As we say goodbye to an exciting year, we wanted to take a moment to share some of the highlights and numbers that defined 2023.
As promised, we expanded our knowledge base with the introduction of new training material and webinars. We have developed a PDF-based self-training manual that focuses on profile creation in pdfToolbox. The manual helps you get familiar with pdfToolbox by guiding you step-by-step through all the important aspects, with interactive exercises and solutions. For those who haven't explored this resource yet, the manual is available for free on our website: training.callassoftware.com.
We also hosted 6 new webinars during the year with a total of 308 registrations. Our pdfToolbox introductory webinar, held in three languages (English, French, German), provided an overview about pdfToolbox's core engines and functionalities. Industry-specific webinars focusing on commercial and large format printing followed. Explore all webinar sessions by watching the recordings available on our YouTube channel.
In this context, we are excited to announce the upcoming webinar on pdfToolbox for label printing - reserve your spot now.
Breaking with tradition, we hosted not one, but two pdfCamps in 2023, bringing together users, developers, and PDF experts for two days of learning and collaboration. The first event took place in spring in Berlin and because demand was higher than available seats, we decided to organize another pdfCamp in fall. Both events were a resounding success: Attendees left with valuable insights and inspiration, and we received great input for future product development. To capture the vibrant atmosphere, we created an after movie of our spring event. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. And mark your calendars for the upcoming pdfCamp on April 18-19! Join us to learn about new possibilities, features and tools, and gain insights into how to get the most out of callas software products. Seats are limited, so don't miss out and register today!
Although there was no major release in 2023, this does not mean that there were no major innovations in pdfToolbox. The release notes speak for themselves - we closed over 700 bug fixes and feature tickets, resulting in four minor releases of pdfToolbox 14. Here are some of the highlights:
- Process Plan UI improvements (14.2 and 14.4): Explore an even nicer user interface to create and maintain Process Plans. As always, our users prove that they drive our engine to ends that even we did not expect. This has become easier.
- Enhanced Checks for stroked vector elements (14.3): Prepress automation is the standard and most issues have been solved. Time to care about additional things such as die lines. New Check properties have been introduced to identify die lines and, more importantly, to find issues in them.
- Derive spotcolor from softmask (14.4): Another new task for automated prepress is the creation of white forms. This is a new method to create a white underlay, where the amount of white depends on the amount of visible color.
- Creation of Link annotations (14.1): Not all prepress PDFs end up on a printing machine, quite often they also are the basis for digital publishing. One of the issues is that a print PDF does usually not have hyperlinks in text or QR codes. pdfToolbox allows to (re)create them.
Analyzing our documentation metrics revealed compelling trends. Our online documentation received more than 90,000 views, a remarkable increase of more than 15 % compared to the previous year.
Looking ahead to 2024, we are gearing up for drupa. So Düsseldorf (May 28 - June 7, 2024) is another opportunity to meet us in Hall 7, Booth F06, where we will be showcasing our products. Last but not least – stay tuned for exciting product updates and releases throughout the year.
