Electronics for Imaging Announces Advanced Fiery Production Color Server for Xerox DocuColor 70; New Fiery Drives DocuColor 70 at Fully-Rated Speed of 70 Pages Per Minute

Business Wire, May 6, 1997

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 1997--Electronics for Imaging, Inc. (NASDAQ:EFII), a pioneer and leading supplier of technologies for high-quality digital color printing over computer networks, today announced the development of a new Fiery Production Color Server for the Xerox DocuColor 70 digital printing system. With an advanced hardware architecture and sophisticated tools to manage workflow and color output, the new Fiery shatters existing performance and color quality benchmarks while driving the DocuColor 70 at its maximum rated speed of 70 pages per minute.

"Fiery technology and new high speed digital production printing systems like the DocuColor 70 are revolutionizing the world of on-demand printing," said Dan Avida, EFI's president and CEO. "The new Fiery Production Color Server defines the next benchmark for productivity and throughput. It is built to exploit the full potential of the next generation digital press."

Built for Speed

The new Fiery Production Color Server combines a powerful and flexible hardware architecture with EFI's sophisticated yet simple-to-use interface and workflow productivity tools. It produces fast, offset-quality output on the DocuColor 70. In addition, the new Fiery Production Color Server incorporates Adobe PostScript 3, and is optimized by EFI for maximum performance on production class digital color printing systems.

At the heart of the new Fiery Production Color Server is a scaleable system that will support a multiprocessor configuration, designed from the ground up to provide the maximum document processing speed and throughput on even the most complex color printing jobs. The new Fiery Production Color Server includes EFI's RIP-While-Print and Continuous Print technologies to make the most efficient use of the DocuColor 70's printing speed. RIP-While-Print allows one page to be processed while another prints and Continuous Print eliminates print engine downtime between pages and jobs. Running the open Windows NT operating system, the new Fiery Production Color Server offers unparalleled flexibility and performance.

Producing Brilliant Color

EFI has matched the document processing speed of the new Fiery Production Color Server with an advanced suite of tools to produce brilliant, offset-quality color output. Calibration on-the-fly allows users to create custom calibration targets for each job. For example, a user can apply SWOP targets for a job that must meet offset press standards while using the DocuColor 70's default targets for the next job. In addition, EFICOLORTM Color Rendering Dictionaries (CRDs) help produce the best color reproduction on every job and on every print. Further color enhancements include automated trapping and advanced EFI proprietary screening technology to maximize color quality.

Managing Workflow

Based on its experience with the very large installed base of Fiery servers, EFI has designed an optimized workflow for high-speed production printing. The new Fiery Production Color Server is endowed with a sophisticated, yet simple-to-use interface that provides complete control of all print jobs. The customizable Fiery Command WorkStationTM 4.2 user interface provides operators with an intuitive top-to-bottom, "waterfall" view of workflow. In addition, the Command WorkStation also supports job ticketing, batch processing of jobs through scripts, and complete access to PPD overrides. To safeguard documents in multi-user environments, the Command WorkStation provides multi-level password security. With its complete feature set, the Command WorkStation provides a true control center for production color printing.

Dynamic Document Creation

Fiery DocBuilderTM technology allows the Command WorkStation to dynamically merge jobs providing users with the ability to combine documents quickly, and easily incorporate last-minute changes in processed documents. Thumbnail preview windows display both RIPping and RIPped jobs making it easier to locate the correct stored job for reprinting. By dragging RIPped pages from one window into another, users can dynamically create new documents on the fly. This functionality also allows operators to quickly fix errors or make changes in multi-page documents. Corrected pages can easily be merged into long documents without the need to re-RIP the entire file. In addition, the Fiery Production Color Server provides complete document set printing support with auto-duplexing, electronic collation and page ordering.

Document Management & Archiving

For production and print-for-pay environments, the new Fiery Production Color Server provides extensive job archiving capabilities that help to make it simple - and more profitable - to manage and reprint existing jobs. Both PostScript and RIPped files can be stored on standard internal and external media. A convenient indexing utility makes it easy to find archived files for fast reprinting.

Support for Variable Data

On-demand printing increasingly requires the ability to customize documents. To meet this need, the Fiery Production Color Server is designed to support the emerging on-demand printing applications that make use of variable data. Built into the Fiery Production Color Server is the core technology to support existing and future variable data software.