Software - Prepress & Design

Positive Focus has announced an end of year promotion on Producer 3D software from HumanEyes Technologies that will enable digital and litho printers to get into the lucrative and rapidly growing lenticular market at significantly lower cost. Discounts of around a third apply across a whole range of software, training and installation packages.

HumanEyes' new Producer3D brings a level of productivity and ease of use that lenticular printers never experienced before.  It changes the face of lenticular printing with an impressive array of tools and ''industry first'' pre-press features which both simplify the pre-print process and greatly improve productivity. Digital printers can benefit from the HumanEyes LensFree technology and avoid the cost of printing on pre-formed lenses. The technique, involving double sided printing using a UV cured flatbed inkjet printer, allows an image to be printed on one side of a plain acrylic sheet, with a barrier layer on the opposite side. It lends itself to larger format, backlit advertising and point of sale material, and a recent development now allows use of thinner, flexible substrates that can be easily changed within suitable lightboxes.

There is a resurgence of interest in 3D images, with major 3D movies and 3D television in the news in recent months. Lenticular posters can display 3D, Flip and Motion effects and compete effectively for attention against other forms of advertising. ‘A 60 x 40 3D backlit poster which we displayed on our stand at mediaPro created a lot of interest,’ said Ivor Dixon, Managing Director of Positive Focus Europe, ‘even people who had not considered the technique before were asking searching questions about the ease of production.’

‘We provide a complete package, including training in the creation of the images and the actual printing techniques that need to be mastered. It’s not a difficult process, but it does need a high standard and careful printing to get the best from it and avoid wastage. We have some users who print onto an opaque substrate that is then laminated onto the lens, but with the increasing number of flatbed printers coming onto the market, especially those with a white ink option, printing direct onto the lens is a more viable solution.’

With the offer, which runs to the 22nd December, a digital printer can get started in Lenticular printing for around £4,500 ex VAT, plus training. Thinner lenses, designed primarily for litho printing, can be used and also help keep production costs down. There is a short term rental option, to ease companies developing sales in this market into production before committing to the full purchase, starting from £750 for 3 months.

mediaPro 09 provided the opportunity for Positive Focus to introduce Claro Layout, an Adobe InDesign plug-in from Elpical that offers automated quality analysis and predictable enhancement of pictures placed in an InDesign document. It optimises image size and resolution to suit the enclosing picture box and automatically names, saves and re-links the optimised image. Positive Focus, distributor of Elpical products in the UK and Ireland, is promoting the time saving features with special introductory pricing that runs until 22nd December.

Claro Layout joins Claro Premedia Server, a multithreaded server solution for image optimisation and enhancement and Claro Single, which uses Enfocus Switch as the front end, in Elpical’s product family. Claro technology is also embedded in DMP FLO Suite. Claro’s Individual Image Analysis checks each image for sharpness, brightness, contrast, colour balance, skin tones and natural greens and then applies specific corrections only to those aspects that merit changes, avoiding over-corrected images.

Alan Dixon, Technical Director at Positive Focus said: ‘It has always been time-consuming to change a picture’s parameters to suit the way it is used in a specific document, so many designers just don’t bother, creating a problem downstream for the printer. If you mask down an area of a larger image, the whole image still gets embedded in the print file, not just the pixels you need. With Claro Layout you hold one master file of each image, drop it into the page layout, position it as you require, then select the settings you need from the Claro plug-in. Resolution, cropping and scaling are all handled automatically, and you also have immediate access to Claro’s intelligent image enhancement, optimisation facilities and colour profile management. Claro Layout automatically performs all of the necessary changes on a single selected image, multiple images on one page, a whole page or a whole publication. Documents that are optimised in this way transfer faster and print more reliably, and operators can save many hours of tedious work with a few mouse clicks.’

‘You can work with files stored locally or on a file server, across your network, so this is a solution that suits everyone, from a designer working on his own to a large commercial studio within an agency, publishing house or printer, and will show a rapid return on the original investment. It’s possible to combine Elpical’s server products with Claro Layout in enterprise environments.’

