APRIL 4, 2006 – Birmingham, UK (IPEX - Hall 6, Stand A20) – April 4-11, 2006 – As part of its strategy to offer more practical solutions that remove technical complexity from the life of creative professionals, Enfocus adds Instant Barcode to its ‘Instant’ product line. A plug-in for Adobe Illustrator, Instant Barcode allows professional graphic designers to easily generate, check and read barcodes -- a rapidly increasing design component -- within their familiar software design environments. With Instant PDF, Enfocus has proven it understands the needs of creative professionals. With Instant Barcode, the company brings an additional product to market that makes the day-to-day life of graphic designers easier and more productive. With such a limited number of reliable, user-friendly products available for the creation of barcodes within design applications, Enfocus has re-branded and upgraded the products previously known as Barcode Toolbox and Barcode Checkup, to provide creative professionals with a more integrated solution. Frank Vyncke, original developer of Barcode Toolbox and Barcode Checkup, comments: “We believe that our customers will benefit greatly from the integration of Barcode Toolbox and Barcode Checkup within the respected Enfocus brand. The company’s sound knowledge of what creative professionals need, combined with the strong network of support throughout the world, can only be a good thing for all concerned.” Today, barcodes are used on a large majority of items, and predominantly as a means of automation. It is imperative that they are created correctly, putting designers in the awkward position of needing to generate them on the original artwork files, without necessarily having the correct understanding, or training. A simple to use, low cost, plug-in to an already familiar software package provides them with a seamless working environment which will save time and prevent costly errors. “As designers are now widely responsible for generating barcodes when creating the artwork for packaging or publications, Instant Barcode is designed to be fully compatible with the latest version of Adobe Illustrator. Where today in many cases a font is used to create and place barcodes, we believe that the vector approach of Instant Barcode provides a more user-friendly and reliable solution,” comments Tom Peire, Director of Corporate Marketing, Enfocus. Initially available in both English and German, Instant Barcode operates on both Mac OS X and Windows platforms, and supports the 17 most common barcode systems used today, including EAN-8, ISSN and ISBN. When a code is created it can either be directly integrated within the Illustrator design or can simply be exported to an EPS or PDF file if necessary, for placement in other design applications. Instant Barcode will automatically make sure the barcode is of good quality, placing it on a white rectangle if needed, or warning when it is not properly scaled. This, along with many other pre-set parameters, makes it virtually impossible for a designer to get it wrong. The advanced barcode preflighting capabilities allow the design to be checked for the amount and types of barcodes used in a document. The software also verifies the barcode height, the number of colors used, and whether it is set to overprint or not. As with Enfocus’ PDF preflighting technology, certain errors can be fixed during verification. The measurement of existing barcodes is simply carried out by the end user ‘swiping’ the mouse cursor over a code which will then be instantly read, so that he can see at a glance if the correct code has been used . Pricing & Availability This new plug-in will be available June 1st 2006 on the Enfocus website and through its distributor and reseller channel, and is priced at € 249/$ 299. Existing Barcode Toolbar or Barcode Checkup users can upgrade to Instant Barcode from € 59/$ 69 as an electronic download only.