THE CHALLENGE

Leading vision technology company EyeC wanted to improve the performance of its automated artwork proofreading system, ProofText. Using a PDF library to extract and render text, ProofText checks for discrepancies in multiple documents, often with multiple pages and in different languages, in one pass, to prevent unnecessary errors as early as possible within the print and packaging value chain.

Software engineer at EyeC Lukas Petersen explains: “We were experiencing some performance issues with the Adobe PDF library we were using at the time, and we found that we weren’t receiving updates to our reported issues quickly enough. The PDF library also had some limitations, so we decided to look for an alternative solution. Since many of our customers use HYBRID Software’s CLOUDFLOW we were aware of its sister company Global Graphics Software and its Mako™ technology, so we decided to evaluate their alternative.”

THE SOLUTION

Mako Core is an SDK that uses a unique document object model (DOM) to control color, fonts, text, images, vector content, metadata and more. With the DOM APIs you can interrogate and edit content across formats and platforms, changing virtually any aspect of a digital document.

David Stevenson, Mako product manager adds: “EyeC began by carrying out a technical evaluation and through that we were able to prove that our technology could satisfy the ‘missing piece’ in the technical capability. Before we could implement it into ProofText, we needed to adapt Mako to suit exactly what EyeC wanted, and one of our senior developers worked with the team at EyeC to make this happen.”

ProofText speeds up the artwork process, shortens proofreading and avoids costly mistakes.

ProofText has been developed for text-heavy artworks and multi-languages on leaflets, booklets, folding boxes, labels and flexible packaging.

Performance is up to 50% faster than competitors’ products after implementing Mako Core.

THE RESULT

Lukas continues: “We now have a much more stable and reliable system. Performance is consistent and, even in very complex cases, is up to 50% faster. “The customer support from Global Graphics Software has also been a great benefit to us. If we have any issues with our customers’ files we know we can get a fast response and solution from the Mako support team. That is especially important for us because we try to supply our customers with superior service, so we need our partners to be the same. Another great benefit of choosing Mako is that we can use it when we prototype new products. We have some customers with very complex layouts, so being able to carry out testing and prototyping freely is of enormous benefit to us, and really helps our R&D to keep us ahead of our competitors.”