Hybrid Software wins PIA technology award

The awards honor the development of innovative technologies for graphic communications and related industries. For more than 30 years, InterTech Technology Awards have recognized the development of technologies predicted to have a major impact on the graphic communications and related industries. More than 80 percent of technologies that receive an award experience commercial success in the marketplace.

With the rapid adoption of digital presses for labels, cartons and corrugated boxes—and the need to find a way to reduce the cost of producing multiple flavors or languages—package printers have required software for variable data print preparation and output than existing offerings.

Hybrid VDP is a self-contained, variable data printing software for labels and packaging that changes text, images, barcodes, colors and other elements linked to variable data sources, producing an optimized file for fast printing on all digital presses.

Hybrid VDP is applied at the prepress stage, not in the pressroom, eliminating the up-front template creation. It can be used to turn any PDF package or label design into a VDP design by simply indicating which elements are dynamic and linking them to the data source. It can place variable objects in different shapes and colors. Hybrid VDP produces an optimized PDF file that is ready for digital printing, keeping printers’ expensive digital presses running, not waiting for variable data files that are generated while the press sits idle.

‘Hybrid VDP is an incredible, intuitive program that utilizes all the functionality with the ability to customize a file quickly for variable data label printing. Saving time is the primary value Packz VDP provides. It took me only 10 minutes to learn how to use it. And, for comparison, 10 minutes in Hybrid VDP would have taken hours to multiple days of prepress time using our previous software,’ said Lauren Plinka, graphic designer, Advantage Label and Packaging. ‘Also, data transfer of a multipage PDF file to press rather than the transfer of a PDF template has proven to save us significant time.’

‘For us, Hybrid Packz and Hybrid VDP are going to be game changers. We prevent approximately 20 to 25 percent of jobs from going to external departments, which saves a lot of prepress and server time. Once a job is done and we hit submit, the prepress operator is free to work on another job, rather than wait until the current job is processed,’ said Jeff White, director of print, ABCorp.

‘Hybrid Software is thrilled to receive an InterTech Award for our work on Hybrid VDP,’ said Mike Rottenborn, president and CEO, Hybrid Software. ‘It demonstrates our philosophy that there is still plenty of opportunity to improve on existing technology to make printers’ lives easier. Hybrid Software appreciates that the judges clearly understood the exact pain points that Hybrid VDP can resolve. We are proud of the work our development team invested in this product.’