September 10, 2008 – Gent, Belgium – Enfocus announces the North American debut of its Crossroads community at Graph Expo 2008, October 26-29, 2008, McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois. Centered on the robust Enfocus Switch automation technology, Crossroads is a unique community that draws together a large ecosystem of software vendors offering automation products for publishing workflows.

"We have seen many exciting and innovative automation projects using Enfocus Switch as the core," said David van Driessche, Director of Enfocus Marketing. "With this in mind, we formed Crossroads to establish a community where vendors can collaborate in developing multi-vendor automation workflows that solve specific customer business problems. In addition, users can learn from examples of automated workflows that others have developed. After a successful European launch, we are now bringing the power of Crossroads to the North American market. We encourage visitors to the show to visit Enfocus (Booth 5463) and our Crossroads partners to learn more about how easily common business processes can be automated for savings of time and money.  It may be the most important stop you make at the show."

The Enfocus family of Switch products uses configurators to quickly and easily configure Enfocus and third-party applications to link software applications to create automated, end-to-end workflows.  Switch has developed configurators for popular applications from suppliers such as Adobe, Alwan, Callas, EFI, Elpical, Markzware, PerfectProof, Quite, Ultimate and more. These and other partners have joined together to ensure seamless integration, solve specific customer automation issues and educate the market about the value of workflow automation and how to get started.

Crossroads workflow automation seminar series

Crossroads conducted a number of full-day automation sessions across Europe during 2008, with an average of 60 end users attending each.  Seminars include a keynote on automation from a theoretical perspective explaining why it is important and what kind of cost savings can be realized, followed by sharing of practical information attendees can put right to use. The session includes demonstrations by Enfocus and participating partners. "The feedback has been terrific," says van Driessche.  "This is a concept that works, and we are extremely excited to be bringing it to North America.  First US seminars are planned to take place on October 21st in New York and October 23rd in Boston.  More information is available on http://crossroads.gradual.com/newslist.php."

 
Crossroads Demonstrations at Graph Expo
In addition to demonstrations of how Enfocus Switch can integrate with the Enfocus suite of products, including PitStop, the following Crossroads partners will include Crossroads automation demonstrations during their Graph Expo exhibition.

Alwan Color Expertise brings ISO 12647 compliance to PDF automated workflows
Alwan CMYK Optimizer award winning technology is available now as a Switch configurator. CMYK Optimizer allows designers, publishers and prepress companies to quickly produce PDF documents that are compliant with ISO 12647 color and print specifications for problem-free printing. CMYK Optimizer allows printers to control and improve the printability of files by optimizing the separation for ISO 12647 standard printing or for actual process/press/paper capabilities. CMYK Optimizer is powered by Alwan Dynamic DeviceLinks technology which has been rated best technology for color accuracy, print stability and ink savings by various benchmarks and has received 2008 PIA/GATF InterTech Award for innovative excellence.

callas software brings major productivity enhancements to PDF-based print production workflows
callas pdfToolbox 4 goes beyond regular preflighting and fixing to provide functionality that gets the job done, simply executing common tasks or preparing files for a specific type of production with one touch of a button. Based on pdfToolbox 4 and its new functionality, callas software introduces pdfToolbox Server 4 offering advanced automation for a variety of PDF-based workflows. The Switch configurator ensures seamless integration into a larger Switch-based automated production workflow.

Elpical brings the next generation of automatic image enhancement capabilities to automated production workflows
Elpical offers significant productivity and quality enhancements through its intelligent automatic image enhancement technology. Specifically built to integrate into automation products like Enfocus Switch, Elpical Claro Single offers true automated image processing power. Elpical's image analysis adds dynamic quality improvement capabilities to a workflow that otherwise could only be performed manually by an operator. Publishers, commercial digital printers, ad-agencies, industrial photo-studios, photo-labs or anyone else dealing with a large amount of pictures per day will quickly see the benefits of Claro. Elpical Claro Premedia adds the ability to route specific images to an operator for manual inspection based on quality or other criteria, still allowing a personal touch to those images that need special attention.

PerfectProof delivers innovative solutions for proofing and large format production
PerfectProof offers a complete proofing solution for offset, gravure, flexo and newsprint. ProofMaster Certify offers out-of-the-box standards compliancy and is the only proofing product available today that offers proofing on any size printer from A4 to A1 at the same price and without sacrificing quality. PrintFactory brings significant productivity enhancements and easy yet precise color control to large format production environments. As part of a Switch-based end-to-end workflow, these applications allow for more automated hence more productive and profitable proofing and large format production.

Ultimate's  Bookstacker and OnDemand Digital bring control over automated finishing upstream
Bookstacker is ideal for short runs of photo books, calendars or any other books to be produced in blocks intended for perfect or spiral binding. It automatically produces cut and stack books for single or multiple book quantities. Impostrip On Demand is a very versatile solution helping businesses to grow by optimizing production for a large range of press and bindery equipment. Dynamic Templates allow you to process jobs of varying lengths, page size and format with the same settings.