NEWS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

27th February, 2004

HAMILLROAD SOFTWARE RELEASES

FIRSTPROOF PLUS

Hamillroad Software, the market leader in Post-RIP Soft-Proofing Systems for Harlequin¹ RIPs and TIFF² based workflows, is pleased to announce the immediate availability of FirstPROOF Plus. FirstPROOF Plus contains an unprecedented set of soft-proofing tools along with market leading performance, which combine to make sure that every job can be printed correctly first time, every time.

FirstPROOF is Hamillroad's family of popular 'across the LAN' Post-RIP Soft-Proofing products which run on both the Apple Macintosh³ and x86 Windows⁴ platform. FirstPROOF already enjoys an install base numbering thousands of users and now FirstPROOF Plus adds even more to this already powerful product, offering the ultimate in soft-proofing systems.

FirstPROOF Plus contains over eight additional tools and seven features compared to FirstPROOF, some of which are completely novel and unique. The increased tool set contains specialised tools to check screen frequencies and angles, screen moiré, linearisation/calibration of output, trap sizes, step-and-repeat sizes and placement, ink saturation and press ink limits. Additional features include reporting of ink densities per-separation, improved methods for navigating around the viewed image, support for colored background/paper, sorting and searching for jobs, and a simple backup system.

"We are tremendously excited about the release of FirstPROOF Plus," comments Robert Miller, Hamillroad Software's Director of Product Development. "For the first time, a product now exists that can efficiently and effectively check for virtually all the things that can go wrong with the output from a RIP. As a result, there really is no excuse for stopping the press due to an error in a job."

But don't listen to us; this is what some of the early adopters had to say about the product:

"The extensive range of tools and features in FirstPROOF Plus coupled with its speed and ease of use have made it an indispensable component in our Harlequin Workflow," said Gavin Jones, Technical Director of Syreline Process, "so much so that we are currently busy installing it on every production machine in our company." Gavin continues , "As far as the cost of installing FirstPROOF [Plus]  goes, we recovered the cost of our investment in hours and it more than pays for itself over and over on a daily basis."

"The best feature is FirstPROOF [Plus]'s speed which is many times faster than any of the other applications that we have previously used. If we add to this the list of other features including zoom and rotation tools (we were unable to rotate our files before), navigator window, 1D and 2D measurement tools and a powerful color manager for assinging colors to individual separations, what we have is a really powerful application", said Marko Rakar, CEO of Printel . "FirstPROOF [Plus] has helped us increase our productivity by speeding up the last minute checking of our 1bit TIFF files and the Ink Limit warning tool has helped us pinpoint errors and possible problems on the press before we even imaged the plates! This features alone has helped to pay off the investment in FirstPROOF [Plus] with just a few rescued jobs."

FirstPROOF Plus  is available immediately through Hamillroad Software's sales partners, which include a number of dealers, distributors and OEMs. For further details, please see our web site at www.hamillroad.com/main/sales/general.htm.

Notes to the Editor

About Hamillroad Software

Hamillroad Software is an independent software group, with offices in Cambridge, UK and Cape-Town, South Africa. The company specialises in the development and sale of specialist software products relating to Harlequin and other RIPs in the pre-press industry. Offering real value for money, Hamillroad Software's FirstPROOF is the first in a series of products that will dramatically change the way users work, making them much more productive. For more information on Hamillroad Software and its products please visit their web site at http://www.hamillroad.com.

For further information, please contact:

  Andy Cave, Chief Executive Officer.
  Hamillroad Software Limited.
  Office: +44 (0)1223 236272.
  Mail: andy.cave@hamillroad.com
  Website: www.hamillroad.com

ENDS

(1) Harlequin is a registered trademark of Global Graphics Software Limited, which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. (2) TIFF is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Inc. (3) Apple Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc., registered in the US and other countries. (4) Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other names are trademarks of their respective owners.