Donegan, who left Compose in January to found his own company, has since signed a deal with ISIGS, the Malaysian developer behind Compose's Star Proof software.

The deal gives Graphic Republik exclusive European distribution rights for MaxPro, which Donegan expects to be as successful as the Star Proof inkjet proofing system.

Donegan said: "MaxPro is a very powerful editing tool. Speaking to end-users, it has very wide market appeal and I've yet to find anyone who hasn't been impressed by it.

"We have dealers in place in Europe already and I'm in talks with companies in the UK – hopefully we'll have our first install before Drupa."

London-based Graphic Republik will showcase the MaxPro suite, which includes MaxPro, MaxStep and MaxPro Rip, at the Drupa Innovation Park, where the product will receive its worldwide debut.

Donegan said MaxPro would allow users to apply individual zonal traps to continuous tone, high-resolution continuous tone and linework elements.

It also manipulates process and spot colour plates individually or globally, and creates bespoke separations.

"Users can take advantage of powerful masking tools, unavailable in other software applications, to efficiently and simply create press-ready files," he said.

MaxStep allows the creation of step-and-repeat layouts for a wide variety of printing processes including gravure, narrow web label printing and packaging.

MaxPro Rip is a postscript level 3 RIP, capable of processing PDF 1.7, PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4 and PDF/X4-p files.