For a full list and details on released and upcoming driver support, click here.

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1 November 2008 Issue What s New: ONYX Launches a New Website on December 9 Visit next Tuesday, December 9th to see the new website. We have worked with hundreds of ONYX users to improve our website. New enhancements include: RIP buyer s guide Searchable Technical support Print shop needs analysis Interactive product information These tools will be a benefi t to new and existing customers alike by simplifying the technical world of RIPs. Visitors can use these tools to gain a better understanding of ONYX software, get training, and see support solutions. Visit to see how to improve your operations. Recently Released Drivers ONYX is constantly updating and adding new drivers to our list of supported printers. Your requests, along with new product releases, and changing technologies fuels our driver development. Below is a short list of recently added driver support. Agfa Anapurna M, Anapurna M4f, Anapurna Mv Canon ipf6000s Fujifi lm Acuity Advance Oce Colorwave 600 Oce Arizona 200 GT, 350 GT For a full list and details on released and upcoming driver support, click here.

2 Hooked On ONYX ONYX Customers Share Their Stories of Success Kürten & Lechner GmbH, one of the largest printing companies in Germany, reports on its current projects and the use of ONYX products. The success story of the Bergisch Gladbach-based company, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1996, is characterized by a whole series of internationally groundbreaking developments and patents such as the Trockenlichtpausanlage (dry printing unit) designed in 1930 and the screen-squeegee for half-tone screen printing, invented by Rudolf August Kürten in With 250 highly skilled professionals and state-of-the-art production facilities, today the company assumes all stages of production for orders of any size. Production begins from high-end scans, electronic page setting and advertising across digital printing, screen printing and offset printing through to delivery and assembly throughout Europe. Gunther Fells, head of the Digital Printing Department, estimates the monthly digital printing volume to be 70,000 sq. meters. He states that they have been collaborating with ONYX since After several attempts with various other RIPS we came to ONYX, which convinced us through its simple operation, many special features, and simple, fast RIP procedures. Therefore, ONYX is still our preferred RIP. We have now been working with ONYX for over 8 years and are convinced by the quality. It assists us in receiving the large number of fi les processed in a coordinated manner and later enables us to reproduce with color consistency, says Mr. Fells. The digital equipment of Kürten & Lechner includes 9 digital printers, 8 RIP stations and 8 RIP servers. There are also several large-format screen printing and offset printing machines. Here, Kürten & Lechner relies on brands such as SPS, HP, KBA and Roland. Kürten & Lechner has been involved in beta testing for Roland, KBA, and HP.

3 Hooked On ONYX ONYX Customers Share Their Stories of Success Mr. Fells goes on to talk about the convincing structure from basic linearization of a printer to ICC profi ling. Quick Sets along with a well-organized ICC workfl ow facilitate working on jobs of the size processed by Kürten & Lechner. Here, orders with, for example, 8000 different print fi les represent a particular challenge. We generate all our ICC profi les with an XRite EyeONE and the ONYX Profi le Generator in-house. In addition to the COLORTABLE included in the ONYX software package, we also use all the other color management tools because doing so results in far superior color accuracy on the large number of our various printing materials, explains Mr. Fells. He highlights the automatic RIP Quick Sets, the fast rendering engine from ONYX, as well as the media-saving nesting behavior for supporting daily production as being extremely time-saving. The department head refers to several projects in order to demonstrate the strength of the ONYX RIPS. All three examples show how the speed of ONYX, combined with the printers, produces quality output while still achieving maximum RIP and print times. Project 1: The premium wall at Frankfurt airport placed fourth in Germany s Next Topmodel Model, says Carolin Ruppert. Carolin has been promoting the Roland-Rechtschutz-Versicherungs AG on the 440 square meters of advertising wall since August 18, Kürten & Lechner GmbH was responsible for the production and installation of this new advertising wall. Altogether, nearly 440 sqm of window graphics fi lm was printed on the HP Scitex TJ8300 and bonded during an overnight assembly. Project 2: As its fi rst printing job, the recently acquired new Scitex XP 5300 printing machine from HP delivers the mega-format 864 sqm facade of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG at drupa 2008 in Dusseldorf. In less than 10 printing-hours, the giant 72 x 12 m fi lm was printed on blockout and later assembled. Project 3: Kürten & Lechner was commissioned with the entire production of all the HP graphics at drupa 2008 in Dusseldorf and produced more than 5000 sqm of prints for the fair, airports and taxis. The next premium wall and many other attractive full-service projects are already in the pipeline. Once again these projects demonstrate the productivity, cost savings, and quality that is achieved when using the ONYX software in conjunction with supported printers.

