Salt Lake City - ONYX Graphics, Inc. has joined forces with industry leaders to define open Job Definition Format (JDF) standards for the wide format printing market. JDF is a technical interface standard developed for and by the graphic arts industry to facilitate cross-vendor print workflows.

"Today, our customers maximize productivity and quality using ONYX® Quickset automation and software tools available in every ONYX RIP product," said Danielle Mattiussi, Director of Product Portfolio and Business Development at ONYX Graphics. "JDF further enhances our automation capabilities by extending our connectivity to other JDF-enabled products. This digital job ticket can now be shared between systems automatically, reducing the manual intervention that is required to move a job through the shop. It minimizes the expense associated with errors, increasing reliability and ultimately leading to higher quality. We are excited to be a part of the JDF initiative as it gains momentum in the wide format market."

This initiative, under the guidance of the International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) is chaired by HP, which introduced a new certification program that enables alliance partners' workflow products – including those from ONYX Graphics – to be "HP Certified for Wide Format Printing JDF Exchange." The initiative is designed to resolve interoperability shortfalls between web-to-print tools, production devices, raster image processors and digital front ends so that they work together to streamline wide format printing workflows for increased productivity. ONYX Graphics is among the first alliance partners to achieve certification through the program. This enables wide format print providers using ONYX Graphics production software products to take advantage of automation tools that reduce costs and differentiate their service offerings.

ONYX Graphics has also joined the CIP4 workgroup and will release certified JDF workflow interfaces for its various production workflow products, starting with an update to ONYX ProductionHouse™ software Version X10 early next year.

ONYX Graphics has worked closely with other JDF alliance partners including Cyrious Software, a leading provider of estimating and business management software, to increase automation of job submission and business information. "Cyrious is very pleased to be working with ONYX Graphics, HP and the other certified JDF partners in what is a natural next step for increasing productivity and profitability," said Cyrious co-CEO Charlie Carter. "Being able to exchange information between Cyrious Control, ONYX RIPs and the other JDF certified equipment and systems will sharpen the accuracy of estimating profitability, increase the visibility and manageability of work-in-process in production, and reduce costly errors."