What’s New at EFI?

Electronics for Imaging (EFI) recently held an analyst event called EFI Ignition, where they presented several announcements covering EFI Fiery, Enterprise Productivity Software, and EFI Wide Format.

What’s New Regarding EFI Fiery

The EFI Fiery group announced its new, better, and faster Fiery FS500 Pro platform, which will work with new production and office printers. It offers:

• Faster job processing time and up to 40% faster application launch time
• More tools for detecting potential errors to reduce waste
• New features for high-security environments to ensure compliance with customer security requirements and industry standards
• A new Fiery TrueBrand solution to assist corporate users in ensuring accurate brand color production from Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
• Fiery JobExpert, a tool for automatically selecting the proper color and imaging settings, has a visual report and is now available for all Fiery servers

The company announced the Fiery XF 7.3 DFE for wide to superwide format printers. This is bundled into two new market focused Fiery XF product offerings:

• Fiery XF Proofing with the Color Verifier Option and Color Profiler Option included
• Fiery XF Production with the Cut Marks Option and Color Profiler Option included
• Support for hundreds of new printers
• New cutting advancements

What’s New About EFI Enterprise Productivity Software

EFI’s Enterprise Productivity Software group also announced the following enhancements to its e-commerce offerings:

• EFI PackCentral is an online design and ordering tool for packaging. It allows users to upload and modify artwork onto a die pattern from a 600+ template library to create and visualize a folding carton order in 3D with folding animation and texture mapping.
• MarketDirect Fulfillment is an integrated fulfillment and inventory management solution that covers inventory management, warehousing and fulfillment, order acquisition, pick and pack, as well as shipping and tracking.
• There is now a Rentals and Reservations solution that covers all aspects of scheduling, managing, tracking, and shipping rented items.

Enhancements to EFI’s layout and media optimization solutions include:

• Metrix now does orthogonal+ rotations to provide high-density nesting, especially for the digital printing and display graphics markets
• iQuote has enhanced direct layout optimization for regular and irregular shapes

In addition, EFI made workflow enhancement announcements in mailing, packaging, wide format, estimating and planning, as well as enterprise management.

What’s New in EFI Wide Format

EFI announced its Pro 30h hybrid printing solution, a cost-effective, 3.2-meter hybrid printer designed for the entry-level market. Some of its key features include:

• LED curing
• Productivity up to 2,477 ft² (230m² ) print speed
• CMYKWW
• Grayscale printing up to 1,200 dpi
• Optional clear channel
• The ability to print up to five layers in a single pass
• Rigid and flexible media support
• Embedded Fiery proServer Core DFE

EFI also announced its FabriVU Plus textile printing series:

• FabriVU 180+ (2,152 ft²/hr)
• FabriVU 340i+ (2,562 ft²/hr or 1,722 ft²/hr with Inline fixation)
• FabriVU 340+ (238 ft²/hr) 

Keypoint Intelligence Opinion

EFI’s new Fiery FS500 Pro is already exciting, but it will become much more interesting to the general market as digital presses that can leverage its power arrive from the printer manufacturers. The new wide format printers appear interesting, and the enhancements to Fiery and the EPS software are improvements. My recommendation is to be sure to attend the EFI Connect user event in Las Vegas on January 17-22, where I suspect we’ll learn more about all of this in addition to hearing other announcements. I'll be there, so make sure to say hello if you are, too!

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