4 Product Feature Focus: Precise Rosette Screens for Moiré-free Output Did you know you can set up your own screening patterns in ONYX? With a screening dot pattern, you can use your inkjet printer to emulate the output of traditional screen printing. Even better, ONYX makes it easy for you to get moiré-free rosette patterns without having to calculate screen angles. Here s how: 1. In Media Manager, select Confi gure Devices > Confi gure Printer Capabilities. 2. Select Dot Patterns and click on Add. From the Basic Tab select the lpi and check the Precision Placement checkbox and click OK. 3. Now you will see a new screen dot pattern added to your printer s dot pattern list. The software has automatically calculated the correct screen angles for each ink so you get moiré-free rosettes. Tech Tips Helpful Tips From the Experts Setting Up Your ColorSpan Driver ColorSpan drivers have changed and can be somewhat diffi cult to setup. When setting up ColorSpan printers (either for the fi rst time or when performing an update) here are a couple of items to check to verify that you are set up for optimum performance. 1. Make sure the Videonet protocol is the only protocol active on the network card that will run the ColorSpan. 2. Make sure all other network cards have the Videonet protocol disabled from them. 3. Make sure the ColorSpan dll fi les only exist in 2 places: the win32 folder inside ONYX/Common/Repository/ ColorSpan.zip and ONYX/System folders. These fi les are: ccgnu2.dll, kodiakdll.dll, ferret.dll, output.ini, output.exe, printmaster.exe. 4. Keep in mind that Videonet does not act like other network protocols. Windows will often say that the network card is unplugged, but when you try to access the printer it still communicates. 5. If you are having trouble getting these printers to confi gure or print, it is best to backup your profi les and buffered jobs, delete the printer, and go to to download and install the latest version of the driver.

5 Max-imize Your Color Tips from our Color Scientist Max Derhak ICC Profiles and Rendering Intents A color management system can reproduce color in multiple ways to achieve color reproduction objectives. Some basic color reproduction objectives include: getting an exact reproduction, getting something that is not exactly the same (but looks about the same), or getting a preferred reproduction (that doesn t look exactly the same but tends to be more desirable ). These general objectives can be further complicated by the fact that different reproduction technologies/media will have different capabilities to reproduce color. (Note: Additional techniques and objectives are required when colors from one device or medium cannot be reproduced on a different device or medium). In order to provide the ability to address these different color reproduction objectives the ICC profi le specifi cation allows for multiple transforms to be encoded in a single ICC profi le. The selection of which transform(s) to use is determined through the selection of rendering intents. The ICC profi le specifi cation defi nes four rendering intents: Perceptual, Relative Colorimetric, Absolute Colorimetric, and Saturation. Generally when two profi les are connected the transformation associated with the rendering intent in each profi le is used. The Poster Color rendering intent in ONYX software is a proprietary dynamic transform that represents an additional method of connecting profi les to meet different color rendering objectives. Perceptual Intent The perceptual intent is for achieving a preferred output, and might not look the same as the original. Different profi les can provide different preferred outputs and consistency can vary between profi les. Options in profi le generation like gamut mapping are generally applied to the perceptual intent transforms. Further complicating perceptual intent interoperability between profi les from different vendors stems from assumptions made about the connecting color space between different profi les. Color rendering can be performed in both the source and destination profi les. If the destination profi le makes assumptions that are not provided by the source profi le then less than desirable results can occur. In order to promote better interoperability when using the perceptual intent, the ICC developed the Version 4 specifi cation for ICC profi les which defi nes a clearer defi nition of the perceptual rendering intent connecting space. This defi nition specifi es viewing conditions as well as the white and black points. Since the white and

