Foster City, Calif. – June 29, 2005 – EFI, the world leader in digital imaging and print management solutions for commercial and enterprise printing, is now shipping an enhanced version of EFI Proteus with new features that more closely integrate planning and production. EFI Proteus is a software system that provides publishing professionals the ability to plan, position, view and set printing press specifications for all advertising and editorial elements of a magazine, newspaper, catalog or other publication. The most significant improvement in Proteus version 4.7 is the ability to export to Adobe InDesign on Macintosh OS X and Windows 2000 and XP. Building a new bridge from content management to content design, Proteus now exports page geometry to Adobe’s InDesign CS. The user controls the output by selecting the pages to be exported and then Proteus does the rest. Attached images, text files and multiple boxes in a single editorial item will be automatically linked in InDesign, saving valuable time for the designer. Another major change is the ability for PC users to display digital content in the page layouts, and for both PC and Mac users to display PDF images. United Litho, a magazine printer based in Ashburn, VA, has been serving short- to medium-run association and special-interest publishers for more than 30 years and is a member of The Sheridan Group. Said Rebecca Hoeckele, Proteus liaison and trainer, “A very exciting enhancement to version 4.7 is the ability to attach PDF images to the dummy and have those images appear automatically in InDesign when the page geometry is exported. Given today’s PDF-based workflows, the seamless PDF integration is a real time-saver that our users will love. “The new, customizable fields for tracking sales status and production status are another welcome addition—especially for customers who aren’t using a sophisticated ad tracking system. These fields give them a way to consolidate this information and produce a variety of different reports,” said Hoeckele. “This latest Proteus release has truly raised the bar on functionality and integration of features, which is critical to meet the changing needs of our publishing customers,” said Marc Olin, Vice President/General Manager, EFI Commercial Print Systems. “More than ever, Proteus streamlines the complicated process of publication planning and management, allowing our customers to focus on providing excellent service to their customers.” Proteus allows editors, art directors, sales managers, production managers, printers, and other publishing professionals to collaborate on the assembly and production of a publication. The end result is a digital “map” of an issue, containing the exact pagination, color reproduction, imposition, and other information the printer needs to produce the issue accurately and efficiently. Proteus is available with four levels of functionality for both the PC and Mac platforms. Other features of the system include: - Easy-to-learn, icon-driven interface - Drop-and-Drag functionality throughout - Automatic conflict-checking - Supports an unlimited number of inserts, bind-ins and blow-ins of any dimension - Refolios and alpha-paginates on-the-fly - Automatically generates your press paperwork - Calculates and displays ad/edit ratio in real-time, and calculates costing elements based on a predefined printer's contract - Manages regional or demographic editions or mixtures, including remnant tracking EFI recently integrated Proteus with its newly enhanced EFI Prograph module, allowing the completed publication layout and data to be electronically delivered to the printer’s EFI Hagenä management system. Version 4.7 is free to all clients with support plans in good standing. For more information on EFI Proteus, please call 1-800-875-7117.