Canada, Montreal, May 20, 2008 Ultimate Technographics, together with Horizon International Inc., concluded this week their collaboration on the development and certification of JDF connectivity from Impostrip digital line of solutions to Horizon's in-line and near-line booklet makers.
 
Significant development for in-line finishing
'This is a major step forward for digital printing and its strive for competitiveness, says Joanne David, Executive VP at Ultimate; translating the final imposition in a JDF instruction file that Horizon in-line finishing can understand and applying these instructions accurately help making short runs and personalized printing more profitable. JDF for in-line finishing is synonymous of 'finishing on the fly'. Ultimate was the first to generate CIP3 for offset printing and now we are proud to kick start this process again for digital printing using JDF for in-line finishing. We are very excited about the future of in-line finishing because it will bring a unique and definite advantage to the digital print consumer. JDF connectivity will bring a much higher level of automation to the whole digital print delivery process.'
 
We are pleased to announce the first complete JDF workflow for digital in-line booklet-making process, says Michiharu Noguchi, Executive Director at Horizon International; we believe, this solution will be a great help for the printers who have been seeking a true efficient print finishing workflow. "JDF" and "Digital", these are the keys to advance the Printing/Finishing process to the next level. We will continue our relentless pursuit of automation, to provide efficient and profitable solutions for our customers.'
 
Producing professional quality booklets in one pass
Ultimate line of solutions for digital printing is comprised of specific applications designed to address specific needs for the growing digital book industry as well as web2print general commercial businesses. Impostrip On-Demand Digital, the award winning Book Stacker and other Ultimate software targeting digital printing will be equipped with a new module that allows Horizon users to set their finishing preferences as part of their imposition workflow and job files dropped into this imposition hot folder will automatically generate the corresponding JDF instruction for the Horizon i2i system to complete the digitally-controlled print production process, offering consistency from job to job. The Ultimate JDF connectivity will help automating near-line and off-line Horizon equipment for high standard trade-bound booklets.
 
JDF Finishing Instructions enhance Workflows
JDF finishing instructions produced by Ultimate's products can be exported with JDF imposition instructions to a JDF workflow system so that it can pass those instructions to the finishing equipment. Ultimate can also pass JDF instructions to workflows based on other types of XML encoding. For example web2print systems that interface with the Ultimate XML Director for automated production can be configured to pass along the JDF instructions to the finishing equipment used, in-line or near-line. This creates true automation from web submission to finished product.