FOSTER CITY, Calif., – As it marks the 20-year anniversary of the first Fiery digital print server, EFI today launched the next-generation Fiery platform. Fiery technology is long recognized in the industry for its blazing speed, color accuracy, image quality, and intuitive user-interface, and with this launch increases operator productivity, produces more accurate and consistent color, and provides stronger variable data capabilities for personalized communications.

Named Fiery System 10, the new platform delivers documents faster than ever before, along with the latest system calibration technology to guarantee color consistency at all times, tighter integration with the printer's finishing options, and greater flexibility and control.

Toby Weiss, general manager of the Fiery business unit and senior vice president of EFI, said: "EFI has been a pioneer in digital print technology for the past two decades, and continues to lead the technology advancement of digital front-end controllers with today's platform launch. System 10 is the fastest, most robust ever, and is poised to bring amazing results to demanding customers worldwide. Fiery technology is now the most integrated platform in the industry, with connectivity to business process automation solutions, production workflow systems, and direct mobile printing to deliver a complete solution from creation to print."

"EFI's Fiery System 10 release provides a wide collection of powerful and user-friendly tools for print workflow," said Jim Hamilton, group director of production hardware at InfoTrends. "System 10 is a demonstration of EFI's continued leadership position in front- end systems for production digital print."

Fiery System 10 provides advanced capabilities to customers in four key areas: color, usability, performance and integration.

Color - Calibration Features and Powerful Visual Editor

A major enhancement to Fiery's color management system is the new Fiery Calibrator that makes the calibration process more effective, integrated, and easier to use. The new Job-based Calibration increases calibration accuracy and effectiveness because calibration is customized for a specific job and the associated media and profiles. Because calibration is critical and needs to be performed routinely, Fiery System 10 has incorporated a "Calibration Guard" to provide calibration status, warnings, and alerts to encourage calibration to take place and ensure color quality.

The Fiery Image Enhance Visual Editor (IEVE) is a powerful feature newly available on the Command WorkStation print job management and user interface software that ships with Fiery System 10. IEVE allows editing each image in a job without going back to the native design file, saving time and reducing costs. IEVE simplifies the editing process, providing an interactive toolset for optimizing image appearance and applying automatic per-image corrections, to ensure photos look their best. This tool also gives users a manual control to individually adjust brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, color balance, sharpness and to make red-eye corrections on any image within a job. (To see a video of this powerful new capability, visit http://w3.efi.com/fiery/Products/CWS5/Demos)

Usability - Command WorkStation and Mixed Finishing Sets Simplify Complex Jobs

The latest version of Command WorkStation software is now even easier to use. Common tasks are more accessible and required job information more readily available to operators to increase productivity.

In addition, a Mixed Finishing Sets feature in the SeeQuence Compose option is now available to simplify complex jobs in high-production environments. With the new Fiery Mixed Finishing Sets (and an inline finisher attached to the print engine), users can specify multiple finishing requirements among the various subsets within a single job to produce completely finished jobs, minimizing labor.  

Performance - Support of New VDP Standard

EFI has a long-standing commitment to supporting industry standards, and Fiery System 10 has a number of enhanced Variable Data Print (VDP) features. Most notably, it supports PDF/VT-1, a new standard developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) for VDP data exchange. PDF/VT-1 brings the benefits of a PDF workflow to VDP, helping customers increase production efficiency with capabilities such as late stage exchange of critical variable content. By folding seamlessly into existing PDF-based prepress operations, PDF/VT-1 enables a single, common PDF print production workflow for all job types.

Integration - Direct Wi-Fi Printing for Today's Mobile Workforce; MIS and Workflow Connectivity

An ideal solution for corporate CRDs and offices with Fiery-driven MFPs, System 10 has built-in technology that enables direct mobile printing from Apple iOS devices to the Fiery-driven printer. Wi-Fi enabled Apple iOS devices (such as iPhones and iPads) will automatically discover any System 10 Fiery-driven printer on the same network inside the corporate firewall. Employees can simply select a listed printer and touch "print" with no need to download an app or install printer drivers.

"EFI's embedded support for mobile printing from iOS devices is another example of how mobile printing is moving from a 'billable service' to a standard feature for applications behind the firewall," said Robert Palmer, director, Managed Document Practice at Lyra Research.

Besides integration with mobile devices, Fiery servers are a great fit with EFI's market-leading portfolio of print MIS and workflow solutions, including PrintSmith, Pace, Radius and Monarch management systems and the EFI Digital StoreFront web-to-print platform.

Fiery System 10 further expands its industry integration capability with Agfa Apogee Prepress Workflow, and the upcoming release of Kodak Prinergy Workflow, to enable prepress workflow users to submit jobs to and manage one or more Fiery-controlled digital print engines right from the same familiar user interface. These prepress workflow integrations create a single workflow to serve blended production, reducing operational costs and boosting production performance.

Fiery System 10 is available now. The first OEM printer brands that use Fiery System 10 will be announced soon. For more information, visit www.efi.com or contact 800-875-7117.