Caldera has announced Caldera PrimeCenter V1.1 just months after the June launch of the prepress automation solution for digital printers. The upgrade is said to improve the flexibility and automation capabilities of the original.
Caldera PrimeCenter was created to sit upstream of the Rip to facilitate scaled up production for print-and-cut workflows. It consolidates preflight, bleeding and nesting in one tool, while reducing the level of manual errors and saving time on file preparation. V1.1 is now compatible with more cutters and can generate cut files in layered PDF. This means that every element of a PDF, from the design and cut contour to the registration marks, is now contained in different layers.
Another improvement is the inclusion of extended cut marks options to provide compliancy with cutter and workflow restrictions. There are added shape choices for registration marks and fully customisable placement options.
In terms of automation PrimeCenter, V1.1 now allows two possibilities for tracking codes. Job processing can be automated by the inclusion of optical marks such as QR codes or barcodes. Changes to the new version mean that standard barcode readers can be used to enable semi-automatic processing. Output auto naming is another area of improvement. Layouts can now be named according to media name, number of copies, date and ganging metadata. The ganging metadata can feature any naming attributes and these changes will ease the identification process in both manual and automatic workflows.
Other changes include automated cropping of images with blank space around them, and automated cut contour generation and crop mark placement.