs, photo service providers and commercial printers maximize business growth and attract new customers through high-value applications. One of the focal points of the Kodak booth (E20, Hall 4.2) will be the live printing demonstrations on the KODAK NEXPRESS Photo Platform. Designed for printing high-quality photo products, the NEXPRESS Platform with the KODAK NEXPRESS Fifth Imaging Unit Solution delivers comprehensive capabilities for digital output.
KODAK NEXPRESS Presses have been a leader in the photo book category for a number of years, providing printers with growing revenue opportunities for high-value printing. During the show, Kodak will demonstrate new applications for photo merchandise producers by showing how a retail customer can submit a digital photo project through a KODAK Picture Kiosk and how the job moves seamlessly into the KODAK Digital Fulfillment System (Kodak DFS) for payment and routing to the NEXPRESS Platform for production. While the NEXPRESS Platform has always been an open architecture platform, this will mark the first time retailers and photo service providers will be able to capture print sales from a KODAK Picture Kiosk and remotely move the digital file to the NEXPRESS Platform, using Kodak DFS to effectively manage the workflow throughout the process.
Kodak will also demonstrate how retailers can capture digital print jobs from their customers’ KODAK Create at Home Software, KODAK Creative Production Software and even the My KODAK MOMENTS app on the Facebook site. By pushing digital print jobs into the Kodak DFS, lab client, and onto the NEXPRESS Photo Platform, printers will find that they have plenty of additional opportunities to capture new business.
Print service providers such as Cohber Press of Rochester, N.Y., have utilized the expanded NEXPRESS Platform capabilities to capitalize on new market opportunities. “We enjoy how the Kodak DFS can remotely drop a print-ready file into our servers, giving us the ability to produce high-quality photo books for those customers using the My KODAK MOMENTS app,” said Eric Webber, President and CEO of Cohber Press. “We’ve expanded our service offerings thanks to Kodak’s technology and as a result, we’ve been able to grow our business and reach new customers.”
Printing on more than 800 substrates and enabling duplex printing with ease, the KODAK NEXPRESS Photo Platform provides printers with exceptional photo-quality output, including hard- and soft-cover photo books, calendars, greeting cards, 4×6 prints and more. At Photokina, Kodak will be performing live demonstrations of various end-to-end solutions, which enable photo service providers to utilize the advanced printing capabilities of the NEXPRESS Platform and complement existing photo service processes.
In an independent photo quality study completed by SpencerLab, the KODAK NEXPRESS Press achieved their overall highest rating for photographic print quality, demonstrating the best all-round performance across the majority of attributes evaluated. In another study by Photofinishing News, Inc., 73 percent of imaging professionals surveyed chose the KODAK NEXPRESS Press as their preferred choice for high-quality photographic printing.
With the KODAK NEXPRESS Fifth Imaging Unit Solution, photo professionals can also pursue a number of unique features to help differentiate their photo products, including watermarking and protection coating to glossing and inline dimensional printing.
The latest NEXPRESS Platform enhancements, which debuted at drupa 2012, included the new 36?/914 mm long-sheet option for larger printing applications, the new award-winning Gold printing solution, and Pearlescent and Neon Pink printing solutions, which will be available in 2013 as part of the Fifth Imaging Unit Solution.
Throughout each day of Photokina, Kodak will give away limited-edition photo cards from photographers Louise and Joseph Simone, featuring both the pearlescent and gold printing effects.
“As experienced photographers and artists, we love using the new gold and pearlescent printing solutions for Kodak’s NEXPRESS Platform. These new inks can truly help us create products and images that differentiate our work from others,” said Louise Simone. “Thanks to the capabilities of the NEXPRESS Photo Platform and the Fifth Imaging Unit Solution, we have the ability to add high-impact effects and aesthetics to expand the artistic appeal of our images in a way that no other output device or digital platform can.”
All NEXPRESS Presses feature Print Genius, a suite of productivity and quality control tools and options that automate tasks and help users maintain peak quality throughout their production run. NEXPRESS Presses also offer unique field upgradability, which minimizes risk and avoids technology obsolescence.
“The KODAK NEXPRESS Platform can help photo retailers differentiate their photo merchandising offerings and improve their bottom line overall,” said Greg Gresock, Kodak’s Director of Marketing for Electrophotographic Printing Solutions. “By combining the proven quality and extensive capabilities of the NEXPRESS Press with new ways to receive digital photo jobs, retailers will find that they can better serve their existing customers and take advantage of new market opportunities to grow their business.”