ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 5—A new solution for KODAK NEXPRESS digital production color presses brings a different treatment for personalizing variable data printing (VDP) applications. With Deutsch Technologies’ DIRECTYPE software, variable texts, such as names or individual messages, are realistically incorporated into photographic images. The personalized pictures can be used for postcards, direct mailers, brochures, and other personalized documents and printed on a NEXPRESS press system. Kodak is now a worldwide reseller of DIRECTYPE. The solution is being shown at IPEX 2006 in Kodak’s booth, D70, in Hall 5. “Kodak seeks to continually bring our digital printing customers innovative ways to further the effectiveness of one to one marketing campaigns,” said Sankarshanan Anantham, Workflow Product Marketing Manager, Digital Printing Solutions, Kodak. “DIRECTYPE’s ability to incorporate the recipient’s name into an image, combined with the high quality digital color printing capabilities of NEXPRESS presses, produces highly personalized materials that enrich direct marketing pieces and promotional items.” DIRECTYPE features an intuitive user interface that makes it easy to develop personalized applications using VDP software. Image font elements are created with four different methods. POSTSCRIPT or TRUETYPE fonts can be filled automatically with small image elements, such as coffee beans or blossoms. In the node point method, manually drawn points can be specified for each letter and the image elements can then be positioned along their contours. The punch form program function cuts letters of every font out of the foreground of an image. In the fourth method, a separate image is assigned to every letter, such as a group of cheerleaders in which each one holds a different letter of a name. Additional DIRECTYPE software functions help ensure that the personalized images always have a very high quality. For example, the software compensates varying text lengths with automatic word wrapping and scaling. DIRECTYPE effectively automates what used to be complex and expensive individual works of art in classical electronic image processing. “We are very happy that Kodak, with its strong reputation in the graphic communications and printing industry, has joined with us to bring DIRECTYPE to more users,” says Joern Philipp Hilscher, Managing Director of Deutsch Technologies. “This further underlines our position as a leading provider for image personalization solutions.” The KODAK NEXPRESS 2100 plus and KODAK NEXPRESS 2500 digital production color presses meet a variety of needs from entry level to very high volume environments. Customers are able to upgrade presses as they grow their businesses with options to select desired paper capacity, increase processing capability, and add a fifth imaging unit for delivery of spot color, watermarking and protective coating with the GATF InterTech Award winning KODAK NEXPRESS fifth imaging unit solutions. The fifth imaging unit solutions also enable high impact glossing in conjunction with the KODAK NEXGLOSSER glossing unit.