It’s time to take approvals online

RealTime Image collaborative approval and remote proofing facilities are changing the way the printing and graphic arts industries are doing business.


The innovative technology is revolutionising the workflows of design agencies, prepress companies and printers, according to Michael Laird, managing director of CyraChrome (pictured), the Australian supplier. “RealTime Image is the most significant graphics technology since the development of desktop publishing,” he said. “After this nothing will remain the same. It is changing forever the make-up of production teams, overcoming the tyranny of distance and redefining how products come to market.”

RealTime Image is an online facility that provides the infrastructure for getting stakeholders engaged in the development process to collaborate at the earliest possible time in a printing or packaging project. It brings together designers and printers, lawyers and product managers, clients and specifiers and the numerous other professionals involved no matter where they are. It facilitates the input of the individuals and companies concerned at the most appropriate time saving annoying design glitches, endless intermediate proofing run arounds and potentially ruinous legal problems.

Already installed at some of the leading prepress houses in Australia and now New Zealand (see story this bulletin on Colorite Auckland), RealTime Image is allowing local printing and graphic design companies to participate in a meaningful and profitable way in business across the country and around the world.

Real Time Image is one of the leading collaborative proofing and remote approval products on the market. Its clever technology, Pixels-On-Demand, is an image streaming system that allows huge graphic files to be easily opened over the internet, often faster than could be done from your own hard disk. (The same patented streaming technology is used in the medical field for transferring CR, MRI and CT scan data for remote viewing and diagnosis.)

The streaming technology facilitates multiple users and allows them to collaborate on every stage of a product’s development, by letting them have access in real time to the original, full-resolution production files. This has implications for the whole process. For instance, the printer can be brought into the process right from the start, therefore able to advise on the best way of producing the job. It also gives the product manager absolute control over the whole process and eliminates the need for multiple proofs and the consequent interminable courier delays.

Participants have access to every detail, no matter how slight. The legal department can scrutinise the required text, the die-cutting designers can check that the box is going to fit, the printer can even check the trapping, all with pixel level resolution files.

There are now approximately 350 Real Time Image customers around the world, facilitating the operation of over 150,000 users. Among its graphic arts customers are such large printers as RR Donnelly and Quebecor World in the US and leading publishers such as Haymarket in the UK.

As far as CyraChrome is concerned, Real Time Image fits in very well with its product line of proofing products, says Michael Laird.

“We see it as a natural progression for us - it fits nicely into our strategy of being The Proofing Professionals. There is a very strong link between this technology and actual hard copy remote proofing where colour approval is critical. Using a combination of both RTI and our leading Color Tuner product to output colour accurate contract proofing at remote sites we can achieve true remote proofing.”

According to Les Bovenlander, Real Time Image’s Australasian representative, using the system can bring tremendous added value to companies. “The value is in ’time to market’ for products, whether they be printed books and magazines or toys packed in boxes with high graphic content,” he said.

“We have many customers in our region who are expanding their businesses either nationally, regionally or internationally, and they are quoting figures of three days less in production times for magazines and up to three weeks less in production times for packaging products.”