Announced at Labelexpo Americas, HP will now be a value added reseller for two HP Indigo-optimised digital front-end solutions from Esko: the Esko Optimize Pack and the Scope Pack. Both dramatically decrease print preparation and colour management times, enhancing the overall workflow productivity of HP Indigo presses.
During the show, these Esko solutions were driving live jobs on the new HP Indigo press ws4500 and the HP Indigo press ws4050 on the HP Indigo stand.
Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager, Indigo division, HP says: “Our successful integration with Esko is a major win for the label industry as HP continues to expand its digital end to end workflow solutions for industrial printing.
“We are supporting hybrid environments where analog and digital printing co-exist, enabling converters to choose the right technology for each job. HP will maintain its market leadership by offering new products and innovative solutions that enable a smooth transformation to digital.”
Chief executive officer of Esko, Carsten Knudsen says that today’s label and packaging production workflow demanded more powerful solutions that dramatically shortened lead time and reduced costs.
HP says that the two digital front end solutions, now available for users of HP Indigo press models ws4000, ws4050 and the new ws4500, reduce colour matching time by as much as 50 per cent – based on internal HP testing under specific test conditions relative to key competitors. Included in these packages are additional products that boost digital printing productivity.
The Esko Optimize Pack enables seamless output to HP Indigo presses and digital proofing systems, even on jobs originally designed for flexography. It also features ICC-compliant multi-colour profiling and includes Esko FlexRIP, Esko Kaleidoscope colour management, and pre-written profiles of users’ specific HP Indigo press model.
The Esko Scope Pack for HP Indigo has the features and capabilities of the Optimize Pack with the addition of features from Esko’s powerful Scope Pre-Production Workflow Software. With the Scope Pack, users gain automation capabilities and imposition and barcoding tools provided by the Esko BackStage workflow server and Esko DeskPack packaging software, while the Esko’s DeskPack plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator provide production tools on the platform of choice in labels and packaging design.
