Ghent, Belgium - Enfocus is in the midst of a multi-media education campaign to prepare users for the next release of its PitStop technology. The campaign is introducing the market to all but one of the new features in PitStop Pro 12 and PitStop Server 12. These significant new features enable the most comprehensive checking, correction, and editing of every element within a PDF file - all from within the familiar PitStop interface.

The education campaign is centered on a series of videos, with one debuting every week of 8 leading up to the release of PitStop 12. Then, on September 8, 2013 at 12 pm CST, Enfocus executives will unveil the final feature at PRINT 13 in Chicago, USA, to coincide with the release of PitStop 12 to the marketplace. 

The videos are available at: http://www.enfocus.com/pitstop-pro-12.

Customers behind development of the world's industry standard

PitStop Pro, the industry standard for PDF preflighting and editing, is used by 130,000 users worldwide to correct typographic errors, change color spaces and fix dozens of other PDF problems. As the company looked to improve and expand the functionality of PitStop Pro, it turned to this expansive user base for feedback, conducting customer surveys, "Voice of the Customer" interviews, and reaching out to customers via social media and LinkedIn forums. 

Fabian Prudhomme, Vice President of Enfocus, talked about customer involvement in the release of PitStop 12: "PitStop 12 is a result of Enfocus' commitment to developing solutions based directly on customers' needs. As a result, PitStop12 has evolved into a simple but extremely powerful 'pocket knife' of technology that can manipulate everything in a PDF, without opening a new application.

"Our commitment to these customers has continued with this education program. These videos and resources are helping our customers - and the market in general - understand the value PitStop solutions bring in streamlining the production process."

Beta site speaks out

Pictorial Offset of Carlstadt, New Jersey, USA was a beta test site for PitStop 12. A company spokesperson said, "We run a fast-paced print environment; so our shop completely relies on PDF integrity and smooth workflow integration. With features like Smart Preflight, image editing, and gradient editing, there is hardly a PDF that can't be fixed using PitStop Pro 12. Most importantly, having the capabilities to do all these things without kicking the file back to the client and slowing down production is invaluable." 

New features in PitStop Pro 12 and PitStop Server 12

PitStop Pro 12 includes new editing tools* that let users edit and correct images and blends without having to leave PitStop Pro and go into an external editor, such as Adobe® Photoshop® or Illustrator®.

The new PitStop Server 12 now uses the industry standard Adobe® transparency flattening engine. This ensures consistency with flattening performed externally in Adobe® Creative Suite® or APPE pre-press workflows.

• Align and Distribute - The new Align and Distribute functionality allows multiple selected objects to be easily aligned or equally spaced. Objects can be automatically rearranged so they align to common left, right, top or bottom edges, or vertically, or horizontally to a common center.  
• Group/Ungroup - Multiple objects within a PDF file can now be selected by the user and grouped together. A group object can then be edited as a single object and also used with the Align and Distribute tools. Grouped objects can also be cut and pasted between PDF documents, and the group will remain in the new document, making moving objects much simpler and straightforward.  
• Ink usage reporting - Users can generate a report containing the amount of ink or toner required to print a page ,or an entire document. This new report can be generated as part of the Preflight report or as an independent action.  
• Check font size by lowercase x-height - A new European Union regulation (No. 1169/2011 effective December 13, 2014) specifies minimum font size requirements for the nutri­tion declaration on food packaging, based on the lowercase x-height of the font as it is designed, to guarantee legibility. This new action in PitStop allows type size to be checked in this way.  
• Check for white overprinting objects - This check looks for white line art objects that overprint. There is also a fix available within the preflight profile, to make offending elements knockout automatically.

Also available are new Actions and Action List Functions that include:

• An Action to remove empty layers.  
• An action to allow layers to be flattened to their current view rather than the default view.  
• A new Action that converts content in Form Fields to normal, printable content; removing any output issues that may exist with Form Fields.

Special Announcement 

On September 8, 2013 at 12 pm CST, Enfocus executives will unveil the latest new component of PitStop at a press conference during PRINT 13 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.