Soft Proofing — Virtually a Lock

The product category also continues to expand, both in terms of the solutions offered and the applications they support. In just about a year, the number of vendors offering SWOP (Specifications for Web Offset Publications) certified systems has gone from two to five, for example.

There doesn’t seem to be any development in particular that answers the question, “Why now?” System vendors and printers have been experimenting with soft proofing for decades, and most of the current generation technologies have been available for several years. Also, high-speed Internet access has been a standard business requirement for some time now.