Rampage Systems, Waltham MA USA, is shipping a new version of its automated prepress workflow system on the Rampage FireCore Workstation, which runs under the Windows 7 operating system.  The initial release of Version 12 includes automated functions, including PDF Fixer, PDF Color Manager, and JDF Hot Folders as well as faster transparency processing through PDF Trap Engine.

Reduces upfront file preparation
Manually troubleshooting PDF files is one of the most time consuming tasks, usually un-billable, faced by prepress operators and CSRs.  To speed that process and preempt downstream errors, Version 12 features PDF Fixer and PDF Color Manager.  As the name implies, PDF Fixer can automatically detect and correct perennial issues, such as missing fonts and thin lines, and PDF Color Manager uses ICC profiles to resolve color space issues using Rampage-supplied or custom profiles.

Introduces JDF Hot Folders
To reduce the number of "touches" in prepress, Version 12 introduces JDF Hot Folders, allowing imposition instructions from 3rd-party packages to combine with other process controls, such as line screen, spot-color handling, and remote proofing options.  Dragging a file into a JDF Hot Folder will spawn the job in Rampage and initiate processing, moving it as far downstream as appropriate.

Boosts RIP speeds by 200 to 500 percent
Rampage test suites were comprised of posters and other large format projects from InDesign with numerous transparent effects and ran twice as fast as compared to Version 11 on equivalent hardware.  Businesses switching from older configurations have reported speed improvements exceeding Rampage benchmarks.  Bob Manwaring, Prepress Manager at SPC Marcom in Vermont, said, "We went from Version 10 to 12, so we're actually running ten times faster."

"Windows 7 gave our Engineers more flexibility to allocate RAM across processing cores," said Peter Gorgone of Rampage Systems.  "Version 12 uses half of the cores to RIP a single file and uses the others for related tasks, such as preflighting or screening.  This is a powerful combination of threaded processing and parallel processing and has laid the foundation for our pending VDP offering."