Packaging developers get easy-to-use and affordable access to Barco's famed, professional trapping technology August 26, 2002 -- At the Adobe Partner Pavilion at Seybold SF in September, Esko-Graphics demonstrates DeskPack, a combination of Adobe Illustrator plug-ins and a professional trapping server that brings sophisticated design tools, verification of printability, and the world's number one packaging trapping solution to Mac and PC desktops. At the same time, Esko-Graphics presents a technology preview of its next milestone: adding the same professional trapping capability to any PDF-based workflow with DeskPack for Acrobat. Both applications provide designers the freedom to work on files with their editor of choice. "Packaging pre-production specialists increasingly communicate and collaborate with their partners and their customers using industry standard PDF files, and continue to use standard desktop applications beyond the early design stages", explains René Delbar, Esko-Graphics' Senior Vice President for Product Marketing. "These programs however lack specialized tools for cost-efficient development of production-ready packaging materials. Designers, for example, perform trapping manually, or simply leave it for later in the workflow. The resulting designs are not ready for quality production and require a lot of (re)work afterwards - a notorious source of miscommunication and costly, time-consuming errors. DeskPack changes this dramatically." A unique solution from the world's leading packaging pre-production software supplier DeskPack for Acrobat applies expert trapping intelligence to any PDF file, regardless of the source application, anytime in the workflow, and without compromising the integrity of the PDF data file. Users launch the trapping process from Adobe Acrobat clients, using an easy-to-use plug-in to interact with a plug-and-play trapping server box. All operations are fully controlled from the familiar Acrobat desktop environment. The multi-user server ensures that the Acrobat stations are freed up for other interactive tasks, while complex trapping calculations continue in the background. Trapping is conducted, by inclusion, to the PDF file. DeskPack for Acrobat incorporates the same extensive and sophisticated ColorStitch object trapping technology introduced with the most recent versions of Esko-Graphics' PackEdge and BackStage software. It supports any number (and any mixes) of process and spot inks. It also offers several timesaving and error-reducing expert tools, for example an automatic detection of small gaps between objects. Finally, DeskPack introduces unique new solutions to CT and vignette trapping - all with stunning performance. The trapping process creates new objects on top of the original design data. Acrobat 5 enables accurate preview of traps with transparencies and overprints, for immediate and interactive verification. Complete or selective re-trapping with different parameter settings is very easy. The trapping objects are fully editable: they can be modified without leaving the Acrobat application using third-party plug-ins such as Enfocus' PitStop. Trapping tickets are created interactively with the Ticket Editor, and stored for later re-use and reference. They may also come in from other users, trade shops and print experts, including those with a BackStage workflow server or DeskPack with Illustrator clients. Workflows set up with DeskPack on Acrobat or Illustrator stations guarantee a high degree of consistency and repeatability across jobs, operators and sites. This makes DeskPack an ideal solution for facility management sites or other forms of distributed operations. Unique advantages to all packaging professionals DeskPack for Acrobat brings a number of cost-saving and moneymaking advantages: - perfect "round trip workflow": design and pre-production concentrated around the powerful Adobe PDF file format, without the need to convert files into a dedicated pre-press oriented file format; - higher quality: the ColorStitch trapping engine capitalizes on more than 20 years of Barco expertise in packaging prepress; - improved reliability and efficiency: consistent high quality trapping across all operators and workflows becomes the rule - labor intensive, error-prone manual trapping is history; - easy adoption: Adobe Acrobat is used to open PDF files, to set trapping parameters, to monitor the background trapping process, to inspect and if needed to edit the results, and to save the design as PDF data anywhere on the network - without retraining operators or making changes to established design and production workflows; - low cost of ownership: with a moderate investment in DeskPack for Acrobat serving any number of standard Mac and PC workstations, current operators can produce higher quality jobs with greater efficiency. Configuration and upgradeability DeskPack for Acrobat works with Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 on Macintosh (OS 9 and OS X) and PC platforms (Windows ME/2000/XP). The DeskPack server software runs on any standard Pentium III/4 or compatible PC with proper CPU power, RAM memory and hard disk space, running Windows 2000 Server OS. The basic DeskPack license supports up to five concurrent user sessions from any number of Mac or PC Acrobat and Illustrator clients on the network. The DeskPack server is upgradeable to a more complete BackStage workflow automation server, offering a broader choice of background processing and communication tasks while maintaining full services for Acrobat and Illustrator clients. DeskPack for Illustrator, already shipping to customers worldwide, is also on display at Seybold SF. This product not only includes Barco trapping tow other Illustrator plug-ins as well: but boostX, an Illustrator plug-in that provides a number of advanced drawing, editing and ink control tools permitting faster and more precise product design; and checkX, a collaborative tool that analyzes a package design and compensates for limitations of the reproduction process early in the workflow. About Esko-Graphics Esko-Graphics is the result of the merger between Purup-Eskofot A/S, a leading worldwide supplier of prepress equipment to the graphics industry, and Barco Graphics, the leading global supplier for digital pre-production solutions to the packaging industry. The new company combines the management, R&D, manufacturing facilities and distribution resources of the previous entities. The product lines of the two companies are also merged into one integrated portfolio. This gives Esko-Graphics the broadest line of CTP (computer-to-plate) products of any organization in the world as well as market leadership in a number of graphic arts and packaging business sectors. The head office of Esko-Graphics is in Gent, Belgium. For more information visit Esko-Graphics' web site at www.esko-graphics.com.