Ricoh awarded Ghent Workgroup 2015 PDF preflight certification

The Ghent Workgroup (GWG) represents the print and publishing community, including industry, vendors, associations and educational members. The GWG 2015 prefight certification is a validation of the prepress quality control specification developed by the GWG. Based on the ISO PDF/X-4 standard, it contains 14 different ‘variants’ aimed at different print market segments and output methods.

Print service providers can configure PDF preflighting as an integrated and automated workflow step, via Enfocus Pitstop Library, with Ricoh’s TotalFlow Production Manager and TotalFlow BatchBuilder, thereby adding a vital component to these workflow solutions that balance workloads, manage and track jobs, and even group incoming jobs together based on user defined criteria. They can also ensure their files comply with the latest GWG preflight standards, which is an important measure that helps maintain accuracy, quality and consistency of content.

Erwin Busselot, Business Innovation and Solutions Director, Ricoh Europe, says: “This demonstrates our commitment to providing easy to use, automated solutions. PSPs can produce high quality output with integrity to the original designer’s intent.”

Andrew Bailes-Collins, Co-chair of the GWG specifications committee and Senior Product Manager for the PitStop product family at Enfocus, comments: “GWG compliancy is a real benefit for Ricoh’s clients. It takes a lot of the guess work and manual effort out of system configuration. It assures customers that 'out of the box' they conform to a known and proven standard.”

| About Ghent Workgroup |
The Ghent Workgroup, formed in June 2002, is an international assembly of Industry Associations, suppliers, Educators and Industry members from around the globe. The Ghent Workgroup’s objective is to establish and disseminate process specifications for best practices in graphic arts workflows.

Since its inception almost fifteen years ago, the organization has consistently produced numerous process specifications for PDF exchange, as well as developing useful tools for automating processes and testing and establishing consistent PDFs for print and publishing – all available free at: www.gwg.org.

Members are comprised of graphic arts associations including: BPIF (UK), CIP4 (Switzerland), CMBO (the Netherlands), ERA (Germany), Febelgra (Belgium), FESPA (UK), FTA (USA), Medibel+ (Belgium), PDFX-ready (Switzerland), Printing Industries of America (USA), UNIIC (France) and VIGC (Belgium).

Vendor members include: Adobe, Agfa, callas software, CHILI publish, Dalim Software, EFI, Enfocus, Esko, GMG, Heidelberg, Hybrid Software, Kodak, Océ, Ricoh, Quark, Ultimate Technographics, and Xerox IMPIKA.

Industry members are: JP/Politikenhus, Litografia Rosés, PB-Consult, Phototype, Pragmeta, Sagamgraphic and Square. Educational members are: Ryerson University and University of Wuppertal.

For more information on the GWG2015 preflight certification procedure and test files, please visit: http://www.gwg.org/compliancy-testing-procedure.
| About GWG preflight certification |
The GWG 2015 prefight certification is a validation of the prepress quality control specification developed by the GWG. It contains 14 different ‘variants’ aimed at different print market segments and output methods, all based on the ISO PDF/X-4 standard, but with additional conditions and restrictions relevant to each segment. The variants cover the majority of common print applications and include web- and sheetfed CMYK and/or spot color, magazine and newspaper advertisements. Because the certification is based on the PDF/X-4 standard, it also includes variants which include the use of RGB colors within artwork files as well as ‘live’ transparency to support the most sophisticated and up-to-date graphic arts workflows. The test suite used in the certification process comprises 260 test files that cover aspects such as correct detection of minimum image resolution, use of correct color spaces, white and grey overprint settings, ink coverage and spot color usage and naming. File content that does not meet the necessary conditions is either flagged with an error message or with a warning, depending on the importance of the issue and how it could affect output.