IBM has announced two digital colour presses based on the Xeikon 500D engines using its own front-end software at Drupa.

The Infoprint Color 130 is the standard configuration which comes with a Barco FastRip/X PostScript 3 RIP. It introduces an XML based job ticket file. IBM also says it will support the PPML variable page file formatting standard in future.

Infoprint Color Plus is intended for full-speed production of highly variable colour pages. It is configured with a new IBM print controller with advanced pre-ripping of images and the error recovery capabilities of IBMs AFP (Advanced Function Printing). IBM has also developed new screening technology, together with fully automatic density and registration controls. Infoprint Manager for AIX, included in the package, will accept PostScript and PDF 1.3 documents.
The new imaging conversion tool is based on AFP architecture. It imports TIFF, GIF or JPEG files and converts them to Color Plus objects. These are automatically split into small tiles, which are then individually compressed using the most efficient technology. Large areas of near solid colour can be given a higher compression ratio than highly detailed multi-colour areas.
PostScript and PDF files can also be rasterised and converted to AFP objects.
For long runs of variable documents AFP provides page-level error recovery. IBM say this provides soup to nuts tracking of page objects from the authoring software to the print engine, and if an error is detected it is logged. Production can be restarted from the same point on another printer if necessary. IBM vice president for global marketing and strategy David Dobson said: So far most of the IBM Infoprint Color sales have gone to graphic arts customers. However, a new colour bill-printing facility introduced last year has started to attract corporate customers. By Simon Eccles.