Agfa Monotype Corp. announced that Lucid Dream Software Inc., provider of workflow tools for the prepress and printing industries, has licensed its color screening technologies. Lucid Dream will integrate the screening capabilities as part of a software upgrade that provides customers with a 1-bit TIFF connectivity option.

X-Rite Inc.’s latest version of the 500 Series Spectrodensitometer is now available for purchase. The 500 Series models come with an upgraded firmware with new features to boost productivity, performance and compatibility of the color measurement product.

Current 500 Series users can update to the new platform either by ordering from X-Rite or authorized resellers. Users can also register to download the update for free at www.x-rite.com/ga/5000update.

X-Rite also announced plans to expand its distribution and service network for Latin America. The announcement was made at the Graphics of the Americas exhibition and conference.

Jaws PDF Courier is an encrypted client/server document delivery system that enables print service centers to create customized specifications for PDF file creation and output. The software is distributed as a complete PDF workflow package to clients. Clients can design, preview and submit any document created within any application, direct from the desktop to designated print centers in an automated PDF workflow.

Software Consulting Services moved to a new building in mid-January after 16 years at its Michaels School location in Nazareth, Pa. SCS will also now be known as Software Consulting Services L.L.C. SCS’s new address is 630 Selvaggio Drive, Suite 420, Nazareth, PA 18064. The new phone number is 610.746.7700 and the new fax number is 610.746.7900.

The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Canada, signed a contract for CCI NewsDesk 6 from CCI Europe. The newspaper said the new system will better position it for moving to a convergent environment.

CCI NewsDesk is a complete editorial solution designed to streamline the editorial process from story creation to final publication, no matter what the distribution platform.s

Agfa’s Digital Solutions Road Tour, which debuted last year, will be making another run around the country this year. The Digital Solutions 18-wheel tractor-trailer serves as a mobile showcase of Agfa’s products and technology. The 2002 tour will begin in southern California and will spend the remainder of the winter months in the West Coast before heading back south and into Texas. Products on display include Agfa’s Apogee workflow software, the Agfa Sherpa inkjet digital proofing system and Agfa CTP technology. There will be Agfa technical experts available on the tour to demonstrate products and perform press tests and pressroom audits.

Creo Products Inc. reached an out-of-court settlement concerning a patent dispute for automatic trapping technology in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware over software technology has been reached with Artwork Systems Group N.V.

The technology is used to reduce or eliminate misalignment between colors in multi-color printing.

Kodak Polychrome Graphics completed its acquisition of Imation’s worldwide color proofing and color software businesses.

KPG’s portfolio of film, plate and digital proofing products will expand to include offer analog, inkjet and virtual proofing, a color front end for digital printing, and color management tools. As part of the transaction, approximately 500 employees are transferring from Imation to KPG.

The Media Center at the American Press Institute and the Ifra Centre for Advanced News Operations formed a strategic alliance to develop new training programs for the online and multi-platform convergence news industry.

The alliance between the two organizations will be reflected in a pooling of training and presentation staff to support each other’s programs and in the development of new programs to enhance cross-border knowledge in digital news operations.

Monotype Systems announced a record sales quarter of computer-to-plate, imagesetter, scanner and PrintExpress workflow solutions to newspapers.

A partial listing of installations includes the Salem (Ore.) Statesman Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Kingston (Jamaica) Observer, the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal World, as well as other newspapers in the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom and other countries.

The Village Voice in January signed a contract to purchase the Scoop editorial system from Software Consulting Services. The Scoop system will facilitate the newspaper’s editing, remote reporting and page tracking and will be run on Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows editorial workstations.

Celartem Technology Inc. recently introduced Vector Format for Zooming technology software, developed to scale, compress, archive, view and zoom up to 1,200 percent. VFZ also enables users to print at fine art quality, track, manage and secure high-quality images without loss of quality. Users can convert and reconvert TIFF, JPEG and BMP files to VFZ format for manipulation, transfer and storage of digital files.