‘Working on large documents, used as masters for on demand digital print and personalisation, where processing speed is a critical issue, we set an appropriate image resolution, as digital print does not require the full 300dpi usually specified for litho, and complete what could be days of hand work in minutes. The optimised file can be half to a third the size of the original, significantly reducing printing times. We solve the problem of large images being used at postage stamp size, with no loss of quality and no guess-work involved in getting size and cropping correct. Claro Layout will also apply the appropriate colour profile to cater for different output devices or paper types.’

XChange UK are pleased to announce a new exclusive PitStop Pro 09 Competitive Upgrade from FlightCheck Pro or FlightCheck Designer. This competitive upgrade gives existing users of FlightCheck Professional or FlightCheck Designer the opportunity to upgrade to the power of PitStop Pro 09 and save. PDF has become the standard for delivering press-ready files and PitStop Professional allows users to make minor edits to a PDF job at any stage.

London, United Kingdom - XChange UK, the source for extended technology worldwide are pleased to announce a new exclusive PitStop Pro 09 Competitive Upgrade from FlightCheck Pro or FlightCheck Designer. This competitive upgrade gives existing users of FlightCheck Professional or FlightCheck Designer the opportunity to upgrade to the power of PitStop Pro 09 and save £200! PDF has become the standard for delivering press-ready files and PitStop Professional, unlike native file checking software like FlightCheck Professional or FlightCheck Designer, allows users to make minor edits to a PDF job at any stage - even just before press time.

PitStop Pro 09 is an Adobe Acrobat plug-in indispensable for every graphic arts and publishing professional. Its interactive and automated editing capabilities allow everyone to perform advanced PDF editing and correction up until the very last moment. PitStop Pro offers the most comprehensive and intuitive preflight experience available. Its powerful Certified PDF technology provides immediate visual feedback and allows tracking of every edit made to a PDF. Having proven to be a real job-saver, PitStop Pro offers immediate return on investment. PitStop Pro's comprehensive interactive inspection and editing tools enable changes of virtually all of the attributes of a PDF available. Global Change speeds up the editing by offering universal modifications throughout an entire document and Action Lists automate repetitive tasks.

"We are both a design studio and pre-press facility. As a result we receive a large number of jobs submitted by outside clients. When the work was coming in (on disk) as Quark and InDesign files we found that FlightCheck was a very good way to examine the job and make sure that everything was presented as press ready. Over the last few years more and more jobs are being submitted either by email or to our FTP site as PDF files. Flightcheck can check these but PitStop, by virtue of running inside Acrobat offers a far more sophisticated way to prepare jobs for output. At the same time we developed a digital print service and large format printing which have their own prerequisites and PitStop can cater for all this. The main point that I find PitStop wins over Flightcheck (which can do a lot of this stuff) is that it allows you to make minor edits to a job at a very late stage. If a job arrives in full process colour but should have main text in a spot colour then PitStop is your weapon of choice. I have corrected text; moved objects; changed particular fonts and even added a missing object at very late stages in the workflow." - Richard Gardner, Colourtone Print & Graphics, UK

Top new features for PitStop Pro 09 include:
* PitStop Pro 09 is faster than ever before and has a user interface optimised to help you be as efficient as possible. Toolbars, menu items and panels have been streamlined and work together more smoothly as before.

* With PitStop Pro 09, making document-wide changes is easier and faster than ever before. The redesigned, enhanced global change engine offers many additional benefits: effortlessly save different versions of global changes with predefined settings and keep shortcuts to your favourite global changes at the top of the global change panel. The range of global changes that can be implemented throughout the document has also been dramatically extended.

* PitStop Pro 09 includes powerful design layout tools that can quickly visualise existing page boxes and safety zones. Design layouts including proper page boxes and printer marks can instantly be applied as well.

* PitStop Pro 09 consolidates tools to focus more on how you use them in your daily work, and additionally it offers support for workspaces. Each workspace lets you configure exactly those tools and panels you want to see.

The competitive upgrade is available now through XChange UK.

SA International (SAi) has announced the launch of the online version of Sign Tracker at SGIA 2009 in New Orleans, LA.

