MONACO, 7 May, 2007 - Canon Europe, world leader in digital imaging technology, in conjunction with EFI, today announced the launch of a PDF-based digital workflow software, EFI Fiery Central. The software is designed to manage high-end production engines, such as those in Canon’s flagship imagePRESS portfolio. Fiery Central, which allows printers to produce complex documents more efficiently, was developed and further refined by EFI after extensive input from Canon customers in Europe, the United States and Australia.

• EFI and Canon Europe launch high-end workflow software - Fiery Central
• Extensive Canon customer feedback used in product development
• Canon confirms commitment to open standards

Antony White, European Solutions Professional, Canon Europe, said: “Fiery Central previewed at Ipex last year, but the version that’s going to market has been continually honed and improved since then, based on feedback from Canon customers. We are dedicated to bringing the very best products to market for our professional print customers through the Canon Workflow Program, either by working with best-in-class partners, such as EFI, or as a result of our own investment in production workflow software research and development.”

“An essential part of that is to actively seek customer input during the development stage. Importantly for Canon Europe, as a CIP4 member, Fiery Central supports open industry standards so can dovetail with other production software. For example, it could quite easily sit between EFI Digital StoreFront, for web submission, the output device itself and other third-party MIS systems that customers may already have in place,” added White.

The software, which supports PDF and JDF data exchange, has been beta tested by EFI and Canon at a number of sites in Europe and the United States. It comprises three modules: Fiery Central Focus, Fiery Central Flow and Fiery Central Balance.

EFI Fiery Central Focus helps users manage jobs and swiftly guides operators through the production process with its easy-to-use interface. EFI Driver makes setting up, submitting and monitoring print jobs easy, while ‘hot folders’ reduce costly mistakes by automating the job set-up process and improving throughput. EFI Scan improves the job process by providing production scanning of monochrome and colour documents to the workflow.

Fiery Central Flow allows the automation of pre-press functions within a simple and intuitive, ‘drag-and-drop’ interface. Fiery Central Flow incorporates file conversion, pre-flight file checking, spot colour management, approval, routing and proofing processes into customisable workflows, which can be edited and managed by operators of any skill level. By automating workflow, operators optimise press time and increase productivity.

The Fiery Central Balance module increases productivity by combining multiple print engines into a ‘virtual printer group’ to give a bird’s eye perspective of a company’s digital plant. For complex documents, it routes jobs to one or more devices within the printer group for workload balancing. This allows operators to split monochrome and colour jobs, select the fastest engine, a preferred printer for a particular job, or split long jobs across multiple output devices. In addition, EFI Compose, which is optional, makes job set-up easier by enabling users to visually assign page-level attributes and tabs to any printer. Optional EFI Impose also reduces production time and errors by allowing WYSIWYG display for most imposition schemes and by creating templates using ‘hot folders’ for simple, scalable workflows.

Dave Varty, Pan-European Account Manager, EFI, said: “Canon customer input has played a key role in the development of Fiery Central, which is a testament to our continued partnership with Canon Europe. The investment in marketing and technical evaluation by Canon during the development stages of this product means that it will be ahead of the competition when it comes to installs, by providing its customers with a product that has been tailored to their needs.”  

EFI Fiery Central will be available in Europe from May.

Can't find what you are looking for?  Why not visit our News Archive to search our news database for a specific item.

News

Further Information