Prepress Editor

Agfa Corp. last month introduced IntelliNet TiffProof, a stand-alone piece of software that provides the newspaper industry with a completely automated color proofing system, employing a RIP Once, Output Many workflow philosophy.

IntelliNet TiffProof takes bi-level, screened TIFF input from a workflow system, recognizes from the TIFF filenames which separations belong to the same output, and sends color output in either a PostScript or Portable Document Format file to a printer.

The system is particularly suited to IntelliNet workflows, but can be attached to any workflow that can copy standard TIFF files to it. IntelliNet NewsFlow is Agfa’s workflow solution for newspapers. IntelliNet provides soft proofing of each separation and automatic proofing to printers for certain file types.

The proofing is generated from the raw bitmap to give a true indication of the final film or plate. Each proofed image can be held until after an operator examines and accepts the printout. There is also the ability to view and request a color printout for color composite outputs.

Using IntelliNet TiffProof, files are copied into one or more folders for input to IntelliNet. TIFF files corresponding to different color separations from the same page are recognized from the TIFF file names.

Once a complete JobSet is detected, or once a configurable timeout is exceeded, the TIFF files are descreend and combined to output a composite TIFF image. TiffProof also allows a manual override to trigger a proof in the case that an incomplete color set needs to be outputted.

TiffProof outputs directly to Agfa Sherpa proofers, to any PostScript-compatible proofer, to a raster image processor, and can also output full-color PDF page images for archiving or repurposing.

For the special case of a PostScript output, TiffProof takes the configured paper size into account. The system attempts to output the descreened image at a 1:1 scaling if the paper size allows it. TiffProof automatically rotates the image if necessary. If printing is not possible in either orientation, TiffProof automatically provides the minimum scaling sufficient to make the image fit on the current media. This is a useful feature if the film or plate target is only slightly larger than A3.

A bounding box is added to the PostScript image to allow easy visual detection of white space bounding the image. An annotation text line is added to the output, detailing the JobSet name and the original size and resolution of the source images.

Agfa Corp.

201.440.2500