Enfocus Software in Encino, California, was able to build strong brand recognition for its unique Certified PDF technology largely because of the hands-off approach of its Belgium-based owner, Artwork Systems Group.

Having purchased the company in 2000, Artwork waited until 2004 to announce

plans to aggressively integrate Enfocus tools into its Nexus workflow platform. 

The company began a share buy-back program by July 2005 and by the end of the year Enfocus and Artwork engineers were rolled together into one office in Gent, Belgium. PrintAction spoke with Rick Berens, Artwork’s regional manager who looks after Canada, to find out how the combined R&D effort is creating workflow innovation that might help speed the adoption of PDF and alter imposition.

Jon Robinson: How has Artwork integrated Enfocus into its existing workflow? Rick Berens: We took the technology for Preflight and PitStop and Certified PDF and integrated that into Nexus as a parallel workflow to what we had already developed. So now you can take native PDF files and run them through Pitstop profiles, certify them and then send them on their way through the rest of the Nexus workflow. 

Does this change the architecture of Nexus?

Our objective was to continue to develop Nexus to support a completely open PDF environment, without compromising the line work and CT and vector that we had already built into the workflow. It allows our customers to move through the transition without a forklift upgrade of their software and workflow solutions.

Where is your customer base?

In any given month within a few percentage points we are about 50 percent on the commercial side and 50 percent on the packaging side. Packaging can be everything from shrink sleeves to flexo to dry offset to folding carton work. 

Why is Certified PDF important for packaging? It is particularly important for panels that need to be monitored from a legal point of view. It gives the customer on the food service side, or on the pharmaceutical side, a roll-back history so they know exactly where the file has been, what has happened right down to the IP address of the person who made the change.

Why is Certified PDF still important given the rise of PDF/X?

Those are just file formats that have certain standards rolled into them. They are not even close to what Certified PDF can accomplish, which is really a custom-made preflight sequence. It filters the files. So it is not really connected to an X-1a, for example. With Certified PDF, we are really not talking about formats. We are looking at content – what happened to that PDF file. 

Why do some printers still want application files instead of PDF?

It is the result of a transitional industry. The local printer views PDF files much like they viewed old PostScript files. It is a locked-down file where I have very little editing capability and that has been an industry problem. It is why Artwork Systems, I believe, still is probably the most powerful workflow solution in the world and that is because we have embraced the fact that PDF is here. We have developed, I think, one of the most significant editing tools in a product called Neo to get into that PDF file and make it print ready. Pretty much anything you want to change in that PDF file, you can change inside of Neo and you never leave the native file format. So what NexusEdit was to the Nexus workflow, Neo is to the PDF workflow. It is an outstanding piece of software. 

Do other vendors have software to rival Neo?

People are working on it but we had a huge jump on the industry. 

Preflighting is good but not great when files still need rework. Should printers be trumpeting an in-flight process, where designers face production restrictions as they create?

It depends on how intelligent the software becomes, but when you give a job to a printer, do you really know if it is going to be output to a plate, output to a digital press? You really don’t have a sense for that. Is it going to be printed here or is it going to be printed somewhere else. Those dynamics make it difficult. Nobody wants to touch the file, because as soon as you do it costs money. In most cases it is money that cannot be recovered.

How is Artwork marrying creation with output?

We have products like PitStop Automate that can be delivered at the customer level, where they can do their own preflight and certify the file. We have a product called Autostart Connect, which is the same product with a higher degree of automation, but essentially files can be preflighted, date stamped and certified to meet a specific set of production criteria. It flags things that are very easy to miss on the creation side.

If I build a custom profile that content creation folks can reconcile their product through, and have it successfully pass that preflight, I am getting closer to what I really want and that is a print-ready PDF. From that point on, now that printer can add value to that file and continue to certify it. That is what makes Artwork Systems very unique. Some [workflow systems] can certify at the front end and they can certify at the backend, but they have no history of what happened to that file in the middle. We can certify that file along the entire production process for trapping and so on. If the text has moved a millimeter it will be documented in that certification and we are the only company that can do that, because we own all of the technology. 

Can the industry move away from touching files all together?

There are certain things that require human intervention, but there are a lot of redundant tasks that cost a lot of people a lot of money. If we can automate them the same way every single time, we can improve productivity and profitability. We can buy back capacity within the business itself, grow your sales without having to increase your overhead costs. That is how we view this. It is not about RIPping and trapping any more. It is a lot bigger than that.