6 black points are defi ned for a perceptual intent in version 4, this transform generally preserves shadow and highlight details by mapping the tonal range of the input through the PRM to the output. Rather than have data come directly into the connection space and have the output profi le make all color conversions, input profi les are encouraged to provide a color rendering to a Perceptual Reference Medium. One example of this is the srgb_v4_icc_preference.icc profi le that can be found on the ICC web site (and released in 7.2 ONYX software). This profi le represents several years of efforts by members of the ICC to develop an input profi le that renders srgb images to a well defi ned middle point. Use of this profi le with the perceptual rendering intent can provide for more consistent results. (Note: Unfortunately a similar profi le for Adobe RGB images currently does not exist). Relative Intent The Relative intent is for making almost exact reproductions of colors that can be reproduced. The almost part of this defi nition makes use of the fact that human observers adapt to differences in what is considered white. This property of human vision is referred to as chromatic adaptation. The Relative Intent transforms and adjusts all colors so that if the absolute white of the source is different than the absolute white of the destination, the white will still appear as white. There is no relative defi nition of black in the Relative Intent. Some color management implementations also provide for a Black Point Compensation (BPC) that allows for relative black transforms. A relative intent transform without BPC will preserve highlight details but clipping can occur in the shadows. If the tonal range needs to be preserved, then relative intent with BPC can give comparable results to a perceptual rendering intent transform. Note: Currently ONYX products do not support BPC rendering. Absolute Intent The Absolute intent is for making exact reproductions (that can be measured the same). The Absolute Colorimetric actually uses the Relative Colorimetric transforms in the profi les with some extra math performed by the Color Management Module (CMM). To get to absolute colors, the relative values are adjusted by a white point value and stored additionally in ICC profi les. Since this is an exact reproduction, the highlights and shadows can be clipped and no tone remapping happens. Saturation Intent The Saturation Intent is the most poorly defi ned rendering intent. The ICC.1: version of the ICC specifi - cation indicates that Saturation rendering is useful for images which contain objects such as charts or diagrams.

7 Additionally, compromises such as trading off preservation of hue can be made in order to preserve the vividness of pure colors. However, very little is defined or specifi ed in how this is to be achieved. In the profi les created by ONYX ICC build engine of the 7.x versions of Media Manager, the Saturation Intent is defi ned using the ICC V4 Perceptual Reference Medium Gamut (PRMG) to provide a clear defi nition of saturated colors. The CMM in 7.x products checks to see if the saturation intent for the output profi le assumes PRMG input. If it does, and if the source profi le was not built using the PRMG for the saturation intent, it connects the profi les using the perceptual intent. Note: V4 input CMYK profi les that provide PRMG saturation intent mapping will be part of an up and coming release of ONYX software. Poster Color Intent Poster Color is an alternative form of the saturation intent that dynamically uses information from the relative intent transforms of source and destination profi les. It creates a transform at run time that tries to maintain maximum saturation of colors while generally trying to preserve hue. An important difference between Poster Color Intent and Saturation Rendering Intent is that Poster Color intent doesn t require specifi c transforms to be encoded in source and destination profi les to get consistent results. Recommendations Generally the perceptual intent will give the most pleasing results; hence, it is the default intent for image data. For spot color matching, the Absolute Intent is probably more desirable. Poster color or the saturation rendering intent can be used to get a saturated and vivid look. This is the default intent for vector data in ONYX software. Having the ability to defi ne Rendering Intents allows for different color reproduction objectives to be defi ned and achieved; however, the following complications can ensue when defi ning color management settings for PS/EPS/ PDF fi les that have different rendering intents being assigned to image and vector portions of the document. The introduction of transparency in PDF fi les has proved to be a complication to defi ning rendering intents because transparency can blur the defi nition of vector and image. Also, using different color management choices for source profi le or rendering intent can cause undesirable color shifts in the output. If any of these complications occur it might be advisable to use the same choice of source profi le and rendering intent for all document image types.