Product of the Month - Packz professional editor

With an experience of five decades in the graphic arts industry in India, Malhotra Graphics, has been associated with manufacturers and suppliers of the print industry for products ranging from consumables, equipment and workflow solutions.

In the year 2014, Malhotra Graphics, with a view to being a total solution provider for pre-press in the packaging domain, entered into a tie-up with Germany-based Packz software. Packz provides a wide range of tools to simplify and improve packaging and label workflows. The company offers a worldwide distribution of software, services and training.

Packz founded Artwork Systems way back in 1992 with popular and digital workflow for the packaging industry -‑Artpro. Yogesh Bhat, business development manager, Malhotra Graphics says, “Association with Packz since early 2014 has complemented with the existing consumables and equipment for the packaging industry especially for flexo.”

What is Packz?
Packz is a professional editor designed for the packaging and label industry. The software is completely built around PDF, which is a globally accepted file format for the interchange of all packaging graphic designs. Bhat says, “Packz is an open architecture which means it can work both on Mac operating system and Windows; the Graphical User Interface (GUI) remains the same.”

The software comes with Native PDF editing. Hence, the files require no conversion to any other or internal file format throughout the life cycle in pre-press. According to Bhat, “Packz takes complete advantage of the computing power of the hardware.” He further explains that “The 64-bit computers with multiprocessing and multithreading enable Packz to deal with complex designs or multiple files seamlessly at the same time.”

Technical aspect
Packz is a standalone system in itself, wherein it is completely production oriented with a built-in feature to seamlessly address all the parameters required for packaging in offset, flexo and gravure process for the digital file preparation. This is in terms of parameters such as CAD, interactive and grid‑based step and repeat.

Additionally, the software can also address parameters for production such as shrink sleeve warping, dot control and dot gain compensation which is critical in printing, barcode detection, and creation, extended gamut printing among others.
The software is equipped with tools for quality assurance which includes full resolution preview; incremental save and roll back provision and finally, files inspection system.

The software is equipped with Smarttrapper tool which helps the user in verifying the trap result by highlighting areas of interest where attention is needed. The White Underprint tool can be used to combine multiple shapes. This helps to speed up the creation of white, varnish, embossing and braille plates.

While the Flattener tool eliminates transparencies, overprints, and makes PDF compatible with older RIPs. The Packz software has the ability to create barcodes such as EAN, QR, Data Matrix, Laetus, UTF, PZN and many more. Additionally it can also detect most of the barcodes and their characteristics in supplied design files, so that barcodes can be adapted to comply with product and printing standards.

Target segment
The Packz software is aimed at the labels and packaging segment. According to Bhat, “The users can be the offset-based packaging printers, flexography printers and gravure printers who can take advantage of the software.”

Bhat says, “The printers in India have appreciated the concept and technology and have expressed it as simple, more advanced, non-proprietary and very economical workflow solution for packaging compared to the existing solutions available in the market.” The firm offer trials to their customers, enabling them to try the software before they actually buy it.

Added advantages
Explaining the features of Packz Bhat says, “Packz is a fully built PDF editor and an application by itself and does not work on plug-ins. He further says, “Most of the features that are sold as options in the market are the standard feature in Packz. Further, the software is non-proprietary and can seamlessly integrate to any workflow environment in the market.”

“Packz is quite easy to use especially for the existing Artpro users as well as for the Adobe Illustrator users,” says Bhat. Malhotra Graphics has a dedicated staff for training Packz and also has basic and advanced training modules.

The firm currently does not charge to provide training. Periodic updates as and when required are installed. The firm has in-house trained service and support engineers to cater to any problems arising at the customers end.
Currently, Packz has twenty active users in India and Malhotra Graphics is optimistic about Packz, says Bhat, “The numbers are likely to grow faster in the immediate future.”

Ahmedabad’s Ankit Graphics leverages Packz
Prior to the installation, the Ahmedabad-based Ankit Graphics, Ankit Darji evaluated all the available products in the market. Darji who is the first buyer of the software in India, says, “We evaluated similar products from a different software provider. However, the most deciding factor that went in favour of Packz was the fact that it was a standalone software and did not require any additional support software or systems.”

Packz according to Darji is user-friendly software which is faster in a simple way. He says, “The complex files which has a lot of data in it makes the file very heavy and difficult to process. But with Packz the file size remains small.”

The Packz team from Belgium has been supportive. And so, whenever there is a problem and we get stuck with some function or artwork they proactively come and help us.

According to Darji, the functionality factor along with being able to process complex files in a simpler way was another factor “to tilt us in Packz favour.”

Earlier, the repro house used to manually convert around eight files. But with Packz, Darji says, “Now, we can process four times the number of artwork and that too error free. It has simple and minimum function unlike other software and hence it is easy to learn and train in it. Usually, a week’s time is sufficient."

Tools you can use

Nested step and repeat
Nested step and repeat is an option in Packz to impose folding carton designs using the CF2 cutting die retrieved from the CAD system. The user can browse through die-cut libraries using the Quick Look function, and see the preview without the need to import the file.

Different single designs may be combined on a repetition, in which each station of the repetition can define its own station number, positioning and bleed handling. Packz generates full coloured step and repeats or dynamic templates which can be reused at any time.

Tabular step and repeat
Tabular step and repeat create web-fed printed label or flexible packaging layouts. Packz includes block repeated multi-page single designs with staggered vertical and horizontal stepping. The Seamless Calculator produces continuous lanes. The result is a template or full colour file that can be reused at any time.

Each block has its own trim path, positioning and bleed handling. Bleed follows the irregularly shaped label and can nest the blocks for an economic label repeat.

Interactive and grid step and repeat
The interactive step and repeat for sheetfed labels allow assembling templates or full colour layouts of custom sized blocks, for mass production of cut and stack labels.

The Grid Step and Repeat combine many different designs of the same size on a sheet. This repetition function is suitable for greeting cards, credit cards, name cards, playing cards, and more.

Links
Although the PDF is self-containing, here external references are also remembered. Therefore, modifications in the referenced designs are tracked, and can be distributed back to the layout.

The Translucent Quality Assurance tool makes it easy to check the register between front and back side. The user can see the final design in the step and repeat. Shortcuts allow easy switching between different view modes. Additionally, an infinite deep zoom level tool allows viewing and editing even the smallest object.

Live 3D
The Live 3D option can show the 3D shape (folding carton, pouch, sleeve, etc) instantly on screen, making it easier to verify the seamless connection between the sides.

Additionally, the changes in the 2D single design are instantly synchronised with the 3D view. The software can output 3D PDF and can link with 3D modeling applications for the creation of complex folding cartons on 3D models and 3D PDF delivery.

Dynamic Marks
Live Objects is the technology for making customised registration marks and other elements. It enables the user to rapidly create dynamic live objects and connect them to PDF document content.

The software stores registration marks in central or local libraries and applies them to the step and repeat. The marks automatically transform and update when changes are made since they are driven by repetition parameters and the 1-up design content.