Product category:
General Print Supplies, Services for Printers
News Release from: Canon Europe | Subject: Fiery Central PDF-based digital workflow software
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 03 May 2007
Digital Print Workflow Software For
Complex Jobs
Canon UK previewed PDF-based digital workflow software, EFI Fiery Central, at Northprint.
The software is said to be designed to manage high-end production systems, such as those in Canon's Imagepress portfolio Fiery Central, which allows printers to produce complex documents more efficiently, was developed and further refined by EFI after input from Canon customers in Europe, the United States and Australia, said Canon
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 8 Jul 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Canon UK's professional solutions marketing manager, Nikki Richardson, said: "Fiery Central was previewed at Ipex last year but the version that was on show at Northprint has been continually honed and improved since then, based on feedback from Canon customers.
We are dedicated to bring the very best products to market for our professional print customers through the Canon Workflow Program, either by working with best-in-class partners, such as EFI, or as a result of our own investment in production workflow software research and development." The software, which supports PDF and JDF data exchange, has been beta tested by EFI and Canon at a number of sites in Europe and the United States.
It comprises three modules - Fiery Central Focus, Fiery Central Flow and Fiery Central Balance.
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Fiery Central Focus is claimed to help users manage jobs and guides operators through the production process with its interface.
EFI Driver is said to make setting up, submitting and monitoring print jobs easy, whilst hot folders reduce costly mistakes by automating the job set-up process and improving throughput.
EFI Scan improves the job process by providing production scanning of monochrome and colour documents to the workflow, added the company.
Fiery Central Flow is said to allow the automation of pre-press functions within a drag-and-drop interface.
Fiery Central Flow incorporates file conversion, pre-flight file checking, spot colour management, approval, routing and proofing processes in to customisable workflows, which can be edited and managed by operators of any skill level.
The Fiery Central Balance module is also claimed to increase productivity by combining multiple print engines in to a 'virtual printer group' to give a bird's eye perspective of a company's digital plant.
For complex documents, it routes jobs to one or more devices within the printer group for workload balancing.
That allows operators to split monochrome and colour jobs, select the fastest engine, a preferred printer for a particular job, or split long jobs across multiple output devices.
In addition, EFI Compose, which is optional, makes job set-up easier by enabling users to visually assign page-level attributes and tabs to any printer, said Canon.
The optional EFI Impose also reduces production time and errors by allowing WYSIWYG display for most imposition schemes and by creating templates using hot folders for scalable workflows.
Richardson added: "It's essential to actively seek customer input during the development stage.
Importantly for Canon, as a CIP4 member, Fiery Central supports open industry standards so can dovetail with other production software.
For example, it could quite easily sit between EFI Digital Storefront, for web submission, the output device itself and other third-party MIS systems that customers may already have in place.".
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