XMF, which stands for cross-media workflow, has been in development for the past three years and was designed specifically to work with APPE. The software was previewed at Ipex.

Fujifilm Graphic Systems UK workflow manager Andy Walker said: “We were developing XMF at the same time as Adobe was developing its new PDF print engine, so we were able to work with them and build it based on APPE technology.”

Both Kodak and Heidelberg have said that they plan to incorporate APPE in the next release of their respective Prinergy and Prinect Printready workflows.

However, Fujifilm said that to get maximum benefit from Adobe’s release, it had to start from scratch.

“We believed that, to maximise the benefits, we had to structure a workflow around it. You can only do that if you build it using JDF from the ground up and design the architecture to make full use of APPE,” said Walker.

In addition to raw processing speed improvements of between three and 40 times, Fujifilm said one of the main advantages of XMF was its flexibility, as demonstrated by its ability to automatically re-impose jobs for different output devices.

Walker added: “Everything is flexible, unlike normal imposition, where it’s pre-defined. XMF can reflow
everything from an 8-up litho job to digital, or vice versa.”