Key Focus at Seybold: Saving Production Time

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 2000 by Marie Alanso

PDF, Internet collaboration and real-time digital proofing all point the way to streamlined production cycles.

Seybold San Francisco was every bit the portable document format (PDF) workflow, Internet collaboration and digital proofing exposition any publishing industry insider would predict. And this year's new technologies and publishing solutions all focused on achieving one goal for publishers: reducing production time. Here's an overview.

PDF advances

Seybold, like DRUPA 2000, seemed an industry affirmation of Adobe's PDF. The file format for flexible, cross-platform, automated publishing puts new emphasis on the potential of digital workflows to accelerate the production cycle. And now vendors are intent on incorporating PDF into all steps of the workflow, not just in the final file shipment stages of production. Enfocus Software, for example, introduced PitStop Professional at Seybold, which is the centerpiece of the company's new PDF tool product line. Professional addresses the needs of PDF users with a complete feature set that includes preflight capabilities, editing options, global changes and action lists.

In another area, Lantana launched its PDF ImageWorks, a native image-editing program for Acrobat. PDF ImageWorks permits image editing and manipulation of PDF images where they appear in the PDF document.

Internet collaboration

Has NASDAQ volatility scared publishers and print providers away from collaborating via the Web? Vendors at Seybold did their best to answer no. In San Francisco, Adobe Systems introduced InScope, a Web-based asset management system, and Indocs launched FinalWord, a platform that allows users to edit documents using a Web browser. These collaborative processes enable teams to work both independently and in parallel with each other, which could ultimately eliminate bottlenecks and last-minute crisis.

Internet collaboration is nothing new for business titles. But current technology now enables publishers to combine Internet and production solutions across the board. Publishers, their print providers and service bureaus will be managing assets, collaborating on conceptual proofs, tracking jobs, and bidding for contracts in the future--all over the Internet. For example, one e-service provider, DeskNet, launched ContentWelder, a solution enabling traditional and non-traditional publishers to offer a variety of b-to-b solutions, such as customizable reprints or personalized direct mail pieces.

Significantly, e-service providers Collabria, Impresse and Noosh returned to Seybold for their respective one-year birthdays. The past year has seen all three e-procurement technologies launch new tools and collaborative technologies for publishers and print providers to work more effectively--24 hours a day, if needed.

Digital proofing 2000

The publishing community, it seems, may also be realizing the benefits of real-time, collaborative proofing. Vendors say the advantages are obvious: immediate revisions and approvals of conceptual proofs possible anywhere in the world with any number of graphic arts or publishing professionals involved in the online process, minus the cost of consumables.

And at least one publisher is biting. RealTimeImage announced that Sports Illustrated used the company's RealTimeProof, a complete online proofing solution with full remote soft and hard proofing capabilities and interactive communication tools, to proof magazine pages and instantaneously review photos taken during sports events at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

RealTimeImage and DAX also announced that New York ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi will be the first customer to use RealTimeImage's and DAX's new online proofing solution, DAXProof. The system, which is powered by RealTimeImage, streamlines workflows and reduces costs by enabling users to collaborate over high-resolution files in real time.

All things, to all publishers

Where is all this technology driving the publishing community? Design and digital printing over the Internet? Variable data publications customized and delivered via PDF to anyone's personal Web site or e-mail address? Truly collaborative, real-time remote proofing, for the contract as well as the conceptual stage of any publication's life cycle?

Seybold San Francisco 2001 awaits.