Callas Software (Berlin, Germany), a market leader for automated PDF quality control and archival solutions, has released what it calls “a milestone update” for its pdfToolbox product line – pdfToolbox 12. Major new features include a QuickFix engine “to modify even massive PDFs incredibly fast,” an engine to compare colour differences between PDFs, a generic way to create ‘Fixups’ on the fly using JavaScript, more powerful Actions (now supporting editing and variables), an OCR engine and much, much more.
“One would think it would become more difficult to introduce genuine improvements in such a mature product,” said Dietrich von Seggern, Managing Director at Callas Software. “Instead, we are continuously amazed at what our customers accomplish with pdfToolbox. The list of features we want to add, to help them in what they want to do with the product, keeps growing every year. Once more, we’ve tried to strike a balance between improving what was already there, yet at the same time introducing completely new and exciting functionality.”
“Our partners and customers increasingly rely on the PDF validation, correction and transformation capabilities of pdfToolbox,” said David van Driessche, Chief Technology Officer at Four Pees, the worldwide distributor for all Callas solutions. “The incredible rate of innovation in the product, coupled with its unmatched stability and performance on all production platforms, is paramount in supporting this.” In addition to the major improvements mentioned above, a host of ‘smaller’ new features in the new release include:
- A new (stretching) bleed creation mode specifically for the sign and display market.
- New Process Plan steps to compare files, run QuickFixes and merge PDF files.
- Support for new ISO standards (PDF/X-6, PDF/A-4, PDF/VT-3).
- Improved barcode detection for 1D and 2D barcodes.
- A new “Export as previous version” for Profiles and Process Plans.
- Improvements to the contextual pre-flight system (Sifter).
- Extended “User Unit” (scaling factor) support throughout pdfToolbox.
- Improved bleed creation that adds bleed only when necessary.
- An easier ‘fixup’ to convert elements to Rich Black.
- DPart (Document Part) creation.
- The introduction of free tools that can be used without product activation.
- Improved visualization of page boxes and units in pdfToolbox Desktop.
- Support for pdfToolbox Server in the License Server.
- Better spot-colour name display throughout the upgraded product.
