Pre-Press Systems Accelerates Art On Demand Print

An Odystar workflow system from Artwork Systems has helped leading contemporary art publisher The Art Group to improve the productivity, consistency and quality of its pre-press department.

An Odystar workflow system from Artwork Systems has helped leading contemporary art publisher The Art Group to improve the productivity, consistency and quality of its pre-press department.

Because of using Odystar, the company is experiencing the repro for some jobs, which would previously have taken five days, being completed in one and a half days.

Art Group's Mac systems supervisor Dave Kesarisingh explained: "The Art Group offers an art-on-demand service, creating prints of commercial artwork as well as famous paintings on demand to an individual customer's requirements.

Customers can order prints via our own consumer website, or from kiosks - computer terminals - at leading museums, galleries and major retail groups.

He added: "Customers can select from a variety of different formats - canvas, poster, framed print - and sizes and we will post the printed work within a couple of weeks of receiving the order.

And he continued: "One of the problems we were facing was the huge number of files that we had to handle on a regular basis for our expanding digital printing operation in Wellingborough, where the prints are produced.

When we saw a demonstration of Odystar it was immediately clear that here was a means of automating our pre-press department that would eliminate the hugely repetitive tasks we were carrying out, whilst at the same time implementing a high level of consistency and quality.

Odystar is said to let the operator create simple or complex workflows in to which electronic job files can be dropped.

Odystar's flexibility has enabled The Art Group to design its workflows as hotfolders so that its artworkers can move files from their desktops.

If several jobs require the same procedures, such as automatic pre-flighting, trapping, proofing and trim marks, then each file can be dropped in to that workflow and every one of those procedures will be carried out automatically.

The operator will only become involved if Odystar highlights a problem with the file.

Dave Kesarisingh said: "Once we had our training from Artwork Systems we could create a simple workflow in Odystar in about thirty minutes.

Odystar allowed us to reassess how we handled our artwork production, which highlighted duplication of tasks and enabled us to streamline the work.

Odystar has enabled our checking procedures to be more straightforward, whilst it lets us correct files much more easily.

Retouching, colour correction and artwork production is carried out at The Art Group's London site using software such as Illustrator, Quark, Photoshop and Acrobat.

Kesarisingh emphasised: "Odystar enhances the production process by utilising these packages in a more effective manner and allows us to create PDFs that can be sent to Wellingborough or to the litho printers we use for the original part of our business - publishing greetings cards and posters.

Artwork Systems said that Odystar can be integrated with RIPs and workflows from other manufacturers, turning existing output equipment in to PDF 1.5/1.6 compliant devices.

That means a printer can normally install Odystar software without having to purchase additional hardware.

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