Chicago - Graph Expo - Sept. 10, 2007 - EFI, the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation, today announced the company's expanded relationship with Pantone, Inc., with support for the new PANTONE Goe System across the EFI product line, in addition to its already comprehensive support of PANTONE Libraries. This direct path to Pantone from: the Fiery color digital print server platform; Fiery Central, a powerful, modular, PDF-based production workflow solution; EFI Splash RPX-ii Mac OS X-based workflow solution; MicroPress raster-based color and black and white workflow solution; and Bestcolor-driven proofing and production solutions Colorproof XF and Fiery XF, delivers increased accuracy and flexibility across a wide range of print media - for customers in creative and printing environments producing color documents.
At Graph Expo (Sept. 9-12, 2007, Chicago's McCormick Place ), demonstrations of EFI solutions' Pantone-enabled features for high-end process-color matching of spot-color printing will be highlighted in EFI booth 3000, and in EFI's partners' booths throughout the conference, and will feature EFI's integration of the new PANTONE Goe Color Library as well as the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM. Additionally at Graph Expo, EFI will demonstrate the ability to print PANTONE Reference Charts from Fiery-driven digital output devices. This 19-page downloadable PostScript file of color patches shows CMYK equivalents for each installed PANTONE Library, indicating what the final output color will look like from the Fiery-driven printer.
From Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, the PANTONE Goe System features 2,058 new PANTONE Colors, and includes tools and interactive software to improve versatility in an increasingly global, multimedia environment. Print service providers and graphic arts professionals deploying Pantone-calibrated EFI solutions are more efficient and accurate, saving time by eliminating manual input of color definitions, and reducing inaccuracies in the final output.
"We enjoy a long-standing, collaborative partnership with EFI, sharing a goal of delivering technology innovation that heightens color creativity and impacts the success of print service providers," said Andy Hatkoff, vice president of Advanced Color Technology at Pantone. "State-of-the-art EFI solutions, particularly the Fiery, are extremely popular among graphic arts professionals and print service providers alike. EFI's support will have a terrific impact on the industry's adoption of the PANTONE Goe System."
Unique in the industry, the EFI Fiery platform provides combined RIP (raster image processing) and digital output device calibration, which ensures for customers that their entire printing system is PANTONE Goe System calibrated. This calibration delivers the most accurate color possible, tailored to specific printer devices and their media. PANTONE Libraries are directly integrated into the Fiery workflow, and operators can readily print the full color swatch libraries from the Fiery-driven output device. Print service providers are able to show their customers actual Fiery-printed-Pantone-calibrated swatches - providing accurate color representation from the actual device that will print the job.
"With EFI solutions our customers are accustom to achieving the highest quality, most accurate color, and the new PANTONE Goe System complements our technology, taking color matching to a new level, said Frank Mallozzi, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, EFI. "Pantone has designed a system that enables our customers to define color from the moment of creative inspiration to the delivery of a finished project with its related electronic and printed components - and ultimately that supports EFI's objective of delivering innovative solutions based on industry standards that make our customers more competitive, efficient and profitable."
Print service providers are able to get the most out of their digital print production engine and their people when their engine is driven by the next-generation EFI Fiery platform. Renowned for its intuitive user experience, the new Fiery platform features: a powerful, unique Visual Workflow that optimizes productivity by providing job progress at-a-glance; built in "how-to" guides to address a wide range of operator expertise; and the most open, powerful VDP workflow capability, including support of VDP languages Fiery FreeForm, industry standard PPML, and a host of legacy proprietary languages, and collaborations with the leading VDP software vendors. With Fiery Spot On, users can create accurate color matching for logo colors and other spot colors in an automatic, application-independent workflow. This feature allows the management of named colors on the Fiery, including all PANTONE names in PostScript or PDF documents. Spot On Color Search provides an intuitive graphical user interface for creating and editing named colors directly.
Colorproof XF transforms inkjet and laser printers into powerful proofing and production systems and is renowned for providing customers with outstanding performance, color quality, flexibility and a highly intuitive interface. The XF Server on Mac OS X makes the system a complete cross-platform solution. With its client/server architecture and modular concept, Colorproof XF offers an unprecedented level of customization to fit print service provider's individual needs. Fiery XF provides leading-edge technology for superwide format printing for production and proofing requirements, delivering high-speed processing, exceptional color quality and increased productivity. By incorporating the PANTONE Color definitions into EFI Colorproof XF and Fiery XF, customers can simply process print jobs containing PANTONE Color separations and automatically produce a color-accurate output of the complete print job.