There's hot debate going on in the US regarding Acrobat 8.1 update. Adobe have made a deal with FedEx to upload jobs from within the latest Acrobat 8 Reader to FedEx Kinkos document printing centres. (Read article)

Although this 'feature' is presently for the US market only, it's a sign of the emerging trends in online job submission. 

This isn't the first time Adobe have added job upload features. The EFI printme was introduced years back, but was an option available to anyone that used EFI rips on their colour printer. For simple document printing, and to help business travelers at hotels and airports, it was, and is, a good solution.

Simply Business
Many in the Print fraternity are now furious with Adobe. We don't like our suppliers in bed with a particular print provider. Adobe however will be looking at it from the wider perspective. To them, printers are only 17% of their customer base, it's a declining market and they perhaps see this type of tool appealing to their corporate and business customers. It's also keeps the Adobe name in front of business customers at a time when both Microsoft and open source developers are gaining ground.

There's an obvious market need, since the business community has been enthusiastic over the Adobe announcement. But what's stopped printers offering these tools themselves?

But as the esteemed Dr Joe Webb recently pointed out, "The real issue is the new customer, the one creating documents for the first time, who now sees a capability through Kinko’s that most printers would be please to provide, but they would not otherwise learn about."

Winners, Losers.
One of the winners in all this will be Global Graphics, the Adobe RIP competitor who provide Harlequin RIPs into the majority of our industry-branded film and platesetters. Their robust JAWS PDF Courier solution provides a slick PDF file upload alternative, helping design customers submit jobs to their designated Printshop.

What's best is that Courier is an open system, able to work with ANY Mac/PC desktop application (not just Acrobat), plus it will integrate with any modern prepress, digital print or CTP workflow, from any manufacturer. In other words, Courier doesn't lock you in to one application or output technology vendor.

To further sweeten the customer experience, the Courier solution can also be enhanced with online customer portals, catalogues and shopping cart options too.

In this area of online print ordering or 'web to print' packages, there's many established developers including Press-sense, OPS, Printable, Pageflex plus a dozen print procurement systems like Saepio, Printjob etc, developed for print buyers.

The only losers in this will be those print providers that now do nothing. Ignore market trends and client needs. The good thing, is that we folks 'downunder' have some warning of what's to come. So, what's holding you back?  For a list of options and costs email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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