Agfa Graphics has announced major upgrades for its award-winning Apogee Workflow Management Suite, Apogee Prepress 7.1. The system  is now available through Agfa’s partner TechNova Imaging Systems for India and SAARC countries.

As first glance, it’s clear significant integration and automation improvements have been added into Apogee Prepress 7.1, Agfa’s JDF-enabled pre-press production hub, including many new user-requested features.

The latest implementation of the Adobe PDF Print Engine (v 2.5) provides compatibility with the newest design applications and Acrobat 10. Apogee Preflight has been enhanced and has received Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) 1v4 certification; Apogee’s Preflight Reporter plug-in is ready to work with Acrobat 10. For users of the popular Enfocus Preflight, the Apogee 7.1 integrates the latest Enfocus PitStop Library 10.

Support has also been added for a wide range of third-party CTP devices and the latest inkjet proofers, including enhancements to Apogee Color Quality Manager to facilitate automated proofing, press repurposing and closed-loop colour calibration. New functionality in digital printing capabilities include SKU-based job control and enhanced VDP. Enhancements to Apogee Impose module provide higher levels of automation, customisation and JDF connectivity to planning and MIS systems.

“During these tough economic times, the advancements in Apogee 7.1 workflow offer users a great opportunity to become more automated, more productive, more responsive to their customers and therefore more profitable,” says Luc Bruyneel , business development manager-commercial software at Agfa Graphics, Belgium.

Bruyneel adds, “We’ve added unprecedented JDF integration to third-party digital presses through Apogee’s JDF Digital Print Link. Apogee Prepress also offers multi-part job support, allowing users to combine the different parts of a job into one, reducing setup time and allowing for easy status tracking.”

Additionally, Apogee Prepress supports the latest version of Adobe PDF Print Engine, which significantly enhances the rendering performance since PDF files are rendered natively and included transparencies are automatically resolved during the rendering process.

Anit Saha, manager-software applications at TechNova Imaging Systems, says, “Integration between Apogee Prepress and a digital press is accomplished through CIP4’s Digital Print ICS compliant JDF/JMF. Once integrated, Apogee Prepress becomes the facilitator in a “hybrid workflow.  It manages the creation of proofs, plates and the digital print-ready files. Through rules, scripts, and JDF and JMF support, automated job processing can be controlled and job tracking and job cost calculations can be performed by communicating accounting-specific information to a JDF/JMF-enabled MIS system. Proofing and colour management enhancers control and provide proofing accuracy.”

Customer speak
Mumbai-based Printline Reproductions which specialises in packaging printing is in the process of implementing an Apogee pre-press system.

Iqbal Kherodwala, managing director, Printline Reproductions, who recently joined the ever-growing community of Apogee believers after evaluating two other formidable choices , says, “I got convinced that Apogee learning curve is the least steep amongst the solutions, I was evaluating. Its simplicity frees up more time. Most of the operations are drag and drop. Also the core behind this simple interface is the most rugged 2.5 APPE, which others are yet to adopt (they use a version 2).”

Apogee family in India has more than 30 installations and customers like Repro India, Supressa Graphics and Shivang Creation in Mumbai, Vishwakala Printers in Bengaluru and Lustra in Delhi among others.

With TechNova now taking over managing the Apogee business in India, it is expected to grow rapidly, states Anit Saha and his team.

New modules
Agfa’s access to Microsoft and Adobe is strategic as they are the few gold partners these two companies have entrusted to develop over their core modules.

Apogee Inksave, a licensed option available within an Apogee workflow, provides enormous cost savings for the press room. Apogee Inksave is designed to preserve and enhance quality automatically and provides a serious financial bonus by reducing ink costs.

Bruyneel says, “Inksave, provides additional benefits such as greater press stability, better tolerance to mis-registration, shorter drying time and faster press make-ready.”

Save time and money in pre-press
Apogee Impose, an innovative Agfa-developed imposition module was introduced with the release of Apogee 7. This latest entrant simplifies the way imposition is handled on the fly in Apogee, uses job information instead of templates to determine imposition, saving users time and money in pre-press.

Apogee Impose was developed after Agfa surveyed its installed customer base and found many were having problems with template-based imposition software. Instead of using pre-defined templates which must be manually edited for each job, Apogee Impose uses job information, such as page size, product part information like cover, body and insert, and available equipment (pre-press, press and bindery) to calculate and propose the optimal imposition scheme.

As such, it helps pre-press departments save valuable time and expense in the imposition process. For example, if outcome verification is required for a suggested imposition, with Apogee Impose it would only take about 30 seconds for standard jobs to be validated. With solutions that use templates, the procedure takes more than three minutes.

Bruyneel says, “Apogee Impose is an innovative solution that changes the pre-press industry’s way of thinking by taking all print production requirements into account for imposition. For example, Apogee Impose can print and, if needed, duplicate a print control strip across a press sheet and clip it intelligently at the borders in such a way that the measurement device can read it reliably. You no longer need a strip for each sheet size.”

Apogee Impose enables setting up ‘standard’ folding schemes for optimum efficiency. For example, only folding schemes that require no adaptations of the folding machine will be used. Because Apogee Impose calculates the preferred imposition scheme for every job, based on defined rules, the outcome is predictable and automated, eliminating incorrect settings, resulting in additional savings of time and expense.

Puranjit Sarangi, national sales manager-equipment solutions group at TechNova Imaging Systems, says, “If the print firms are looking for a rugged, simple, modular, scalable workflow then there is hardly any match to Apogee. Its Preflight, Impose and Inksave modules are game changers. It is surely the hybrid workflows with digital printers and presses, irrespective of brands, that we can create with Apogee. It’s our first, small but very firm step towards a digital printing eco-system.”

Upgrade program
Agfa Graphics is providing several economic Apogee upgrade programs to help its existing customers upgrade to the latest Apogee Prepress version. The program enables the user to upgrade to the new Apogee Prepress from the current ApogeeX, Apogee Series2 or Series3.

 
THE ALTERNATIVES

Fujifilm XMf
The workflow is built around JDF and Adobe Print Engine (APPE) technology which provides a high level of flexibility, increasing productivity, quality and efficiency.
Contact  Fujifilm India
               +91  22  42364000, vinod.sheth@fujifilmindia.com
               www.fujifilm.in

Heidelberg Prinect
Prinect covers everything from print shop management, online customer connection, prepress and digital print workflow to make-ready optimisation, colour and quality.
Contact  Heidelberg India
                +91  44  4347 2000, rajendra.prasad@heidelberg.com
                www.heidelberg.com

Kodak Prinergy
Kodak Prinergy workflow uses JDF to share job data, imposition, and page assignment information with content preparation, production planning and pre-press.
Contact  Kodak India
                +91 22 66416300, murad.kalal@kodak.com
                www.kodak.com

Screen Trueflow
The systems has the capacity to process files but maintain them in a non-PostScript, device-independent state, with full content integrity.
Contact  TechNova Imaging Systems
                +91  22  27412081, anit.saha@technovaindia.com
                www.technovaworld.com