Blackmagic 3.4 delivers 'Just What the Printer Ordered'

Sydney, Australia, April 3, 2007

Serendipity Software has pulled another rabbit out of the hat with Serendipity Blackmagic V3.4.

Features geared towards the commercial, magazine and newspaper market include a multi tabbed display showing sub-sets of pages located in different print towers (ideal for both straight and collect newspaper print modes) as well its innovative submission and processing of newspaper pages, by means of an assigned publication name for ease of identification and automatic collation.

Features likely to attract the traditional inkjet proofing market include extended soft proofing, a full range of color output capabilities for both the new HP (Z) as well as Canon IPF multi color printers, and support for multicolor printing processes such as Hexachrome and CYMKRGB. There is also an innovative ink key viewer, reverse page viewing with transparency control, pre-sets with user defined ICC press profiles, paper background selection and replace color sets, as well as a new reader spread display for single page side by side viewing.

The server based software, which runs on Vista and Mac OSX (Universal Binary) with unlimited client connections, will be demonstrated at NEXPO showing soft proofing with reverse page viewing and paper background simulation.

"For the newspapers and magazine market, the new soft proofing tools assists the process of checking correct ad placement avoiding visual impact distraction of heavy show through effect and leads to minimal compensation issues," says Peter Skarpetis, CEO of Serendipity Software.

"With the lower cost of 30 inch cinema displays for both Mac and PC, traditional publishers with print capabilities, are now set to eliminate traditional hard copy proofing by taking advantage of Serendipity technology. This covers annotation notes, fast pre press checking of final ripped files and for use at the press console," says Robert Murphy, owner, Sandstone Software, international distributor for Serendipity Software.

A new scalable ink key viewer has been added allowing press operators to color accurately view fully imposed jobs with spot plates. The press operator can easily see the vertical ink key settings for different press configurations. The ink key viewer can also show a progressive proof.

The soft proof allows "reverse page viewing" with a transparency/opacity control, highlighting the show through effect when printing on different gsm stocks. Newspaper paper background simulation can be created using a wide variety of online measuring instruments or from the ICC Press profile.

The new direct drivers for the HP and Canon series delivers a greater color gamut that extends the range of printable spot colors for use with printing processes such as hexachrome and other forms of printing. A new ink limiter has been implemented to control the additional red, green and blue inks when printing with process colors.

Color accurate reader spread sections can now be automatically displayed from fully imposed ripped files, allowing printers to check the overall color balance of both the left and right hand pages when spread sections come from the same or different sheets. Newspapers will also greatly benefit from this new feature when critical color reader spreads need to be displayed side by side, especially when the individual pages come from different cylinder positions on the press.

Other new innovations include ICC monitor and press profiles combined with a variety of pre-set data, reverse page viewing, user defined unsharp masking settings, PDF input filter with spot plate support and multiple imaging and rendering processors configured on the same box.

For more information, contact Denise Oates, doates@presteligence.com

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