Hamillroad Software Releases Major Update of its Pre-Press Soft-Prooding Workflow FirstPROOF 4

26th March, 2007

Hamillroad Software, the world leader in Pre-Press Soft-Proofing Workflow Products for Harlequin RIPs and TIFF based RIPs, is pleased to announce the release of FirstPROOF v4.0, a major upgrade to its powerful pre-press soft-proofing workflow.

FirstPROOF v4.0 (when used with a Harlequin or TIFF RIP), allows users to find a job that has been ripped, soft-proof it – with many specialist tools for checking pre-press issues, delete blank or incorrect separations, rotate separations, merge separations, print a hard-copy (ROOM) proof and then finally output the job – either exposing film, burning plates or directly imaging on press. In providing all these capabilities, FirstPROOF has matured into a powerful pre-press soft-proofing workflow, which will consistently save its users time and money in reduced errors and reduced down-time on press.

Amongst the many additions and improvements, the release of version 4.0 further extends the many specialist pre-press soft-proofing tools in FirstPROOF to include a Duplex View Tool. With this tool, the Front and Back of a page can be viewed together, with the back page displayed transparently through the paper (either turned or tumbled). This allows for the front-to-back registration of jobs to be checked in a matter of seconds, as opposed to several minutes for a hard-copy proof.

More fundamentally, the new release contains a myriad of features which make it far more efficient to use in a production environment; an alert mechanism to tell the user when a new job is ripped and is ready to proof, the ability to find a job (by name), a page thumbnail view for easier navigation around a job, a user-definable default zoom level for faster viewing, a down-sample server which pre-calculates zoom levels to allow for instant zooming in and out, improved progress reporting, the display of overall ink-density (TAC) for each separation, floating toolbars and much more.

“Over the years we’ve had a substantial amount of feedback from our customers.” comments Andy Cave, Hamillroad Software’s CEO. “Having listened to what they’ve been asking for, we are really pleased to be able to offer them this new release. The feedback we’ve had so far from our beta sites, dealers and early adopters has been very positive, and we look forward to seeing our customers benefit from the many improvements in it”.

FirstPROOF v4.0 has been in Beta test since early February and is available immediately through Hamillroad Software’s dealer network. For further details, please see our web site at: http://www.hamillroad.com/main/sales/dealers.htm.

FirstPROOF v4.0 has also been made available to Hamillroad Software’s OEM sales partners. Specific information on their release plans can be obtained direct from the individual OEMs (see our web site at: http://www.hamillroad.com/main/sales/OEMs.htm ).