Xeikon unveils digital front-end with Adobe PDF Print Engine

Xeikon has launched the 2.50 version of its X-800 digital front-end with the latest Adobe PDF Print Engine. The RIP will provide high-powered PDF-native rendering to ensure that the latest transparency effects and other complex design elements can be quickly and reliably reproduced on press, exactly as the designer intended. 

The Adobe PDF Print Engine 2.5 is the latest version of Adobe’s PDF rendering technology, built on a modern, modular architecture that maximizes system resources and rendering efficiency. Xeikon customers will benefit from predictable reproduction of sophisticated PDF designs, and increased workflow flexibility to accelerate job throughput, reduce costs and increase profitability. 

The Adobe PDF Print Engine is based on industry standards such as ICC, JDF and PDF. ‘The Adobe PDF Print Engine harnesses the widespread adoption of the PDF imaging model to accelerate efficiency, reduce costs and increase profitability. Xeikon’s customers place high demands on their presses, so prepress workflow is critical. The Adobe PDF Print Engine will enable them to excel in a highly competitive market with high performance PDF-native processing, and accurate rendering of even the most complex jobs,’ commented Mark Lewiecki, senior product manager at Adobe Systems. 

Xeikon customer Reynders Etiketten, a label converter based in Belgium, has already tested the X-800 digital front-end driven by the Adobe PDF Print Engine 2.5, and André Vandepitte, pre-press and digital print manager, observed: ‘We do receive a lot of different PDF files, generated by customers from all places, by different kinds of applications. We have been using the new Adobe PDF Print Engine 2.5 for some months now, and haven’t been able yet to detect any mistake.’ 

Xeikon will continue to support the existing PostScript version of the X-800 RIP technology, so that customers can upgrade their workflows to native PDF when the change best suits both them and their client base. 

Jeroen Van Bauwel, product manager for digital front-end at Xeikon, said: ‘It has always been Xeikon's strength to focus on industry standards, enabling the highest level of integration for our customers. Integration of Adobe PDF Print Engine 2.5 is a natural step in supporting the latest generation of PDF flows for Xeikon technology. The intelligent caching mechanism of repeating elements in the VDP flow fits perfectly with the design of our workflow.’ 

All models in the Xeikon range of digital presses are compatible with the X-800. 

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