During SGIA, SAi and Sign Tracker will team up at booth 1258 to kick off the official launch of Sign Tracker on SIGN.com. Booth visitors can participate in live demos, ask questions, and offer feedback about the recent release of Sign Tracker online.

Created specifically with sign shops in mind, Sign Tracker is a comprehensive online management system that helps shop owners keep track of their day-to-day business operations. Managing customers, creating estimates, tracking inventory, managing projects, and generating sales reports are just a few of the tools that will help make any sign company more efficient and profitable.

Sign Tracker maintains a pay-as-you-go, no commitment pricing structure that is scaled to fit the budget for even the smallest shop. Most importantly, all customers will have a fully-functional package.

"SAi is excited to announce Sign Tracker, a wonderful new online program hosted through SIGN.com,” said Don Feagan, president and COO, SAi. "Sign shops will now have the industry's best online management software right at their fingertips."

"Our goal for Sign Tracker is to provide the most effective and easy to use software, resources and technology in our industry. We will strive to give our best so that our sign shop customers can build strong sign businesses that positively impact their communities," said Joe Arenella, Sign Tracker developer.

SGIA 2009 will be held at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, LA from October 7 - 9, 2009. SAi will be exhibiting at booth 1258 and featuring Flexi, EnRoute and Sign Tracker.

HumanEyes and EFI today announce their collaboration to provide customers with new and unique lenticular 3D printing capabilities using HumanEyes’s latest Producer3D technology. With the implementation of HumanEyes Producer3D software, the EFI Rastek T660™ now produces resolution enhancements that translate into superior quality lenticular.
The combined offering is being featured at PRINT 09 in EFI exhibit #2500.

“HumanEyes’s Producer3D technology gives EFI customers more flexibility and versatility to create unique package prototyping/short-run packaging, ad specialty items, display and exhibition graphics and indoor and outdoor signage,” says Darrell Etter, Director of Product Marketing at EFI.

“EFI and HumanEyes both strive to offer customers cutting edge technology at an affordable price point,” says Duby Hodd, CEO, HumanEyes Technologies. “Our latest HumanEyes Producer3D product allows EFI Rastek sites to offer their clients an expanded portfolio of options” .

HumanEyes Producer3D and EFI Rastek T660 Yield Powerful Results
With HumanEyes Producer3D it is now easy to create and print easily amazing lenticular printed projects with special effects: 3D, Flip, Zoom and Motion.

HumanEyes Producer3D maximizes printers’ productivity with an impressive array of new lenticular tools and industry first pre-press features that simplify the lenticular pre-print process, greatly improve productivity and provide superior print quality.

The EFI Rastek T660 is an economical and high-quality UV flatbed printer that provides production and print environments customer satisfaction and profitability through quick service, high image quality and a smaller footprint.

The EFI Rastek T660 generates photographic image quality with four- or four-color plus white, up to 1200 x 900 dpi and up to 300 ft²/hour (27.87 m²/hour). The Rastek T660 by EFI produces exceptional image quality, saturated colors and smooth gradations with gray scale print heads that utilize eight size drops ranging from six Pico-liter drops for fine detail to 42 Pico-liter drops.

Océ Arizona® Series UV flatbed printer customers continue to expand their repertoire of print offerings to include Lenticular and 3D special effects with HumanEyes Producer3D, the complete, end-to-end lenticular workflow solution. The Océ Arizona 250 GT and Océ Arizona 350 XT printers have been certified for use with HumanEyes lenticular technology. Demonstrations of the Océ Arizona 350 XT printer for producing lenticular applications can be seen at PRINT 09 at the Océ booth 1863.

According to Dante DiPasquale, Senior Director Business Development for Océ Display Graphics Systems, “The Océ Arizona 250 GT and Océ Arizona 350 XT printers offer extremely high print quality and the ability to print on a range of rigid materials. When combined with HumanEyes Producer3D, print shops can promote lenticular printing as a point of differentiation. We are very pleased to be demonstrating the Océ Arizona 350 XT printer’s capability to produce lenticular images at PRINT 09.”

