If you think about the core themes that have driven the development of all callas products from the very start, there are only a few. Let’s see.

Automation

Throughout its history, maximizing automation in PDF workflows has been crucial. Even for the manual product, pdfToolbox Desktop, the design guideline emphasizes that everything that can be done manually should also be achievable automatically, with the main focus of the desktop product being to support the automated products.

Excellence

Maintaining a high level of quality in the developed software has been embedded in the company’s strategy from the beginning. Excellence entails various aspects in this context. The software must be high-quality, reliable, as fast as possible without compromising standards, and as flexible as feasible. In this regard, reliability is the most demanding requirement. Not all .pdf files are genuine PDF files, even if they can be displayed in some PDF viewers. An excellent PDF processor must not only be able to understand these malformed files but should also repair them if possible. This certainly presents an ongoing challenge.

Standardization

Enabling automation in print is possible only if you take standardization seriously. That is why callas has commitments in different standard organizations: ISO, CIP4, the PDF Association, and the Ghent Workgroup, to name a few. Significant work is done in those groups, and callas invests time and resources in ensuring their success.

Webinars

It shouldn't be surprising that these core themes are intricately linked. Recently, a series of webinars and a resulting whitepaper have explored this link. If you have missed any of them, they are worth looking into.

Dietrich von Seggern, callas software CEO, kicked off the series, talking about PDF standards and why you can’t afford to ignore them. He went into more detail on what standards pdfToolbox supports and what those mean for PDF workflows.

The second webinar featured David van Driessche, callas’ Chief Evangelist (me), who talked about what types of quality control are possible, what is required for them, and – perhaps most interesting – what we learned over the last 30 years of preflight in graphic arts.

The series was concluded by Sarah Nitschmann, product manager for pdfToolbox at callas, who took a lot of the theory of the first two webinars, and translated it into practice. How do you use pdfToolbox to accomplish what was discussed around standardization and quality control?

White papers

While webinars are great, having a more structured way to explore ideas is sometimes even better. This is why much of the webinars' content (and much more) was written into a whitepaper: “Standardization as profitability driver in print.” Written by David van Driessche, it explores the links between automation, standardization, and quality control.

In short, it explains how quality control can be implemented and highlights its importance to standardization (a link that works both ways). It also shows how companies can benefit from standardization and connectivity between processes and people to optimize their workflows and increase profitability, especially in a world that is becoming more global while print jobs are getting smaller and more personalized.

The white paper is free and a must-read for anybody involved in print management or interested in print profitability.

While not yet available today, a second white paper that translates these theoretical concepts into practice is being developed. Essentially, if the first white paper has piqued your interest, the second will focus more on implementing these concepts in practice, using (mostly) the callas pdfToolbox product line.

Other resources

Meanwhile, don’t forget other resources are available to you from callas as well. Check out the documentation at help.callassoftware.com. Even experts (such as us) are using it for looking up exact imposition commands, QuickCheck parameters and…If anything is missing or unclear, head to explain.callassoftware.com, where you can ask for further information from callas directly.

And last but not least, check out the callas software YouTube channel at youtube.com/@callassoftware. callas uses it to publish webinars and product movies. A new, short product movie is published every Tuesday at 4 pm CET. Make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss anything!