Is it time printers accepted a completely new imposition model?

How many printers have an imagesetter? It is still huge. The dynamic of this industry, [one printer may have an] Avantra 44 screen CTP device and an HP, other output devices scattered throughout their environment. It is a very eclectic production world and we are still transitional. 

If you go back to the first days of computer to plate, there was a dream that we were all going CTP in five years. Everybody was going to embrace the technology. Well, it didn’t happen. There are unique technologies for unique manufacturing. People are beginning to think in terms of lean manufacturing techniques. How can I improve processes, information, and automation using a certification process through the entire workflow so that as an owner I can see exactly where my costs are.

Does Artwork Systems see the PDF Print Engine as a transparency fixer or something more?

Transparency has been a huge problem in the industry and continues to be a problem. It has really been an issue on the PDF side. Well, it is not a problem for us because with our Neo software you just need to keep it in the PDF form and, you can manage the layers. As soon as you derogate the layers, you tie both of your hands behind your back trying to improve the file. With our product suite that is never an issue.

What obstacles can Microsoft’s new XPS Page Description Language present to PDF workflows, when 95 percent of North American desktops are natively creating XPS files?

I think that PDF still really hasn’t got its legs. I mean look at the industry. We wouldn’t be having this conversation about transparency issues and X-1a and all of those other things if PDF were a wholesale file format through the entire industry. We know as an industry that PDF is the direction that it is going to go. We also know that there are a lot of other developers that develop other file formats. But one thing is certain: the printing industry is going to have to figure out ways to manage those unique file formats that companies not in the printing industry throw at us. That is where it started with PDF, which was not originally designed for print. The dynamics haven’t changed.

Will XPS change how Artwork develops its workflow?

We need to give our customers the tools and the capabilities to crack the files that they are getting from their customers as quickly as they can, as efficiently as they can, and provide the vehicle, the software of forward thinking. We know that there are going to be a lot of dynamics happening on the fringes and eventually they will come into the market for whatever reason. Artwork Systems continues to focus on where the industry is going to go. You can ask any printer what percentage of PDF files they receive and very few are going to be getting say more than 10 or 15 percent. 

If you were to ask them if they would rather have a PDF or a Quark file with all of its supporting files, they will say give me a Quark file with all of the support files, give me the InDesign file with all of its support files, because they have those tools. They are adding value and not struggling. Give them a PDF file and sometimes that is a struggle.  This is not new, but every year we get a few more percentage points of PDF files and a few more folks who are trying to fix them and they are finding out that it is possible but in a lot of ways it is the same as it has always been. It goes right back to content creation. There is no software around that will do what I meant, instead of what I say. 

All I know is that if I am a designer then my job is to build beautiful effective targeted marketing pieces. As soon as they start thinking about what is going to happen in production, everything gets compromised. If we had people in the industry that were designing for production, then the design would be different. We have this void in the centre and I think that is where good certified files, good PDF preflight editing, fits.

What advantages does Enfocus provide for PDF proofing?

We have tremendous automation when we are looking at content proof and colour-based proofs.  The certification is embedded. With a plug-in, they can see the entire track record, the history of that file, and as a soft proof. Printers want a file that is small enough to email, that is content correct, with guaranteed file integrity. We have products called WebWay, which automates the entire soft-proofing process. The operators really do nothing but trigger the release and it kicks out a soft-proof to the customer who can annotate it and send it right back. The technology is here.

What is Equinox?

It is an expanded colour-space product for us. Watch for it. It is basically a product that leverages a 7-colour space so that customers do not have to print lots of spot colours. Printers can pretty much mix any colour they want. You add three more colours [for more colour] capability, but those other inks for Equinox are not special inks. Think of it from a manufacturing point of view: buy the 7-colour press or the 6-colour press. It reduces my makeready and allows me to print shorter runs because I am using a standard set of colours. There is a plug-in to Photoshop that allows the customer to have editorial control over colour content and push that through as well. Equinox is very cool. You will hear more and more noise on it as 2007 begins to unfold.

Why is Artwork Systems relatively quiet?

We just work on our database, work within our customer base, and we don’t wave a lot of flags. As we all like to think, we are a humble little software company that is trying to do the right things for our customers and keep our eye on the ball, which is all about workflow.