HumanEyes Producer3D
HumanEyes Producer3D is an end-to-end solution that covers the entire workflow of lenticular image production, from lenticular content creation to interlace and pre-press. With HumanEyes Producer3D, it is now easy to create and print amazing lenticular printed projects with special effects: 3D, Flip, Zoom and Motion.

It maximizes printers’ productivity and changes the face of lenticular printing with an impressive array of lenticular tools and industry-first prepress features that simplify the lenticular preprint process, greatly improve productivity and provide superior print quality.

Océ customers worldwide have installed HumanEyes Producer3D to run on Océ Arizona flatbed printers, finding the solutions to offer natural and strong synergy.

The combined solutions expand printers’ portfolios with wide-format signage, POP applications, environmental design and more.

Océ Customers Speak:
Chris Clews, Managing Director of DE Group in New Zealand says, “Lenticular printing has been on our roadmap for several years and we purchased an Océ Arizona flatbed printer knowing that it was one of the leading options for creating large format Lenticular printing direct to lenticular lenses. The fact that we can also print HumanEyes Lens FreeTM and do short runs on to low cost Litho lenticular is all an added bonus. The sales team are already getting some amazing enquiries from both existing, and new customers.”

HumanEyes LensFree is an additional module within the HumanEyes Producer3D solution that allows users to create stunning backlit applications – totally lens free.

DE GROUP recently collaborated on a project commissioned by DDB on behalf of McDonald’s Australia for a stand-out advertising solution for bus shelters in order to promote its new ‘’McDonald’s 24 hour store’’ concept. The project imagined by DDB featured a flip effect based on 2 images: passers-by could see a young man yawning and then eating a hamburger.

Seven backlit billboards - 1,88*1,10 m - were produced on an Océ Arizona printer using 15 LPI lenses (particularly suitable for a flip effect) and were placed in main centers throughout NZ for about two months.

Victor Kalmakoff of United Graphics Inc. Canada says that HumanEyes Software came highly recommended by Océ. After testing and comparing to another solution, United Graphics selected HumanEyes software because it proved to work well with the Océ Arizona printer and was very user friendly. Today Kalmakoff is actively presenting United Graphics’ lenticular capabilities, saying, “We think lenticular will eventually take-off; particularly for direct mail and point-of-purchase applications. We’ve presented to a number of potential customers who are interested in incorporating 3D and motion printed pieces as part of their marketing campaigns. The combination of the Océ Arizona printer and HumanEyes software makes an ideal solution for producing smaller lenticular pieces in shorter-runs as well as eye-catching POP display applications.”

“Over the years we’ve had many customer requests for lenticular. As a result of HumanEyes Producer3D, we are pleased to now be able to offer these capabilities to our customers; becoming the first lenticular printer in Switzerland.” says Reynald Krähenbühl, SWISS GRAFIK SA. “I also recommend the two-day training supplied by HumanEyes, which was very comprehensive with follow-up that is truly noteworthy.’’

Krähenbüh explains that he purchased his Océ Arizona printer at DRUPA where he also discovered HumanEyes. Within two weeks, he acquired HumanEyes Producer3D software. At the beginning, the intention was to use the solutions to produce lenticular faces for watches. However,, ultimately he decided to specialize in producing lenticular postcards and interior decorations for offices and trade show booths. To date, SWISS GRAFIK’s most popular lenticular projects have featured flip designs.

Océ Arizona Series UV Flatbed Printers Offer Unique Benefits for Lenticular Printing
When the Océ Arizona Series printer’s unique technology is harnessed for lenticular printing, the result is superb print quality, crisp and accurate lenticular effects, and smooth printing.

The system also allows for the use of relatively thin stock, which costs significantly less than thicker lenses traditionally used for lenticular.

The new Océ Arizona 350 XT printer boasts an extremely large flatbed table that can produce prints up to 2.5 by 3.05 m (98.4” x 120”). The extra width allows the system to be used in a continuous imaging mode for rigid materials up to 4’ x 8’ in size.

Lastly, the Océ Arizona 350 XT printer expands lenticular productivity through its new white ink option, which enables under-printing for non-white media or objects, over-printing for backlit applications on transparent media, and/or printing white as a spot color. This eliminates the need to laminate the lens.