Creo and DuPont have established a worldwide strategic alliance to promote and enhance thermal halftone proofing systems based on DuPont WaterProof thermal halftone proofing media for Creo computer-to-plate proofing systems.

Under the agreement, Creo will promote DuPont thermal halftone proofing, and at the same time, Creo customers will continue to have the choice of qualified thermal halftone proofing media for use on existing and new devices.

The Antelope Valley (Calif.) Press is generating additional revenue by utilizing the upsell features and increased functionality of ClassSpeed. The newspaper began using ClassSpeed, Digital Technology International’s (DTI) classified advertising order entry and pagination system, earlier this year.

Reports indicate that the paper is averaging 640 border sales per month and is upselling 80 percent to 85 percent of their liner ads to its Web site.

Integrated marketing and advertising solutions provider Vertis recently completed the 18-month process of integrating its services under the Vertis brand name. The LTC Group, TC Advertising and Webcraft formally adopted the Vertis name in January. Vertis, headquartered in Baltimore, provides advertising inserts, color comics and circulation-building products to over 300 newspapers.

The Los Angeles Times signed an agreement with NewspaperDirect to provide readers with printed copies of each day’s national edition of the Los Angeles Times via major hotel cruise ships and licensed foreign distributors around the world.

Each day the final version of national edition is converted into a PDF file, complete with all editorial and advertising content. The file is transferred electronically to NewspaperDirect. At the subscriber location, copies are printed in black and white by high-speed printers on both sides of quality paper, collated, stitched and personally addressed to each reader.

Creo Products Inc. will move production of its Iris proofing products from Billerica, Mass. to Vancouver, Canada in 2002. Customer support and engineering for Iris products will also move to the Vancouver area.

There is expected to be no interruption in manufacturing, product supply or levels of customer service as a result of the move. Between 100 and 120 regular full-time Iris employees will be affected by the move.

AdF@st has adopted Markzware’s MarkzNet Web-based preflighting solution, which checks native document files, PDF and PostScript files via the Internet.

AdF@st is an Internet-based service deployed by the Newspaper Society, a trade association where members publish 1,300 newspapers.

Creo unveiled its ShadowFX plug-in for Adobe Acrobat, with new technology that improves the processing speed of standard PDF files.

The software creates transparent shadows for PDF page elements and ensures that a wider range of applications is processed at printer rated speed.

Anygraaf Oy, a Finnish developer of asset management and publishing productions systems, recently announced the availability of its complete product line in the United States, though its new North American agent, Anygraaf USA Inc.

Software developer Gluon recently released Reporter, a new XTension that automatically generates complete reports on the contents and structure of QuarkXPress documents.

Almost all aspects of a document can be included in the report, which can be generated at any time. The user selects Reporter from the Gluon menu and then chooses which items to include in the report.

Users can generate reports on each story in their QuarkXPress file. Stories are identified by the first six or so words in the first text box of the story. Information listed includes the length of the story in characters, words sentences and paragraphs, as well as average word, sentence and paragraph lengths and whether or not the story includes any non-ASCI characters.

Reporter can also give large amount of information about each picture in a document including size, resolution, file size, path to picture and modification times.

Badia Software released BigPicture XT 1.0, a software XTension for QuarkXPress that provides a solution for managing graphics and links in QuarkXPress.

With BigPicture, users can access picture information for precise and thorough analysis of document statistics, from image resolution and file size to file compression and full previews. The program can also act as a quick preflighting tool to help avoid costly last-minute print reruns.

Xitron and GraphLine recently announced a partnership in which GraphLine will distribute and support Xitron’s full line of software raster image processors and prepress workflow solutions through its network of dealers nationwide.

The alliance will increase market penetration for Xitron and provide a complementary product to GraphLine’s digital portfolio.

Xitron also announced the release of a new plug-in driving both 42- and 60-inch versions of the Hewlett Packard DesignJet 5000 inkjet proofer.

In addition, Xitron is now offering an interface for Agfa’s Phoenix line of imagesetters. The interface supports the Phoenix recorder family at full speed with data rates over 13 megabytes per second.