News

With this month's launch of XMF 2.0, Fuji has built on the success of its original XMF cross-media workflow, unveiled in March 2007, by adding new features and integrating the latest version of the Adobe PDF Print Engine, APPE2.

Despite only having been around for two years, following its launch at Ipex 2006, Adobe’s PDF Print Engine has rapidly become ubiquitous. The vast majority of workflow products available today are either APPE-based or APPE-enabled. The days of CPSI and all the problems that the clash between PDF functionality and PostScript-based RIPs brought now seem nothing more than an unpleasant memory.

At this year’s Drupa, Adobe announced the next incarnation of the PDF Print Engine, APPE2. Just as it was the first to market with an APPE-based workflow in XMF, Fuji has repeated the trick with the APPE2-based XMF 2.0. Fuji’s speed to market this time round has been largely thanks to the work it did on the original XMF, which was built from the ground up using JDF and the original APPE RIP. That meant that, this time round, it was simply a case of swapping the old RIP for the newer version.

That would have been impossible in CPSI days, says Fujifilm Europe business strategy manager, workflow and software solutions, John Davies. We would have been still trying to work out what the code we’d been given was actually doing.

Overcoming problems
One of Fuji’s goals in developing XMF was to ensure it could support any new application that hit the market. In doing so, it hoped to avoid any repetition of the sort of problems printers encountered with the introduction of PDF transparencies, which designers found they could not RIP.

Fuji has been aided in this quest by Adobe, which now uses consistent technology between its creative applications and the PDF print engine. This was not the case in the past, according to Davies, who says delays of six to nine months were to be expected between creative applications coming out and anyone being able to RIP them.

Thanks to this developmental synchronisation, XMF 2.0 is fully compatible with the full feature set of Adobe’s latest Creative Suite, CS4, which was only released last month. In addition, APPE2 is faster than its predecessor, which enables corresponding speed gains in Fuji’s updated workflow.

APPE2 brings big productivity gains. It’s faster than version one, in terms of general throughput throughout the workflow, and it also maintains compatibility with Adobe’s latest creative applications, says Davies.

In the main, this compatibility with CS4 means greater support for variable data, which could prove an important factor in the future. At the moment, variable data is managed by various formats, all of which are non-standard, says Davies. However, the Adobe-developed PDF-VT, which is currently going through the ISO certification process on its way to becoming an open standard, is likely to become the de facto means of managing and communicating variable data. This will provide numerous benefits, especially for users of APPE2-based workflows, which will support the standard from day one.

With PDF-VT you can actually view multiple versions contained within a single file, using Acrobat, and see each different version come up on screen, which is something you can’t do with current formats, such as PPML, says Davies.

All from one
This means that, where regional or language variations of a print job are included in a single PDF-VT file, these can be managed from within the Fuji workflow. For instance, if a client submits a versioned PDF job that contains four languages, XMF 2.0 can switch on and merge the different layers of the job, allowing the printer to actually produce all four language versions from the one source input file.

Within CS4, it’s easier to create these versioned files than it was before, explains Davies. There was a level of versioning within the last APPE, but, with every new version of CS, there are a few more features and extras that come along – things that used to trip us up in the past.

Among the new features in XMF 2.0, by far the most noticeable is the web submission module, XMF Remote. Fuji has rightly devoted much of the past 18 months to its development and, as a result, has repaired the one glaring omission in the original XMF.

XMF Remote is the business-to-business portal that will sit at the front end of the XMF workflow. It allows printers’ clients to create new print jobs and to upload PDF files directly into the production environment. Fuji has also built in a third-party online preflighting tool, Enfocus’ PitStop software, so that anybody submitting work into the workflow will be notified immediately if there’s anything wrong.

We’ve had preflighting for some time, but we’ve actually put it at the right place in the workflow now, says Davies.

Once the file is into production, the preview that XMF 2.0 generates for customer approval comes from the actual ripped data. This means that when the print buyer looks at a job in XMF Remote, they will be seeing the actual APPE2-ripped data in front of them.

A lot of remote-approval systems will approve PDF files, but that’s really got no value because people submit the PDF file in the first place. What’s important for them is to see what the ripped version looks like, says Davies.

Fuji has also expanded on the level of MIS connectivity provided in version one of XMF. Version two includes the ability to take complete production jobs out of an MIS system, including imposition data, whereas in the past users may have had to set up an imposition scheme. In addition, XMF 2.0 can send JDF messages from the workflow back into the MIS system. This enables the feedback of data, which can then be compared to the original job estimate.

Finally, in view of its partnership with Xerox, Fuji has added direct support for the Freeflow software that drives Xerox’s DocuColor digital print engines. Through its use of JDF, Fuji can now set up a Xerox job within the XMF 2.0 workflow. This includes specification of the number of copies, the media to use, whether it’s a duplex job and all the other controls that would normally need to be set up within the Xerox workflow. This can now be set up within XMF,
created as a JDF job, which is then sent automatically to the Xerox Freeflow software, to print, says Davies.

This last addition is indicative of Fuji’s long-term strategy to become more involved in digital printing ahead of the launch of its Jet Press 720 digital inkjet press, which ships in 2010.It was always in Fuji’s mind to develop a workflow to drive printed work to various types of media on various devices. Clearly, the first was CTP, as it represented the company’s core business at the time. Following its strategic alliance with Xerox, Fuji has now added interoperability with Xerox’s Freeflow workflow.

The conscious decision we made with XMF was that it was a pre-media workflow not a pre-press workflow, says Davies. This is clearly driving us forward.

SPECIFICATIONS

Platform Windows server or XP
Operating systems Mac OS X and above or Windows XP and above
Price £10,000+ (Prepare); £20,000+ (Producer); £30,000+ (Complete)
Contact Fuji 01234 245245 www.futureofworkflow.com

THE ALTERNATIVES

AGFA APOGEE SUITE
Agfa gave its workflow products a radical overhaul this year, introducing four key modules to take production from design to press: Publish, Portal, Prepress and Colour.
Price from £6,000
Platform Windows server
Operating systems Mac or PC
Contact Agfa 020 8231 4929 www.agfa.com

DALIM TWIST
Twist is a fully-automated JDF-enabled workflow. Sister product Mistral includes Publishers Production Flatplan for production management.
Price from £6,000
Platform Apple Xserve, running OS X
Operating systems Intel-based hardware, Linux and Solaris OS
Contact Turning Point Innovation 0870 7744501 www.t-point.co.uk

HEIDELBERG PRINECT PRINTREADY
The pre-press component of Heidelberg’s Prinect workflow. It’s modular, starting from the page-based package up to larger configurations driving multiple output devices.
Price from £6,000 (typically system £15,000)
Platform Windows server
Operating systems Mac or PC
Contact Heidelberg 020 8490 3500 www.heidelberg.com

KODAK PRINERGY
Kodak’s equivalent to Apogee Portal is the Insite range, Prinergy is the challenger to Apogee Prepress and Colorflow, the rival to Apogee Color.
Price Prinergy from £20,000
Platform Windows server
Operating systems Mac or PC
Contact Kodak 01923 233366 www.graphics.kodak.com

SCREEN TRUEFLOWNET
Screen sub-divides its Trueflownet workflow range into the Rite range of online job submission, proofing and approval tools, Trueflow PDF workflow and Color Suite of colour management and screening tools.
Price from £15,000
Platform HP server
Operating systems Mac or PC
Contact Screen UK 01908 545800 www.screeneurope.com