Ghent (Belgium), April 4, 2006 – Esko, the global market leader in packaging pre-production solutions, features technology demonstrations illustrating Scope’s future development directions with DeskPack —a Scope software component—with new plug-ins and updates to existing ones. At Ipex, Esko will disclose new and patented technology that changes the way packaging design will be viewed in the future. The most spectacular one is the innovative ability with Adobe Illustrator to take a virtual three-dimensional view of a package, offering 3-D guidance to navigate through complex structural designs and use this virtual environment in the smart creation of the two- dimensional, unfolded production job. This allows the designer to explore and enhance creativity while virtually holding the package into his or her hand. 3-dX: integrating CAD and Graphic design on the desktop The most innovative DeskPack plug-in for Adobe Illustrator is 3-dX, which allows designers to receive immediate feedback in three dimensions of how their graphics will look like on a printed package. “With the new 3-dX plug-in, packaging design becomes a real three-dimensional interactive process,” says Jan De Roeck, Esko’s Marketing Director for packaging software. “This is a strong signal of our ongoing dedication to CAD/Graphics integration in all phases of the packaging supply chain—particularly our effort to provide designers upstream in the supply chain more control to create packaging as they intend it.” 3-dX automatically maintains a live link between 3-D design visualization and the unfolded 2-D structure. Carton or display panels may consist of different co-planar flaps, spread over the 2-D unfolded structure. The 3-dX distribute tool will repeat design elements automatically and seamlessly over all flaps. The new and stunning DeskPack design tool makes the creation of packaging extremely intuitive, taking away mind boggling 2-D to 3-D translations. 3-dX leads to a significant reduction of prototyping and proofing costs, and brings to market a new and innovative method for packaging design. During CAD and graphical design, 3-D visualization of a package early in the design phase is a major advantage for testing and proofing. Many partners and handoffs are involved, and the more a design can be realistically communicated, the faster and more precisely the collaboration will deliver excellent results. Enhancing packaging design and pre-production on the desktop Understanding that Adobe Illustrator CS and Adobe PhotoShop CS are the world’s most popular tools used to create graphics for packaging, Esko has placed its best packaging and prepress technologies inside them. Because all of the DeskPack tools are within the most popular and familiar design software, they are easy to learn and easy to use. Keeping a packaging design as long as possible in the originating application improves reliability and flexibility; major benefits of modern packaging prepress workflow. “More than 90% of all packaging designs are prepared in Adobe Illustrator, which makes it the preferred and de facto standard platform among designers. With our expanded range of Adobe plug-ins, we empower graphic designers to perfect packaging designs right on their desktops,” remarks Frank Adegeest, Senior Product Manager packaging application software, “The growing success of DeskPack with nearly 6,000 licenses installed worldwide, confirms Esko’s DeskPack approach to be the correct one. With DeskPack, packaging designers, tradeshops and converters can keep the packaging design inside Adobe Illustrator until the job is ready for print output.” Other new DeskPack plug-ins that will be introduced at Ipex: screenX: Different screening parameters (screen ruling, angle and dot shape) can be assigned to different objects in a design. With screenX, special dot gain compensation strategies can be implemented directly from the design. imageX: With this plug-in for Adobe Illustrator, embedded images are extracted from a job. This tool is very useful if you need to edit images with PhotoShop and the original image file is no longer available. wrapX: Wrapping papers are often printed “endless”, by repeating a graphic pattern across and around a cylinder. The wrapX plug-in calculates the correct spacing and repetition of a design to properly wrap around the printing cylinder, enabling seamless output.