DUSSELDORF, Germany--May 29, 2008--EFI, the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today launched the Xerox EX Print Server powered by Fiery(R), the Splash(R) RPX-iii Mac-based Workflow Solution and the Integrated Fiery Color Server, all designed to optimize the new Xerox 700 Digital Color Press and increase customers' ROI. The new solutions deliver advanced color and quality imaging combined with enhanced productivity tools to address a diversity of needs across enterprise, print for pay, commercial print, graphic arts, advertising and graphics-intensive applications that require fast turnaround. The EFI solutions will be featured at drupa (May 29 through June 11, 2008) at Xerox Hall 8b, and with EFI's "Unique Mac-based Color Workflow" and "Productive Document Workflows" demonstrations in EFI booth C01, Hall 5.

"The Xerox 700 Digital Color Press brings productivity, excellent print quality and flexibility to print providers looking to adopt digital technology or expand their digital printing business," said Jerry Murray, vice president, product marketing, Xerox Production Systems Group. "These EFI solutions are designed specifically to optimize the Xerox 700 Digital Color Press for increased productivity, faster document turnaround and perfect color every time, enabling our customers to maximize profits."

The EFI Fiery-Xerox combination has greatly improved printing efficiency and brought tremendous value to THERMOPLAN AG, an international machinery manufacturing enterprise in the restaurant sector, among whose largest customers is Starbucks.

"Our print production annually averages 600,000 pages, the majority of which are color and graphically intense; the Fiery is critical to our ability to produce these pages quickly and efficiently on our Xerox press," said Ruedi Zimmermann, Technical Support, THERMOPLAN AG. "To give just one example, we're particularly impressed with EFI's Document Composition application for our complex technical service manual folders, which contain all technical documentation about our products. Before our Fiery installation, our workflow for this job demanded collating by hand, but now with EFI Compose, we automatically merge the individual chapters so they become one manual, and we can print the whole manual with one mouse click. With the Fiery workflow, all we need to do is simply take the completely finished documents out of the printer."

"Xerox and EFI have developed a winning solution that delivers power, performance, and speed to production print environments, and helps customers achieve the greatest return on their equipment investment," said Frank Mallozzi, senior vice president, marketing and sales, EFI. "With expert color capabilities and new labor-saving, error-eliminating workflows, customers benefit from improved productivity and the highest quality color when EFI Fiery and Splash technology innovation drives their Xerox 700 Digital Color Press."

EX Print Server Powered by Fiery

The EX Print Server enables Xerox customers to compete more effectively and achieve the highest levels of efficiency in production printing environments, where engine utilization, speed, advanced color management, and connectivity are critical to success and profitability. The new EX Print Server Powered by Fiery is designed for customers in graphic arts, print for pay, commercial printers and corporate reproduction departments.

The solution is fully compliant with PDF/X3, a specification for reliable prepress data interchange that enables designers to provide digital content files that can be printed predictably and correctly by the print provider. The EX Print Server passes the Altona Test Suite and Ghent Output Suite, making it an ideal proofing system for press simulation in the digital print environment.

Among the new EFI Fiery advances integral to the EX Print Server is a new Fiery driver for Mac users, giving increased productivity through shortened job preparation and automation with the ability to customize job submission; Compose, EFI's visual document make-ready solution; the Fiery Graphic Arts Package, Premium Edition, a professional "toolkit" for color accuracy and precision; and EFI Impose, a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) document imposition solution combine with the EX Print Server to offer an open, flexible solution catering to advanced customer requirements.

The powerful Fiery-driven print server delivers new revenue stream opportunities such as high-value variable data printing (VDP). EFI Fiery digital print servers readily passed new PPML (Personalized Print Markup Language) testing and earned PODi (Print on Demand Initiative)'s newest interoperability certification. The certification ensures that Fiery-driven Xerox 700 customers have the highest possible levels of throughput and productivity when printing personalized material on demand at high volume. EFI has forged partnerships with leading third-party personalization software providers and supports such VDP languages as PPML, Xerox Variable-data Intelligent PostScript Printware (VIPP), Fiery FreeForm(TM), and a host of legacy proprietary languages, ensuring that the Fiery platform readily integrates into existing workflows and delivers consistency regardless of whether the job is VDP or non-VDP. The advanced Fiery job management capabilities enable print service providers to tailor their production process to the type of work they do.

Fiery supports the new color specification, PANTONE(R) Goe(TM) System. Optional Fiery connectivity with Rampage Workflow System enables high-volume prepress production across diverse plate setters, proofing systems and other output devices. For novice users, "how-to" guides address a wide range of operator expertise. In combination, these features turn Fiery into the most effective competitive weapon that optimizes digital press performance and operational ease and improves productivity and ROI.

In addition, the award-winning EFI Color Profiler Suite profiling solution is engineered to especially suit the Fiery-driven Xerox 700 Digital Color Press. It offers a complete suite of integrated color management tools to ensure total color quality control in color printing workflows for graphic arts professionals.

EFI Splash RPX-iii Workflow Solution

EFI and Xerox offer a unique end-to-end Mac workflow with the Splash RPX-iii workflow solution for the Xerox 700 Digital Color Press. Splash RPX-iii and Fiery workflows are combined to offer creative professionals the best of both worlds by bringing creative and production together to maximize the capabilities of the Xerox 700 Digital Color Press. Creative experts can achieve professional color with a unique Mac-based workflow for applications such as photo printing and photo books and also z-fold brochures and booklets using finishing options.

Splash RPX-iii supports new media type paper stocks and weights. High capacity stackers, t-finishers and tri-fold are also supported, enabling print professionals to benefit from increased productivity as they move from an office to a light production print environment. Updates to workflows such as new and improved Hot Folders for production workflows boost productivity and efficiency. New imposition workflows for Splash RPX-iii enable customer to use finishing options in an easy, user-friendly manner.

Integrated Fiery Color Server

For office workgroups that need to produce consistent quality color documents, the Integrated Fiery Color Server enables users to easily and efficiently create color-rich documents.

EFI Spot-On(R) with Substitute Colors extends the Spot-On capability to manage all CMYK and RGB colors from any native application ensuring accurate corporate colors. The standardized company-wide color palettes are applicable in PowerPoint, MS Word and other applications. Added to this, Booklet Maker Wizard is an intuitive driver-based imposition to give users sophisticated results with simple operations, making it easy to adopt office publishing.

The new powerful Mac Driver provides easy access to repetitive functions, reduces keystrokes, increases efficiency and boosts productivity by flagging users to error conditions and consumables status.

Fiery Bridge provides an interactive, direct link to the users' Fiery Mailbox. This productive color document publishing tool increases productivity through an automated workflow and makes documents stored on the Fiery readily available. For ease of use, users can access Fiery documents directly from Windows Explorer or from within any application that can access the Windows Explorer directory structure.

Availability

EFI solutions designed for Xerox customers are available through the Xerox direct sales force, resellers, agents and concessionaires. More information can be found at www.xerox.com.