Dalim Software has launched Twist 7, a major update of its production automation software during its 2013 World Wide Technical Meeting.
The company is a maker of highly efficient, scalable software solutions for the creation, production and management of cross media content
Companies use Twist to achieve high throughput, reliability and flexibility in demanding content production environments. The software includes features such as the ability to build a variety of processing paths; an extensive modular feature set; and automation of repetitive tasks such as preflighting, file optimisation and conversion, colour management, and trapping.
The software has a number of new features that help automation, prevent file errors, and enhance speed. For productivity, it provides speed improvements of up to a factor of four.
The software has always been able to receive files by hot folder or Web upload and now it is able to monitor FTP servers and receive files via email, making it easier for printers and media service providers to receive customer files, along with the usual hot folder and Weblink support.
It can collect any email message content as metadata, such as the senders’ and recipients’ email addresses, the email subject, and text within the message (for example, signatures, to dynamically drive a workflow. For example, metadata picked up within the text of a message can be used as a ‘trigger’ to automatically notify a sales rep, send preflight reports, or be programmed for other tasks.
Some of the biggest improvements in the software are the options to improve the image workflow, of particular help to agencies and for digital asset management systems. The new ImageAction tool can create and convert a multitude of image files, along with layer support. It can produce several different versions of one image for print, a preview and the web. Automated actions include cropping, scaling, rotation, change of resolution, and file format changes. Support for BigTIFF (>4GB), makes it easier to handle large files for point of sale and sign applications.
The VisualCompare tool offers ‘lights out’ quality control, identifying the rare file that should not have passed an otherwise tedious and lengthy quality control process. It can compare a customer’s original, incoming file to the final, print-ready version, to check if any unintended artifacts were introduced during production.
It can also compare the plate output of two different RIPping technologies, Adobe PDF Print Engine vs. Harlequin for example, to identify potential differences in RIP interpretation before the job is printed. It is also possible to automatically identify and compare a single reference document with the same file on a complete imposed or nested form. This way, the user can easily identify issues introduced during any given part of the process.
‘About twenty years ago, Twist was the first workflow aimed at the print, packaging and media industries to deliver an intuitive graphical interface to connect production tasks. Today, often copied but never equalled, it continues to serve the industry’s power users, print service providers and content creators alike, who need an extraordinarily reliable workflow system to process an exceptional number of files while maintaining impeccable quality, regardless of any change in output devices or presses,’ commented Dr. Carol Werlé, CEO. ‘Our customers use Twist to resolve complicated production challenges. We feel that Twist 7, with its significant versatility, speed, reliability and innovative automation tools, still sets the bar for production automation systems.’
