Version 7.6 of the software, which was launched in its first iteration more than 15 years ago, but changed name last year to accommodate for the Accurio rebrand, features a new Flux Preflight Pro in-built pre-flighting engine incorporating more than 80 predefined profiles.

It became available last week for update or for configuration with new machines, with price dependent on the supplier. The software has three versions: Essential, Premium and Ultimate, with only the latter two configured with Preflight Pro.

Achim Ricks, Konica Minolta production printing application manager, stressed the Preflight Pro as the main improvement over the previous version 7.4.

“Up to now we have had all the basic pre-flighting, which would embed fonts or transferences in the file or check the position of embedded images, but now we have a really sophisticated pre-flighting engine behind it to allow us to do analysing for repro creation or converting colours to CMYK.

“The name Preflight Pro might be a bit misleading but it is not only pre-flighting but allowing it to fix problems.” 

The engine can embed or replace fonts automatically, change sample image resolution and recompress colour and greyscale images, boosting the workflow software that is not only compatible with AccurioPresses but also with machines with Fiery controllers and certain third-party engines.

“As long as it’s a PostScript file and we have PPD then we can do anything the PPD provides,” added Ricks, who also stressed the high automation levels of the software.

“We have some figures from Infotrends saying that in the whole print process the pre-press part makes up 75% of the whole time, which is utilised to produce something; this 75% is what we are tackling with automation.

“In theory, if we have [AccurioPro Flux] Ultimate we could have a customer uploading a print job and pressing the button and then at the other end of the world it will start printing automatically.”

Between the three versions, AccurioPro Flux Essential is designed for makeready and queue management, the Premium version adds calibration for multiple print room operators and Ultimate adds a web-to-print function. 

Konica Minolta has launched a number of new presses in the Accurio range this year, including its AccurioLabel 190 label press and AccurioPress C6100 series.