December 13, 2007 - Gent, Belgium - Enfocus announces key updates to its most popular products: the company's flagship PDF plug-in, PitStop Professional, along with PitStop Server, a tool for high-volume PDF preflighting, and Neo, the standalone PDF editing tool have each been enhanced to provide end users even better functionality.
"PitStop Professional and PitStop Server already enjoy market-wide adoption. Nevertheless, we have a commitment to continuously improve the efficiency for our customers," comments Leo Vanderdonckt, Enfocus Product Manager. "We have added color consistency and support for future industry standards to PitStop Professional and have increased the user friendliness and robustness of our PitStop Server solution. As such, we are confident that these products meet today's and tomorrow's requirements of publishing and pre-press departments across the globe."
Jan Ruysschaert, VP Sales & Marketing Commercial Printing, EskoArtwork, adds: "EskoArtwork believes that with these new software releases Enfocus will further develop its strong position. We are embracing the Enfocus brand and as we now have joined development forces we are convinced new opportunities will be created."
Enfocus PitStop Professional 7.5
Operating system independent color conversions are now possible through the addition of two industry standard color engines to PitStop Professional: Adobe CMS and the open source "little CMS". The original option of an OS specific CMS remains available to provide backward compatibility. This wide range of choices enables end users to utilize the same conversion engine consistently throughout their entire workflow.
The new PDF/X-4 standard, with its support for layers and transparency, has been published, and this version of PitStop Professional is already fully compliant with it.  A ready to use PDF Profile will be included in the release.
When operating in wire frame mode, the way text is represented can significantly increase editing efficiency.  Version 7.5 now provides three options for the display of text in wire frame mode: outlined, black or greeked. Other new features include improvements in support for font remapping and composite fonts, as well as checking whether all required glyphs and metrics for the characters used in a PDF file are available.
Enfocus PitStop Server 4.1
PitStop Server 4.1, to be released early 2008, provides end users with a more intuitive, reworked user interface that allows easy access to hot folder setups, files in process and a comprehensive history log.  Changing the priority and enabling, or disabling, a hot folder is only a mouse click away.  The history of processed files, including detailed report information per job, can easily be filtered and exported in XML format for statistical analysis.
The new server-based processing function, enabling it to run as a service on Windows and a login item on Mac OS X(r) 10.4, allows users to start processing jobs without the need to launch the PitStop Server 4.1 user interface. Once up and running, the new PitStop Server Watchdog which operates as a background application will keep the workflow active at all times.
With a more powerful hot folder function, entire folders can be processed at any one time, with a choice of recreating the original folder structure at the output, or having it flattened. The renaming filename function allows essential information to be reflected in the filename itself. It is also possible to import & export hot folder setups as an Enfocus hot folder file - an excellent solution for backing up workflows or deploying another PitStop Server installation.
Additionally, this latest version provides a number of other extra features including: support for multiple processors and compatibility for Windows Vista; additional security with the option to lock the PitStop Server monitor for operators and an expanded and improved email notification function.
Enfocus Neo 1.2
Earlier this year, Enfocus launched its standalone PDF editing tool, Enfocus Neo. This most recent release includes compatibility with PitStop Professional 7, which enables support for preflighting and extraction of Certified PDF information generated with PitStop Professional 7 compatible Enfocus products.
Neo 1.2 can also highlight places where ink coverage is above a certain level, and reveal places with overprint, transparency traps and breakouts. The ability to show rotated views allows for easy correction of already impositioned pages. Document properties like: PDF Producer, PDF Version, creation date and document security flags can be also displayed.
Finally, the already much appraised text editing capabilities have been extended further with support for text with tabs.