F.E. Burman was able to eliminate the cumbersome and repetitive tasks involved in reviewing pdf files during preflight by automating the process with pdfToolbox.
Founded in 1958, London based F.E. Burman Ltd is a well known supplier of high quality short run printing and digital media services. However, for numerous British publishing houses, F.E. Burman is also a synonym for rock solid web-based production tools.
The company supports its customers in a variety of print and data handling tasks including magazine production, handling advertising material, and commercial print and mailing services. Clients include publishing houses such as Condé Nast Publications, The Guardian Newspaper Group, the British Medical Journal and The Economist.
Before investing in pdfToolbox, F.E. Burman already gained some experience with pdfInspektor (a callas PDF preflight solution, now integrated in pdfToolbox). They used it to check incoming PDF files in Auditor, an in-house developed web-based tool for publishers. Auditor centralizes the final stages of checking and distributing PDF files, allowing publishers to manage their publications more effectively.
Andy Psarianos, F.E. Burman director in charge of development, comments: “With Auditor, it takes editors only a few seconds to check complex PDF files. Running in the background, pdfToolbox checks every single PDF file, and depending on the type of application, some basic things like hair-lines, spot colors and transparency are fixed automatically. Files that aren’t suitable for printing are immediately identified, and detailed reports help editors and employees to quickly identify and solve eventual problems. Before, our prepress employees often had to open defective files manually, find the problem, and then attempt to correct it. These time-consuming procedures and costly problems definitely belong to the past. To put it bluntly, it’s the most accurate preflight engine we ever worked with.”
When F.E. Burman started to develop web-to-print solutions for their customers, the in-house development team quickly realized that tasks such as PDF creation, PDF checking, online proofing, color management and imposition, had to be fully automated in order to flawlessly and timely process the vast variety of incoming files. Andy Psarianos explains: “Creating a good-looking and user friendly front-end is one thing, but making sure that the back-end is capable of processing all the incoming files is another. Let me give you an example: For Savills, a global real estate service provider with more than 80 offices worldwide, we created more than 200 different templates to choose from.
Things like layout, imposition and paper are different for most templates, so manual intervention is no option. We knew callas had a solution that fit our requirements, but we had to see it with our own eyes. After some extensive testing, and comparison with other solutions, pdfToolbox was unanimously elected as the winner. Our previous experience with pdfInspektor, and the fact that these products are very accurate and extremely easy to integrate played an important role in our decision.”
F.E. Burman Reception Desk Installation and implementation was very fast. In just a matter of days, the in-house development team was able to automate the complete web-to-print back-end process. They no longer have to worry about selecting the appropriate print queue or imposition scheme, and thanks to the intuitive user-interface, creating a new or modifying an existing workflow is like a walk in the park.
Andy Psarianos concludes: “pdfToolbox allows us to build some very powerful and sophisticated products. It’s like putting a Formula 1 engine in our web-based products. We have processed literally hundreds of thousands PDF files through the software, and I honestly can’t recall of one instance where we ever had to question the accuracy of the system. The quality of the imposition and preflight engine is outstanding and the software is extremely user friendly with clear instructions on how to use it.
Implementation by our in-house development team was therefore very easy, fast and successful. Thanks to the increased speed, repeatability and accuracy brought in by pdfToolbox, we help our clients work faster and more effectively. And in the end, isn’t that the real purpose of any solution or business.”
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