Ouest Affiches, a leading French poster printer based in Le Mans, has switched its workflow to Kodak's Prinergy Evo system in conjunction with VivaPosterize.

The creation and output of large format posters is very demanding and time-consuming. Ouest Affiches, whose customers include Shell, C & A, Triumph and Disneyland Paris, had been searching for a professional solution to enable them to increase their production speed while at the same time maintaining the high quality for which they are already well known.

According to Patrick Van De Mert, the Director, "We needed a solution that enabled the extremely fast output of the French and standard large poster formats such as 4 x 3 metres and fulfills our printer's exacting output requirements."

Ouest Affiches has supplemented their machine room with a Trendsetter VLF CTP system and the Prinergy PDF workflow manufactured by Kodak (formerly Creo) with its European headquarters in Waterloo, Belgium.

The poster job is exported to Prinergy, where it is converted to PDF and then imported into VivaPosterize for tiling. The tiling is completed in a few seconds, as VivaPosterize enables the entry of all the settings for the tiling, including overlapping and mark positioning, to be made in just one dialog.

The job is now exported back to Prinergy as a single PDF or series of PDF files, RIPed and separated accordingly and imaged.

Ouest Affiches' production includes a large number of backlit 4 x 3 metre posters, where the original is mirrored before being tiled, and in some cases also rotated. The printers have specific wishes regarding the positioning of the visible format of the section on the paper. Although this functionality was not included in the original program supplied, VIVA was able to display flexibility by doing the additional programming at short notice and delivering the final version just a few weeks after the original installation.