Foster City, Calif. - August 10, 2004 - EFI, the world leader in digital imaging and print management solutions for commercial and enterprise printing, announced today a renewed sales and product development effort around its Proteus publishing software. EFI Proteus is a software system that provides publishing professionals the ability to plan, position, view, and set printing press specifications for all advertising and editorial elements of a magazine, newspaper, catalog or other publication. This month the company shipped an OS X compliant version of the product, which also included a number of product improvements requested by customers. Proteus also has versions available for earlier Macintosh operating systems as well as Windows operating systems. EFI recently integrated Proteus with its newly enhanced EFI Prograph module, allowing the completed publication layout and data to be electronically delivered to the printer's EFI Hagen management system. The company is planning numerous enhancements and upgrades over the next year, such as improved production workflow tools. "We've been using Proteus for nearly five years now, and have been very pleased with how the system has streamlined processes and eliminated costly errors, both for our publishing clients and us as printers," said Doug Ehmann, CTO of The Sheridan Group, which comprises seven printing companies focused on the magazine, journal, catalog and book markets. "With EFI's commitment to the product, we look forward to the upcoming enhancements and improvements, which will make Proteus an even more important component of our workflow." "We're excited to have the resources and commitment to take Proteus to the next level," said Marc Olin, Vice President/General Manager, EFI Commercial Print Systems. "We have a very loyal base of users who will finally have the enhanced functionality they've been clamoring for, and the new features will make Proteus the top choice for publishers and printers shopping for a publication production management tool." Proteus allows editors, art directors, sales managers, production managers, printers, and other publishing professionals to collaborate on the assembly and production of a publication. The end result is a digital "map" of an issue, containing the exact pagination, color reproduction, imposition, and other information the printer needs to produce the issue accurately and efficiently. Proteus is available with four levels of functionality for both the PC and Mac platforms. Other features of the system include: * Easy-to-learn, icon-driven interface * Drop-and-Drag functionality throughout * Automatic conflict-checking * Supports an unlimited number of inserts, bind-ins and blow-ins of any dimension * Refolios and alpha-paginates on-the-fly * Automatically generates your press paperwork * Calculates and displays ad/edit ratio in real-time, and calculates costing elements based on a predefined printer's contract * Manages regional or demographic editions or mixtures, including remnant tracking For more information on EFI Proteus, please call 1-800-875-7117 or e-mail [email protected]