Prinergy Automates Page-based Workflow

At Seybold San Francisco, Creo and Heidelberg are launching Prinergy—a page-based workflow solution that leverages Adobe Extreme technology to create customized PDF job tickets and process plans. What's so electric about Prinergy? The first joint-venture development for Creo and Heidelberg, Prinergy brings Adobe into the alliance by offering an end-to-end workflow solution based not only on PDF, but also Extreme. Prinergy is one extreme workflow management system that integrates, organizes and automates the individual tasks in prepress.

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO

Prinergy, a page-based workflow solution being launched this month at Seybold San Francisco by Creo and Heidelberg Prepress, elevates Adobe's PDF file format and Extreme prepress architecture to new levels of prepress performance.

All hype aside: Prinergy is big.

Besides being the first joint venture technology brought to the table by Vancouver-based Creo Products and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Prinergy is the first workflow management system that utilizes not only Adobe PDF technology, but also Adobe Post-Script Extreme—a prepress architecture based on Adobe PostScript 3 that uses Adobe PDF and Adobe Portable Job Ticket Format (PJTF) to automate prepress processes, to provide a distributed digital workflow, to enable late-stage editing, to provide multi-RIP support and to ensure consistent output.

Prinergy is an Adobe PDF-based workflow management tool that organizes the individual tasks or steps in prepress and plate production. It leverages Adobe Extreme technology to provide job tickets and job ticket processors that control and perform tasks initiated by users, giving them a single, integrated product that automates preflight, trapping, imposition and color conversion.

Prinergy implements the full Adobe PostScript Extreme system, which automates the prepress process, keeping machines running at full capacity, avoiding errors and reducing lost production time. It also allows prepress operators much more control over output options, resulting in increased flexibility for activities the magnitude of just-in-time imposition.

"Adobe was a vital partner in the development of this product, supplying us with its foundation technology—PDF 1.3 and PJTF," reports David Kauffman, vice president at Creo Products. "Adobe's Extreme architecture provides a method for automation, and Adobe PDF and PJTF increases the reliability of the system, giving operators the ability to proof documents on-screen and ensuring consistent output with each job."

"Prinergy architecture includes an Extreme core with job ticket processors to execute prepress functions, but there is more to it than that. The components that extend the Extreme core are the Oracle database, the communication layer and the client modules, written in Java," Kauffman continues. "In particular, the database is what makes Prinergy a true fourth-generation workflow system."

Memory, provided by the database and the user interface, means that all the components of a particular job can be dealt with as a whole, archived and retrieved as a single entity, and viewed by one or many users without the distraction of all the other jobs on the system, Creo's Kauffman explains.

"Memory also means that all the activities performed on each job are recorded, along with the operator's name, resources used and time taken for each operation—the system knows how many pages were trapped, how many proofs and plates were made, and the average utilization of all the system resources."

How open is Prinergy?

The system is open at several levels: Industry standard SQL queries can be made to extract information from the database, third party Acrobat plugins can be added, third party JTPs (Job Ticket Processors) can be installed and new client applications can communicate with the system through the communication layer.

The modern software architecture also means that additional resources can be added easily, without stopping or slowing down the system. Prinergy is compliant with the data storage protocol for Microsoft NT 5.0, known as NTMS (NT Mass Storage). As vendors bring new devices to the market, the NTMS drivers mean that they can be added to a Prinergy system without modification.

More than two years in the making, Prinergy—the highlight technology announcement for both Creo and Heidelberg at the San Francisco show—is scalable to multi-server, multi-user environments.

Its distributed architecture allows the system to grow with the pace of business, gradually involving additional users. Software and hardware components are independent and can be added or upgraded individually as required.

Bottom line: A surprise from Creo and Heidelberg, Prinergy is an accessible, scalable page-based workflow solution that maximizes Adobe's PDF and gives focus to the talents of Adobe's Extreme architecture. The name, chosen by Creo and Heidelberg jointly, is a clever combination of Print with Energy.

As early demonstrations and beta site reports from executives at Creo and Heidelberg strongly indicate, this is one end-to-end workflow solution that appears to live up to its name.

Prinergy Extreme Fact:
Prinergy leverages Adobe Extreme technology to create customized Adobe Portable Job Tickets and process plans, which control and perform tasks as initiated by users.