National Magazines Invests In Workflow Software

As part of its strategy to trial pre-press functions in-house the National Magazine Company, Hearst Corporation's principal business in the UK, has chosen Adstream's Quickcut 5 workflow technology.

As part of its strategy to trial pre-press functions in-house the National Magazine Company, Hearst Corporation's principal business in the UK, has chosen Adstream's Quickcut 5 workflow technology.

The initiative to improve efficiency and streamline production will bring most production workflow tasks in-house and includes, colour management, high resolution image management, PDF page production, validation, and hard and soft copy proofing.

The project will begin in the next few months in association with its pre-press services partner, Wyndeham Argent.

One of the UK's top publishers, Natmags publishes 19 consumer titles including: Best, Cosmopolitan, Country Living, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, and Harpers and Queen.

Over 16 million adults in Britain read a Natmags title every year.

The publisher is dedicated to 'quality and excellence' in publishing and this tenant underlines its production environment and drives investment in the latest techniques.

Quickcut 5 will be piloted initially within the editorial department of Runners World.

Simon Horne, the general manager at Natmag, said: "The aim is to gain better control over the production process allowing editorial greater flexibility and management over editorial content.

The ability to action last minute changes with confidence that the final result will reproduce accurately is critical.

We needed a robust system that we could rely on to create and validate the highest quality PDFs, and Quickprint 5 ticked all the boxes." He explained: "A significant difference compared to other systems is that, unlike most other products, Quickprint operates at the desktop level ensuring operators are notified in real-time throughout the page building process if there are any issues so that corrections can be made swiftly." PC and Mac compatible Quickprint 5 is claimed to be an advanced method of preparing pages for print.

It creates files that match destination specifications and enables users to create, validate, colour manage and deliver files within one system.

What are said to be straight forward one-click validation tools identify possible file problems and fix them automatically.

Mike Palmer, the director of print publishing at Adstream, commented: "This implentation by Natmags for editorial page production is a major endorsement for Quickprint 5.

The application not only reduces workloads but guide users through the many pitfalls that plague pre-press production with little or no margin for error.

It remains the world's best workflow tool for preparing files for print.".

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