Three years in the making, Fuji’s new XMF workflow is now commercially available. We look at some of the challenges it’s been designed to address and explain how Fuji technology, JDF and the PDF Print Engine put XMF at the front of the workflow race
It’s a tough time to be in the print industry. A combination of too much capacity and too many companies chasing after every job is squeezing margins constantly. At the same time, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find and retain people with the right skills.
Both printing processes and the demands of print specifiers are becoming more complex - there is a trend towards increasingly targeted and specialised low-volume print runs, with more complex finishing and tighter deadlines. Digital print, once seen as a threat to offset, now offers printers an opportunity to tap into this demand and generate valuable new business but up until now, the move to digital has meant setting up parallel workflows with all their inherent problems.
All these factors conspire to put even more pressure on printers; there is a growing need for sophisticated workflows which can help simplify these processes, deliver efficiency improvements and allow printers to respond better to rapidly-changing customer demands.
To address these needs Fuji developed XMF from the ground up as a brand-new workflow. Starting from scratch allowed Fuji to develop a system which combines its extensive imaging know-how with the brand new capabilities of the Adobe PDF Print Engine, around a native JDF architecture. Building the new workflow around JDF has inherent advantages in that it avoids the translations and efficiency reductions typical when bolting-on JDF solutions to a workflow built around Postscript.
Rather than being a single-process production tool, XMF is a multi-process business management tool, equally at home running plates out to a CTP device or composing colour-corrected PDFs for digital press output - or even splitting a job between multiple presses to maximise capacity.
This is because intelligent automation is key to the way XMF operates. The use of native JDF pre-defined workflow templates means that there’s minimal requirement for user input, so the system can be operated by anyone in the studio and jobs don’t require highly skilled intervention to set up. Automation brings maximum consistency and quality as well as saving operator time for other tasks, maximising productivity too.
Within XMF, job content - what’s on the pages - is kept separate from job intent - how many copies, what stock, which inks or special colours, varnishes, which binding and other finishing - until the last possible moment. This means that jobs can be redirected to different outputs, such as a digital press instead of CTP for offset, at very short notice, increasing flexibility and making the best use of printing resources.
The PDF Print Engine also brings design and print capabilities into step with one another, via support for live transparency without having to flatten artwork files. Native processing of PDF files without conversion to PostScript eliminates the source of many production problems relating to transparency and layer-based effects as well as significantly accelerating rasterisation.
Working with XMF
To illustrate the benefits of XMF, let’s consider how a job progresses through a typical printer. With XMF, customers can submit their jobs online via a web or ftp site, or even via Acrobat Professional. When they do, XMF automatically allocates a JDF Job Bag to organise and keep track of job components and production specifications, even if jobs are submitted one page at a time. XMF then carries out automatic conversion to PDF (if necessary), pre-flighting and correction of errors.
The JDF Job Bag also supports two-way communication with JDF-enabled MIS installations. This allows automated job submission without duplicated entry, as well as supporting press loading, stock allocation and ordering, job routing and job costing functions.
Pages can be processed in different ways in order to provide a range of proofing and approval options, from screen-based soft proofs and inkjet or other digital proofs, to remote web-based proofing. Because XMF uses the PDF Print Engine, the same technology is used to render jobs on-screen, to a digital proof and to final output, so there are no matching issues. It’s even possible to preview the actual rendered output (including trapping and screening) on-screen for absolute confirmation of eventual print quality. The user can toggle back and forth between the document and rendered views to check for consistency. This is further enhanced by full support for ICC-based and JDF-controlled colour management.
XMF helps to improve communication with customers thanks to a variety of remote proofing and viewing options. In particular, XMF has a 3D proofing facility which allows a digital mock-up to be created from a PDF. This allows customers to view a 3D mock-up of the job from the final imposition data, so they can see exactly how different choices of stock and finishing will affect the appearance of the job. These mock-ups can be exported as small self-running files, making it easy to send them to customers via email.
Cross-media capability
Not until the job is approved do you need to think about what output you’re going to use, as XMF uses an exclusive feature called JDF Stripping to build impositions on-the-fly to suit each type of press, stock and finishing equipment Because of this, files remain editable until the last moment, so late corrections to textual or graphical content can be made without having to throw away trapping or impositions.
If a job has to be switched to a different press at short notice, XMF automatically re-plans each signature, adding gutters, trim marks and colour bars as appropriate, and re-colour manages the job to the new press. A job initially destined for an eight-up press can be reconfigured as a double-run on a four-up press in a matter of minutes or even delivered as a colour-corrected PDF for output on a digital press.
Throughout the process, using XMF is made simple thanks to a cleverly-designed user interface and the use of profiles and templates for easy repetition of previous jobs. Anyone can view the status of a job at any time but you can control who has access to job set-ups, so they can’t inadvertently be modified. This effectively puts the workflow’s expertise into everyone’s hands.
The future starts here
Fuji has spent the last three years designing and developing its new workflow in order to make it intelligent and powerful but simple to use. In XMF it offers a pre-media workflow solution for commercial printers that not only ensures increased workflow productivity, quality and flexibility but also a future-proof modular technology that can grow with their business.
