Sydney, Australia, January 17, 2006 - LithoTechnics (www.lithotechnics.com) today announced the world-wide release of Metrix version 1.7. The award winning job planning and automatic layout calculator has been significantly enhanced, and now boasts seamless JDF integration with all major prepress workflows and RIPs. Rohan Holt, founder of LithoTechnics, said "'Seamless integration' is not a phrase I use lightly, but it really does describe our experience sending Metrix JDF Imposition data to the majority of JDF-enabled prepress workflows and RIPs." Users all round the world—from North America, Europe, and Australia—are experiencing enormous savings using Metrix. Mike Lawing, Plant Manager of Indexx Printing Solutions in South Carolina, said "Metrix has helped us double the work capacity of the planning and estimating departments—without any increase in staff. As a result, a greater number of jobs are getting to the pressroom faster, so we've increased the company’s press utilization and overall throughput by 20 percent. Metrix has also helped us cut prepress imposition time per job by 50 percent." Some of the new features in version 1.7 include: • Support for Acrobat 7 JDF. Metrix 1.7 allows users to import JDF/PDF files from Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional, broadening Metrix' JDF compatibility to jobs created by anyone with a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 2 software. • An enhanced layout calculator engine that can keep groups of products separated in columns on the sheet to avoid color conflicts, or to group products with similar post-press finishing requirements. • The ability to define and place press sheet marks, including user-definable custom marks. These marks are then passed along to JDF-enabled prepress systems or RIPs, or to desktop imposition programs such as Preps or DynaStrip. Metrix is the world’s first truly automatic layout calculator, enabling CSR’s, production planners, prepress operators, and estimators to automatically create all types of layouts, considering production requirements such as trim size, folding, run length, bleeds, grain direction, press capabilities, and post-press processing. Metrix makes gang printing easy, reducing the number of press make-readies and plate consumption by instantly calculating complex ganging layouts. Metrix maximizes manufacturing potential by enabling planners and prepress operators to try various "what-if" scenarios at the click of a button.