Agfa’s Use of Adobe PDF in its Award-Winning Workflow Solution Was First of its Kind Mortsel, Belgium – 11 March 2002 – In 1997, Agfa saw a need to promote the growing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) standard as a way to encourage the development of products and services for prepress environments. Five years later, Adobe PDF is the de facto standard for print producers to create a reliable and efficient digital master, streamlining the prepress process. "Agfa was the first prepress company to make a corporate commitment to Adobe PDF technology and that commitment is as strong today as it was five years ago," said Johan Berlaen, general manager of Agfa's Digital Solutions Group. "Our customers have recognized the importance of Adobe PDF which strengthens our vision to future development and cooperation with Adobe," Berlaen added. For Agfa customers who use Agfa’s Adobe PDF-based digital workflow, Apogee, which brings automation, control, openness, scalability, and ease of use to the Print Production Industry, the strides made by Adobe and Agfa have been indispensable. Adobe PDF and the Apogee implementation help to optimize the prepress workflow, making it more efficient, and streamline the flow of jobs through an organization -- saving time and reducing costs. "Adobe PDF and Agfa’s Apogee workflow have provided Citizen Printing enormous benefits. 80% of our digital customers now send us PDF files. Some of our customers are even doing their own proofing of their imposed Adobe PDF flats. Previous to implementing Apogee, from the time files were received in prepress, it was 4-5 days to turnaround work. Today turnaround of jobs is same day or next day," said Dan Booker, Prepress Manager, Citizen Printing. The Sheridan Press installed its first Galileo in 1999 when less than 50% of the company’s pages were digital. Through the full installation of Apogee and the PDF based workflow, Sheridan is now 95% digital and last year installed a second Galileo. "The Adobe PDF format has made our workflow very predictable and our customers have full confidence that their printed product will exceed their expectations. Apogee uses the Adobe PDF format in an efficient workflow that has allowed us to increase productivity by at least 50%. In-RIP Trapping, Job Pilot, and PrintDrive are the essential ingredients to this high-quality and productive workflow. To date, the Galileo and Apogee with Adobe PDF workflow has surpassed our expectations," said Ed Hartman, VP of Operations, The Sheridan Press. "Agfa has been instrumental in increasing the awareness of Adobe PDF as the standard for efficient and reliable print workflows," said George Cacioppo, vice president, Internet Printing Group at Adobe. "Agfa's Apogee workflow leverages the power of Adobe PDF and demonstrates the synergy of our vision for proliferating the use of the format in printing workflows." While Agfa was the first company to announce products enabling a new production workflow that eliminated intermediate formats by using Adobe PDF as the file format throughout the process, the company hasn’t stopped there. Agfa continues to promote Adobe PDF by developing educational tools and programs – as well as products – that help perpetuate PDF as an indispensable tool for the graphic arts.