As it marks the 20-year anniversary of the first Fiery digital print server, EFI has just launched its next-generation Fiery platform. Named Fiery System 10, the new platform delivers documents faster than ever and features calibration technology to guarantee colour consistency and tighter integration.
Toby Weiss, GM of the Fiery business unit and senior VP of EFI, said: "EFI has been a pioneer in digital print technology for the past two decades, and continues to lead the technology advancement of digital front-end controllers with today's platform launch. System 10 is the fastest, most robust ever, and is poised to bring amazing results to demanding customers worldwide. Fiery technology is now the most integrated platform in the industry, with connectivity to business process automation solutions, production workflow systems, and direct mobile printing to deliver a complete solution from creation to print."
According to a recent press release from EFI, Fiery System 10 provides advanced capabilities to customers in four key areas: colour, usability, performance and integration. The following is an excerpt from EFI, detailing the system's new features:
Colour - Calibration Features and Powerful Visual Editor
A major enhancement to Fiery's colour management system is the new Fiery Calibrator that makes the calibration process more effective, integrated, and easier to use. The new Job-based Calibration increases calibration accuracy and effectiveness because calibration is customized for a specific job and the associated media and profiles. Because calibration is critical and needs to be performed routinely, Fiery System 10 has incorporated a "Calibration Guard" to provide calibration status, warnings, and alerts to encourage calibration to take place and ensure colour quality.
The Fiery Image Enhance Visual Editor (IEVE) is a powerful feature newly available on the Command WorkStation print job management and user interface software that ships with Fiery System 10. IEVE allows editing each image in a job without going back to the native design file, saving time and reducing costs. IEVE simplifies the editing process, providing an interactive toolset for optimizing image appearance and applying automatic per-image corrections, to ensure photos look their best. This tool also gives users a manual control to individually adjust brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, colour balance, sharpness and to make red-eye corrections on any image within a job. (To see a video demo, click here)
Usability - Command WorkStation and Mixed Finishing Sets Simplify Complex Jobs
The latest version of Command WorkStation software is now even easier to use. Common tasks are more accessible and required job information more readily available to operators to increase productivity.
In addition, a Mixed Finishing Sets feature in the SeeQuence Compose option is now available to simplify complex jobs in high-production environments. With the new Fiery Mixed Finishing Sets (and an inline finisher attached to the print engine), users can specify multiple finishing requirements among the various subsets within a single job to produce completely finished jobs, minimizing labor.
Performance - Support of New VDP Standard
EFI has a long-standing commitment to supporting industry standards, and Fiery System 10 has a number of enhanced Variable Data Print (VDP) features. Most notably, it supports PDF/VT-1, a new standard developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) for VDP data exchange. PDF/VT-1 brings the benefits of a PDF workflow to VDP, helping customers increase production efficiency with capabilities such as late stage exchange of critical variable content. By folding seamlessly into existing PDF-based prepress operations, PDF/VT-1 enables a single, common PDF print production workflow for all job types.
Integration - Direct Wi-Fi Printing for Today's Mobile Workforce; MIS and Workflow Connectivity
An ideal solution for corporate CRDs and offices with Fiery-driven MFPs, System 10 has built-in technology that enables direct mobile printing from Apple iOS devices to the Fiery-driven printer. Wi-Fi enabled Apple iOS devices (such as iPhones and iPads) will automatically discover any System 10 Fiery-driven printer on the same network inside the corporate firewall. Employees can simply select a listed printer and touch "print" with no need to download an app or install printer drivers.
Besides integration with mobile devices, Fiery servers are a great fit with EFI's market-leading portfolio of print MIS and workflow solutions, including PrintSmith, Pace, Radius and Monarch management systems and the EFI Digital StoreFront web-to-print platform.
Fiery System 10 further expands its industry integration capability with Agfa Apogee Prepress Workflow, and the upcoming release of Kodak Prinergy Workflow, to enable prepress workflow users to submit jobs to and manage one or more Fiery-controlled digital print engines right from the same familiar user interface. These prepress workflow integrations create a single workflow to serve blended production, reducing operational costs and boosting production performance.
