Lionel Broadley, CEO  - - Colony Printing, Australia:

Feel free to quote me on the comment re FP.. it was a genuine comment:

   "First Proof has been an extremely handy tool and has saved our bacon a number of times."

Peter Moat, Advertising Services Manager  - Toowoomba Chronicle, Australia:

With the volume of pages being processed at Toowoomba it is an absolute necessity. Having it as a check in the process saves an awful lot of time, as well as materials, by being able to identify a potential problem prior to actual film output. Prior to the installation of FirstProof, if the platemakers did not identify problems on film or plate, it was either printed wrong, or caused delays in printing. Both of these scenarios cost in credits and/or added costs through delay. With the imminent installation of CTP technology, the importance of FirstProof becomes paramount.

"With FirstPROOF Pro we have been able to implement a no-nonsense ROOM workflow at a fraction of the cost of other mainstream solutions. Its preview of separations is far superior to other big name systems we have looked at in terms of smoothness, visual quality and ease of use. Being able to print these separations to any of our network printers now gives us absolute data integrity, cutting down on time, wasted plates and make-readies."

[Date: 19th July, 2005.]

Scott Vaughan, Prepress Manager - Kase Printing, Hudson, NH, USA:

"As a longtime FirstPROOF user I am amazed at the features of the newest version. It has incorporated all of our wish list items and some even we hadn't thought of. This version truly is a complete prepress tool. My prepress department now has all of the tools necessary to have complete confindence in the files they send to plate. A few of the features even help us with our pressroom now that we can see ink coverage, total ink densities and dot gain. Kudos to Hamillroad!"

[Date: 18th July, 2005.]

Pat Berger - Mercer Color, USA:

"FirstPROOF v3.0 is the most feature rich previewer I have ever used." [Enough said!]

[Date: 18th July, 2005.]

Nick Stevens, Technical Director - SP Group, Birmingham, UK:

"We (Sp Group) have used FirstPROOF as part of our workflow for the last 2 years, it provides a client interface to our Harlequin Rips and gives us the ability to perform intricate and detailed checks of files just prior to output. The new features of Version 3, including the ability to print a hard copy from the actual ripped file, is another great addition to the tools available in FirstPROOF. FirstPROOF makes the solid base of Harlequin a much more user friendly and intuitive Rip to use. FirstPROOF is an essential part of our workflow."

[Date: 18th July, 2005.]

Marko Rakar, CEO - Printel, Zagreb, Croatia:

"I really like the new IDG Tool in FirstPROOF [Plus] v2.1, especially when checking jobs that include stochastic (HDS) screening. With this tool we are now able to accurately soft-proof RIPped data prior to output on our CtP machine, and see exactly what we are going to get from a printers perspective. This is the very first time that a soft-proof on a monitor will actually show your page more accurately than any other digital hard-proofing method."

[Date: 29th November, 2004.]

Gavin Jones, Technical Director - Syreline Process, Cape Town, South Africa:

"We have been using FirstPROOF since it was first released and every subsequent release has brought more exciting and essential functionality. The release of FirstPROOF Plus has had a drastic impact on our profitability with mistakes being picked up sooner and a drastic reduction in proofing material used, so much so that the savings are paying for our new VLF Flexographic Platesetter. The latest release of Plus is once again a giant leap forwards and I would urge any quality conscious shop to spend some time using it and really give it a try."

[Date: 16th November, 2004]

Scott Vaughan, Prepress Manager - Kase Printing, Hudson, NH, USA:

"FirstPROOF v2.0 has solved for us what has been an ongoing problem with our Harlequin rip. Until we starting using FirstPROOF, we had no reasonable way to preview files before commiting to expensive film. Now, we can preview our files in full color, or if we like, one plate at a time, and have a much better chance of catching errors. We can check for color break, trapping, screen angles and more. The ROI on this products was achieved the first time we were able to catch a mistake on the screen rather than on the film, or worse, at press."

[Date: 19th October, 2004]

Marko Rakar, CEO - Printel, Zagreb, Croatia:

"We have tried various SoftPROOFing products since we introduced CtP in 2001, but the moment we saw a demo of FirstPROOF, we knew that this was something worth watching carefully."

"FirstPROOF has proven itself to be a really solid product which works with all the TIFF file formats and compression schemes that we use, something that most of the previous products that we tried were not able to do. It includes a very powerful File Naming Filter that is really easy to use and this has allowed us to automatically recombine 1bit Tiff files back into jobs regardless of the naming scheme that we have used."

"The best feature however is FirstPROOF's speed which is many times faster than any of the other applications that we have previously used. If we add this to 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 assigning colors to individual separations, what we have is a really powerful application."

"FirstPROOF 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 feature alone has helped to pay off the investment in FirstPROOF with just a few rescued jobs."

[Date: 25th February, 2004]

Gavin Jones, Technical Director - Syreline Process, Cape Town, South Africa:

"As a large supplier of Flexographic plates to the South African printing industry we have learned time and time again how costly mistakes can be, a concern that has been raised by our move to CTP. The first time that we saw a demo of FirstPROOF, we knew there and then that we had found the answer to our problems."

"Once we decided to implement it, there was some initial resistance from the operators mainly due to the fact that it is new technology but once they saw the benefits it brought to our company; it was quickly accepted as part of the family."

"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 so much so that we are currently busy installing it on every production machine in our company."

"As far as the cost of installing FirstPROOF goes, we recovered the cost of our investment in hours and it more than pays for itself over and over on a daily basis."

"I guess that all I can say is that it is one of those applications that once you have it you wonder how you ever lived without it."

[Date: 25th February, 2004]

Kevin Hanmer - Virtual Colour, Cape Town, South Africa:

"Since we have been using FirstPROOF, there has been a significant reduction in errors in jobs on our press. The ability to roam jobs accurately using FirstPROOF has given our company an advantage in saving materials and reduced down time on our press. FirstPROOF is a definite plus in any environment that outputs files for imaging or printing. This product is definately a worthwhile investment for any company needing a good first line proofing system."

[Date: 18th July, 2003]

More to come...

Where to buy    Product details   What it looks like (FP)    What it looks like (FP Pro)    FP Feature Comparison