Sign-makers and display producers increasingly are seeking to improve their efficiency, save time and lower costs across all areas of prepress and production. Where they once were required to employ different software elements to manage various tasks such as file handling, color management, RIPping and preflighting, Agfa Graphics’ Asanti, which was shown at FESPA, brings all these elements together in a single, PDF-based workflow.

The Asanti production hub was on display and available for demonstrations at the center of the Agfa Graphics booth at FESPA Digital 2014 in Münich, May 20-23. There, among the many new wide-format printing systems and other inkjet solutions from Agfa Graphics, FESPA attendees could discover how Asanti smoothly integrates both the preparation and printing of jobs in an easy-to-use interface.

As the beating heart of all wide-format production, Asanti offers sign and display-makers advanced automation. The Adobe Print Engine (APPE 3.0) is integrated into Asanti for full JDF control and automated accountability. At the same time, Asanti always allows for operator control, giving production managers the ability to make on-the-fly corrections and adjustments when necessary.

“Asanti enables high levels of automation throughout the production process. The result is a very cost-effective solution that incorporates all the requirements that sign and display-makers need to produce their jobs from start to finish,” said Willy Van Dromme, Director of Marketing, Wide Format, Agfa Graphics. “Our experience in deploying Adobe technology is extensive: More than 30 billion pages of expertise in all those years, and Asanti users can benefit from it.”

Jeffrey Vermaat, one of the growing Asanti comunity, director of De Resolutie in The Netherlands confirms: “From the moment we started to use Asanti, all transparency issues disappeared and printing white became as easy as pie. As result, we now added predictability to our prepress environment.”

Asanti’s unique and user-friendly color management employs patented technology to guarantee realistic color consistency. While the commonly used routines require over two hours of operator time and a lot of media, the Asanti method limits that to 15 minutes and 0.1m2 of media. Spot color conversion is based on PantoneTM libraries, with profile calibration completed quickly and efficiently.

Asanti provides the added convenience of management of various input sources, including Asanti StoreFront and ftp. As a scalable production hub, it distributes the workload over multiple hardware systems and delivers the appropriate data to a variety of engines and finishing equipment such as cutters and sliders.

Asanti is also tightly integrated with the award-winning Asanti StoreFront, a cloud-based web-to-print system. This easy-to-use online shopping solution is designed to help users grow their businesses and explore new markets. Asanti StoreFront handles incoming orders through the Asanti dashboard for time-saving, error-free job handling. Automatic price calculation based on media type and size and finishing requirements, like grommets or lamination, makes this a perfect fit for Sign and Display.