EyeC, which recently joined quality-conscious hands with ROTOCON in Southern Africa, is not the only eye to see the importance of being on point when preparing print files. Printers know that quality cannot materialise without it, says Ralph Beier, sales director of EyeC, which specialises in vision systems for print image control and sample inspection.
‘It’s crucial that packaging and label printers maintain print quality to help customers comply with regulations,’ he points out. ‘They can do so confidently with our highly configurable solutions and print inspection systems, which detect errors early to ensure 100% quality certainty.’
‘Changes made to artwork files during design, revision and prepress are checked meticulously to keep PDFs problem-free.’
Ralph notes that print service providers experiencing errors in the artwork development stage of the process, such as text from multiple languages not being transposed to the PDF properly, can use EyeC’s ProofText product to automate the comparison of text files in many formats to the live text in the created PDF. This ensures the file used by the prepress department is also error-free.
The ace in EyeC’s pack is Proofiler Graphic, the intelligent prepress inspection system that automatically compares the entire print-ready file or step-and-repeat files with the approved artwork, identifying gremlins more quickly and reliably than the human eye, thus preventing reprints or callbacks, which consume both costly consumables and valuable machine time.
Text, graphics, Braille and 1D and 2D codes are graphically inspected in one inspection run. The inspection system automatically surveys all elements of a PDF file in a few steps and displays any quality-compromising culprits. A commented inspection report keeps track of results and helps implement corrections quickly and reliably.
For even greater peace of mind, Ralph notes, customers can opt for Proofiler Graphic integration into prepress workflow systems, like Hybrid Cloudflow, for completely automated prepress security and efficiency. ‘The software compares files against those of customers, one-up against step-and-repeat files, or different versions of a file,’ he elaborates. ‘By using all the features and options of Proofiler Graphic software, such as barcode and Braille reading, integration triggers inspection jobs automatically, retrieving job data, files and inspection parameters from the workflow system. Human intervention is needed only when deviations are recognised, which are reflected as tasks in the workspace and a request about how to proceed. The integration into Hybrid Cloudflow also allows the loading balance of inspection tasks on multiple machines, while starting a Proofiler Graphic user interface out of Cloudflow makes for easy deviation checking even in unclear situations. Problems are highlighted before time is wasted on subsequent steps.’
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