Printer-developed imposition software ‘A2Z PDF’ launched

Print industry stalwart and managing partner of Chennai-based P M Digital Products, P Chellappan has announced the launch of his latest software, a ground-up built imposition and prepress solution which he believes will drastically reduce print ready times for both digital and offset printers.

22 Dec 2017 | By Sriraam Selvam

“With margins reducing every passing day, we noticed that our prepress tasks were time-consuming and involved several complex processes. So the idea of this solution like many others was borne out of the necessity to improve efficiency and thereby control costs,” said Chellappan.

Named ‘A2Z PDF’, the product offers a suite of imposition and prepress functionalities including tasks such as creating n-ups for a single copy, multiple copies, preparing file with folded signatures, section sewing and other features like combine, extract, order, split, scale, resize, rotate, extract, duplicate, tile and many others. It also has a minimal variable data feature.

These tasks according to Chellappan, can also be combined as per the needs to produce desired results.

“Another critical feature of the application in comparison to using a pdf file with Illustrator or Corel Draw is that the embedded colour profile of the file is never disturbed or changed in our solution unlike the tools mentioned. This is hugely significant for the prepress guy,” he said.

The product and its features were not only conceived by him but was also organically developed single-handedly in Xojo, cross-platform development environment by Chellappan himself- in about six months’ time.

“The basic idea for the solution was born out of the necessity to print four registration dots for the Scodix presses we have and from the idea flourished a comprehensive prepress solution which can reduce the time (from hours to minutes and seconds) to prepare a raw pdf that our corporate clients and walk-ins bring to us,” said Chellappan.

“The idea was never to go commercial but on seeing the benefits that we were enjoying I thought this would benefit the industry at large at an affordable cost. It took a while for me to learn the intricacies of PDF but now I am more than confident that I can doing anything with it and temper the file to our needs, using A2Z PDF” he added.

The application is available for free trial at www.a2zbinary.com and can be purchased from the same website.