Creating photo products and newsletters is soon to get a lot simpler with ISL’s Catfish web to print software, thanks to a new editing module called Mega Edit.
In Catfish, Infigo Software Limited (ISL) has one of the leading web to print systems on the UK market, but its latest development – a dynamic editing module called Mega Edit, currently in beta testing before a planned autumn release – puts something quite different on the table, it claims.
‘Catfish Mega Edit brings a completely new dimension to web to print that didn’t exist before – other than perhaps some of the Flash-based editors,’ said ISL managing director Douglas Gibson. ‘There is no other advanced HTML5 editor that gives you this level of advanced functionality. Catfish Mega Edit gives ISL a functionality that now goes beyond our competition.’
It will deliver increased volume, more advanced services and new revenue opportunities for printers that are prepared to invest the £25,000 that Mega Edit costs, and is a direct response to market demands, according to Mr Gibson.
He continued: ‘Traditionally, online editors and web to print systems have been very restrictive. Catfish Mega Edit was developed in response to the requirements of our clients. They wanted to take web to print to the next level with advanced online design. They didn’t want just basic editing; they wanted full design capabilities – a mini Adobe InDesign service on the web. They wanted more advanced functionality such as photobooks.
‘From the end customers’ perspective, the feedback was that they were having problems when creating items like newsletters, since different offices were using different versions of Word – it was becoming quite a challenge. Catfish Mega Edit gives them the flexibility they want with nothing held on local systems and everyone now using the same online tools.’
The cloud-based product is fully optimised for mobile devices and is designed for enterprise level production. It can be used as a single module or can be combined with all the other features of Catfish to deliver an all-encompassing solution that can handle variable data, email marketing, SMS and now photobooks, helping to drive a print business forward.
Printers can create their Catfish Mega Edit website to reflect the exact look and feel of their own corporate identities, and to offer their chosen types and styles of products, with any type of paper stock, finish or cover, as well as other attributes such as gift packaging. They can provide end users with pre-defined page templates or provide full creative flexibility over the size, design and layout of documents.
Options are available for different combinations of images and text boxes with a choice of masks, boarders and corners. An auto-fill facility saves time in populating photo templates.
Dynamic pricing configurations are easy to set up, so that when a customer adds or removes pages from a job, changes the paper stock, or adds new attributes to the job, the cost is automatically updated.
Because Catfish Mega Edit is built on HTML5 it is also compatible with Apple iPhone and iPad devices as well as all other leading touch-based devices, tablets and phones, and automatically adjusts to the screen size being used. The interface has been optimised for touch gestures – the buttons are large enough for fingertips and are designed for swipe and drag motions. It also operates with all the latest internet browsers.
Mega edit contains a number of tools for adding photos and applying effects
As you would expect from a system that excels in photo gift scenarios, the software also has extensive links with social media and other image sources. Userscan upload their photos and imagery from a computer or a phone, and from any online image repository such as Facebook, Flip, and Instagram, with full sharing options.
ISL showed Mega Edit at Ipex, and said the feedback was ‘phenomenal’. It believes that as well as photobooks, there is a massive market in B2B for doing corporate newsletters and estate agents particulars, which are documents well suited to an editing tool such as Mega Edit.
Customers can add Mega Edit to the strengths of the existing Catfish software product, which is also HTML5-based. According to Mr Gibson, what makes Catfish special is its Adobe plug-in template designer, which requires no technical knowledge to use, and can be used for both digital distribution and print production, once a printer has created a template.
Catfish allows printers to offer customers all types of products, from single-page templates to complex documents such as photobooks, calendars, greetings cards, and personalised business print such as statements and stationery, and to merge data from all leading databases for short or long run variable data jobs.
