EFI & Konica Minolta announce Fiery DFEs for max efficiency

Fiery DFEs provide advanced facilities to Konica Minolta AccurioPress series

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EFI & Konica Minolta announced new EFI Fiery digital front ends (DFEs) for Konica Minolta AccurioPress C7100 Series light production presses
Konica Minolta's AccurioPress C7100 Series

EFI and Konica Minolta Business Solutions USA (Konica Minolta) are announcing new EFI Fiery digital front ends (DFEs) for Konica Minolta AccurioPress C7100 Series light production presses. The new EFI Fiery IC-319 and IC-318L external servers transform the productivity of print operations, giving users superior performance, stunning out-of-the-box color, intelligent automation, and maximum production efficiency for print production operations.

Compared to their predecessors, the Fiery IC-319 boosts raster image processor (RIP) speed by 40%, and the Fiery IC-318L boosts processing speed by an impressive 68%. Print organizations will also be able to take advantage of Fiery HyperRIP performance-enhancing technology (Fiery IC-319 server with eight RIPs, or the Fiery IC-318L server with two RIPs) for uninterrupted print production. 

EFI Fiery DFEs maximum workflow efficiency and color accuracy

The Fiery IC-319 DFE for the Konica Minolta AccurioPress C7100 is based on the high-performance Fiery NX Premium hardware platform and is designed to handle complex, image-heavy, or variable data jobs. It includes a complete set of Fiery prepress and make-ready solutions to help maximize workflow efficiency, maintain color quality to a set standard, and reduce rework and waste. 

“Our customers continue to drive digital printing to new levels of quality and versatility, and with these new EFI Fiery DFEs, we are extending the range of what AccurioPress users can achieve even further,” said Dino Pagliarello, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Planning, Konica Minolta.

The latest Fiery FS400 Pro software running on the new DFEs provides highly advanced functionality in the areas of color and imaging, productivity, and workflow automation. 

  • Fiery JobExpert offers built-in intelligent automation. It analyses incoming PDF files and dynamically chooses the optimal print settings to achieve the highest quality while optimizing processing time. 
  • Users can visually define finishing settings on the product’s content with the Fiery Finishing Designer, easily accessible within Fiery Command WorkStation, for Konica Minolta’s TU-510 Inline Trimmer Unit to ensure jobs will be correctly finished without wasting time and media.
  • Both DFEs use EFI’s premier, next-generation Fiery Edge color profiling technology. Fiery Edge delivers stunning out-of-the-box color and produces better color and image details by taking full advantage of the printer’s resolution, imaging, gamut, and media capabilities.
  • Fiery Spot Pro software helps users reproduce perfect brand colors from design to print. Part of the Fiery Graphic Arts Pro Package is standard on the IC-319 and optional on the IC-318L.
  • The two Fiery DFEs also come with EFI Fiery JobFlow Base prepress automation software to streamline job preparation. Users have the flexibility to upgrade to Fiery JobFlow to take advantage of advanced automation features like intelligent job routing, advanced scripting, customer approval workflows, and more.

Fiery IC-319 and IC-318L users will also benefit from EFI ColorGuard − a cloud-based color verification solution and winner of the 2019 Printing United Alliance Product of the Year Award for software color enhancement. ColorGuard ensures that print systems are operating at their full-color quality potential. ColorGuard can drive automated color verification using an optional Konica Minolta IQ-501 Intelligent Quality Optimizer to verify against industry color standards such as G7 or a custom color reference. 

“Fiery goes beyond being the fastest DFE by far in the marketplace, and we are pleased to be able to offer Konica Minolta AccurioPress users higher out-of-the-box print quality and more efficient intelligent automation with these new DFEs,” said John Henze, vice president, sales and marketing, EFI Fiery. “Not only will print businesses benefit from enhanced productivity, but our solutions will also give users the power to easily get color right every time to make the most of their production printing investments.”

The new Fiery DFEs are available from Konica Minolta and authorized Konica Minolta resellers. For more information about EFI Fiery Driven products, visit www.efi.com.

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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