Archive for the 'PrePress' Category
Package Printers Drive KODAK Digital Prepress Solutions
Sales of KODAK THERMOFLEX Platesetters and KODAK PRINERGY POWERPACK Workflow Systems grew significantly in 2006, exceeding previous year totals by more than 40 percent, as package printers seek solutions to increase efficiency and improve color quality.
“The package printing industry is growing and competition is increasing. Our customers are facing business pressures such as condensed cycle times and increased focus on producing colorful packaging that grabs the consumer’s attention,” said Vic Stalam, Director of Market Segments and Vice President, Packaging Products, Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group. “To exceed these expectations and grow their businesses, these printers are turning to KODAK solutions such as the THERMOFLEX Platesetter and PRINERGY POWERPACK Workflow System to turn prepress into a controlled, digital manufacturing process.”
According to NAPL, productivity improvement in the printing industry has lagged the overall nondurable manufacturing sector, growing only half as fast. To grow revenue and increase profit, package printers are looking for consistent, stable, repeatable print that delivers high impact results on the store shelf. Read more
Nitro PDF Software Leads The Way Towards Helping Businesses Reduce Paper Consumption
The industry-leading Acrobat alternative, Nitro PDF Software, announced today the availability of its Nitro PDF Professional 5, which paves the way for organizations of any size to significantly reduce the impact their business has on the environment while simultaneously cutting costs.
“In today’s office environments, we should be moving as quickly as possible towards the goal of less paper consumption,” said Karl De Abrew, founder of Nitro PDF Software. “With the launch of Nitro PDF Professional 5, we offer companies a secure, affordable and simple way to put an end to needless paper waste. And what better place to discuss the environmental benefits of the PDF format than at the 2007 Adobe Acrobat & PDF Conference, keynoted by former Vice President Al Gore.”
The latest version gives customers the necessary tools for form-related tasks such as authoring, commenting, form-filling and digital signatures. The newest features include options such as automatic hyperlink creation and image-use enhancements including vector object editing and direct insertion of TIFF and JPEG files. Also, freehand drawing and deletion tools are now available for users and improvements were made to document security permissions as well. These additions to Nitro PDF Professional make it easier than ever to reduce needless paper waste. Read more
Altia Updates GUI Prototyping Tool for Photoshop
PhotoProto is designed to speed the creation of device user interfaces with Photoshop. From in-dash car displays and mobile phones to medical devices and tactical navy ship displays, just about everything has a display on it of some kind, with the graphics more often than not being created in Photoshop. However, a problem typically faced by designers is that the services of programmers or multimedia authoring experts are needed to turn the static drawings into working prototypes.
With PhotoProto, artists arrange and name the layers in their Photoshop artwork to identify these elements—a layer can be named “button” so the images can be pressed like a button (an approach used by the SiteGrinder plugin to generate Web sites). Then from within Photoshop, PhotoProto creates a working, interactive prototype that can be independently run on a Mac or PC, allowing the user to push buttons, navigate screens, scroll lists and perform similar interactive functions. PhotoProto can also create an XML file and PNG images that can be passed on to others within the workflow, for incorporation within other software production tools.
Altia claims PhotoProto 1.05 is twenty times faster than previous versions when creating GUIs from Photoshop files employing hundreds of layers.
PhotoProto for Mac and Windows can be purchased at www.altia.com/products_photoproto.php for $495. A downloadable trial version is also available.