Print Solutions
SAi has announced the introduction of Flexi 19, a more powerful and feature rich update of its flagship signmaking software, engineered to meet the demanding design to production challenges of sign and display and large format printers.
Central to the super charged Flexi 19 is a faster and more high performance 64-bit RIP engine. Thanks to an increase in speed of more than 30%, the new solution delivers significantly more thrust to greatly improve the production capabilities for sign and display and large format print businesses.
Created as an all in one solution for design, print, print and cut and direct to vinyl production workflow, Flexi 19 also comprises a host of invaluable, easy to use features and tools – some of which will be available free of charge to SAi subscription based customers. These include more than a dozen new additions, each geared towards improving the design, production and business aspects of users’ operations.
Among the convenient new tools introduced to ensure a more efficient and hassle free design workflow, is Find my Font. This lets users open different photo files – including bitmaps – before automatically detecting the font or the best match of that used in the file.
Find my Font automatically detects the font or the best match of that used in various image files.
Another new addition is a Pantone fine tune spot colour matching tool.
Particularly useful for sign and display companies that regularly use Pantone books, this tool allows users to measure charts and make manual adjustments to achieve precise color matching from ICC profiles – not only saving time, but also ensuring color accuracy.
Within Flexi 19’s suite of production tools is a newly introduced Cut by Layers or ‘Colors’ tool, which allows users to expand their ability to cut intricate designs based on the layer. This builds on Flexi’s long standing use of colours to distinguish between the different vinyls to be cut. For added convenience, SAi has also enabled layers for those users that work with other software, but who can then take the job into Flexi. In addition, Flexi 19 includes a handy printed ruler along artwork to let operators know where they left off.
Flexi 19 also comprises a raft of business enhancing tools, including five completely new additions. Among them, Pulse, delivers ‘data in a dashboard’. This allows sign and display users to track production and media use of projects in progress via graphs and pie charts. In addition, Sidekick lets users create quotes, manage customer accounts, and ultimately implement a CRM workflow so jobs can quickly and effortlessly be exported into the invoicing process.
Sidekick lets sign and display businesses conveniently manage customer accounts, create quotes and implement a CRM workflow.
Other highlight tools include:
Improved spot colour mapping – a particularly useful feature that empowers users to rapidly and accurately map spot/corporate colours in the design file to exact output values. This ensures the printer matches the desired output colour for each new job. Using custom spot colour mapping enables sign and large format print providers to easily build their own custom library of spot colours, ensuring such colours are precisely replicated every time they are printed.
An enhanced Profile Wizard – designed to make it easier when setting ink limits and alleviating the invariably complicated process of splitting ink. The automated Profile Wizard lets users obtain such information from measuring charts, taking away the manual guess work required when creating profiles visually.
‘As the largest ever upgrade to our all in one signmaking solution, Flexi 19 packs an extremely hard punch in catering for the varied and sometimes intricate requirements of those operating at the coal face of today’s sign and display industry,’ said Gudrun Bonte, vice president of product management, SAi.
