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PROFILE

APPE V7: under the hood;

Significant new capabilities

A Engine, or APPE, now up to v7.0, with a number of pre-press
dobe has announced a new version of its Adobe PDF Print

processes now moved directly into the rendering pipeline in
the RIP itself, including multi-colour transparency blending
and variable data handling. At the same time, Adobe has also
introduced a new platform, Adobe Print Services, which is designed to
be used alongside the print engine and carries some of the workload to
avoid slowing the RIP down.
The Print Engine is a software development kit (SDK) that’s sold to
OEMs, who will use it as the base when developing their own pre-press
workflow software. Mark Lewiecki, the senior product manager at
Adobe who has been responsible for the print engine since its first ver-
sion, says: “Print quality is almost a given, but we have a lot of work-
flow capabilities and flexibility and power to customise the SDK for
the different segments of the industry.”
It’s widely used throughout the graphics printing business, in prod-
ucts such as Kodak Prinergy. Agfa Asanti and others.
This new version has been designed to address the trends within the
industry, including a shift towards packaging and textiles. Lewiecki
says that there’s a need to reduce the skill level required in pre-press, their preferred spot colours. However, the growth of inkjet printing is driving
noting: “The generation of people that made the transition from ana- a renewed interest in ECG inksets as most digital presses do only offer a fixed
logue to digital printing are retiring and being replaced by a new gen- inkset with no options for spot colours. So, adding this feature directly to the
eration that have a different background.” He adds that pre-press is Print Engine does make a lot of sense, but it’s not so straightforward, as
moving beyond graphics, pointing out that many digital label presses
are being sold to manufacturers, who may lack a pre-press background, Lewiecki explains: “The PDF specification describes how to blend transpar-
rather than label printers. ency in CMYK and RGB and grey, but it’s silent on this subject of blending
The trend towards shorter runs is continuing, but Lewiecki points transparency in N-colour spaces. It’s simply not defined. There is talk of
out that these jobs still require the same amount of pre-press work. addressing this in a future version of the PDF spec but how they do so remains
This means that printers need more automation to maintain profit lev- to be determined. We’re going to solve it our way. We’ll see if they’re going to
els on those jobs. Consequently, for this latest version Adobe has adopt an approach similar to ours or whether we’re going to have to change
sought to reduce the number of processes required in pre-press. our approach to conform to a standard in the future.
Lewiecki explains: “If we can put them right in the RIP and combine “The challenge, of course, is that blending in CMYK, which is the worka-
them with the RIP function, there’s an opportunity to eliminate those round today, results in a constricted colour space, even if the press has those
steps.” six or seven colours.”
He accepts that this may increase the hardware requirements for the He says that although the Print Engine did support single-stage colour man-
processor, but says: “Reducing the cost and increasing the power are agement for N-colour in v6, there was an exception for the transparent ele-
not really mutually exclusive. Yes, new chips are more expensive, but, ments. He adds: “Jobs can have elements that are tagged with RGB profiles.
as soon as the next generation comes out the prices fall back.” He adds: This can include the images, but also CMYK profiles, such as a vignette or
“In some cases, actually doing the function in the RIP takes less RIP even a spot colour. But by blending the transparency and separating the col-
time than doing it in the pre-RIP stage.” ours in a single stage, we are using the multicolour profile, which is the profile
One of the major new features is the ability to handle multicolour
transparency blending directly in the RIP. This is particularly aimed at used to separate for the press, but now we’re using it for blending.”
extended-colour gamut (ECG) printing, which uses a fixed inkset, The other big feature V7 offers is the ability to merge variable data in-RIP.
typically including CMYK plus orange, green and violet, as an alterna- Lewiecki says that there’s growing demand for barcodes and serial numbers
tive to using spot colours. This is gaining ground in label and packag- for track and trace requirements. This is already common for many pharma-
ing printing, where many brands traditionally favour spot colours to ceuticals and there are good arguments for extending this to other products,
give added vibrancy – and therefore shelf appeal – to their graphics such as food packs. But as he points out, many existing variable data tools were
and logos. This is still a work in progress in flexo printing, where brands designed for dealing with complex data, such as customer preferences that
want both the cost savings of using ECG inks but with the punchiness of might change the overall layout and would be unnecessary in this context.

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