AXPA's Xcluder Speeds Postscript Printing.

SKANOER, Sweden--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 1998--AXPA Electronics, a leading provider of high-speed prepress workflow solutions announced the availability of Xcluder(tm), an XTension for QuarkXPress that dramatically reduces the time it takes to print huge Postscript files commonly found in typical magazine and newspaper production workflows.

Xcluder works together with Helios(tm) EtherShare OPI(tm) to drastically reduce print time on a Mac OS-compatible computer. Where normal printing of 10 pages containing four separations each for 10 hi-res images totals 4,000 MBs of Postscript, OPI can reduce the Postscript load to 400 MBs.

By adding Xcluder, prepress network administrators can further reduce the workload to just 4 to 40 MBs. Xcluder delivers a dramatic reduction in the amount of Postscript and print time for a normal magazine page comparted to OPI, and hi-res printing without OPI.

A 10 user license retails at $5,950 with 10-user add-ons at $2,950, and a 250-user license at $11,950. The more and larger images and pages users print, the more time they will save. Estimated return of investment (ROI) for Xcluder in a normal print shop, depending on day-to-day volume, ranges between two to five weeks.

Xcluder boosts OPI performance

OPI alone speeds printing using low resolution files for page composition that are swapped to corresponding high resolution files during proof and final printing to film or plate. Printing can be done even faster with Helios EtherShare OPI using the "omit tiff & eps" switch found in the QuarkXPress print dialog box.

However, when a page contains vector EPS graphics or high resolution files, using the "omit" switch omits these files as well. The result is printouts with no images where vector EPS had been placed. Images residing on local disk are not printed properly either. The "omit tiff & eps" option is seldom used because real world pages rarely contain only low-resolution raster data.

The Xcluder XTension addresses the problem of omitting images. Xcluder recognizes Helios EtherShare OPI low-resolution images and, during printing, only sends the necessary header information in the images that OPI needs to swap in the high-resolution images.

Xcluder accelerates printing of documents containing any Helios EtherShare OPI images to the same speed as if images were omitted in QuarkXPress. The process is completely automatic. Users do not have to do anything special, just print as usual. One effect is much faster printing.

Another effect is that work in imposition software, such as Signastation(tm) or Preps(tm), will be dramatically improved due to smaller, low resolution postscript files. Even printing from the server to the RIP is faster because the Helios software has a smaller file to process. Images that do not come from the OPI, such as Illustrator(tm) vector graphics, are not affected by Xcluder. The postscript from a normal magazine page is reduced to about one percent of its original size and to 10% of the OPI size.

Xcluder is used in many successful production houses including Prolabbet, the largest photo lab in Scandinavia; Malmo (and its subsidiary PrePress Studion), produces a catalog in many languages that contains hundreds of images for a leading international cosmetic company; Halls Offset, recognized as one the highest quality printers in Sweden; and JMS Gruppen, the leading direct mail printer in Sweden.

Easy to use, the status of Xcluder is shown in a small window during printing. Xcluder supports EPS and DCS in OPI version 1.2. Xcluder supports all the color spaces and image formats, including TIFF, supported in OPI 2.0. Xcluder requires PowerPC or 68K Mac OS-compatible computers running System 7.0 or higher; QuarkXPress 3.31 or higher; with Helios EtherShare OPI 1.2 or 2.0.

Based in Skanoer, Sweden, AXPA Electronics AB was founded 1992 by Mikael Nordanaker. AXPA Electronics AB specializes in real-world solutions for the graphics and prepress industry, including the integration of servers and networks together with Helios (http://www.helios.com) products.

For further editor information please contact:

AXPA Electronics AB, P.O. Box 128, S-239 21 Skanoer, Sweden; 011-46-40-475254 (voice); 011-46-47523 (fax); Internet: [e-mail], http://www.axpa.se

For U.S.-based sales information, contact:

European Mikrograf Corporation, HELIOS Software GmbH.'s U.S. distributor, located at 269 Mt. Hermon Road, Suite 100, Scotts Valley, CA 95066; 408/461-6061 (voice); 408/461-6056 (fax); Internet: [e-mail], http://www.ugraf.com. -0-

KEYWORDS: Apple Computer, Publishing/Layout Software, QuarkXPress, Network Servers, Print Servers, UNIX 

CONTACT: AXPA Electronics AB

Mikael Mordanaker, 011-46-40-475254

[e-mail]

or

WORLDVIEW 

Bill Gram-Reefer, 510/676-4733

[e-mail]