Managing production printers can be a challenging task, even for seasoned experts. If not challenging, managing production printers can at the very least be tedious if you haven’t established the right workflows and tools.
Which brings us to today’s topic: is your print shop or organization still manually adjusting settings on your production printer every time you use a new type of paper stock? Most probably, you are—or you have a few presets for common stock types, but still get mired in configurations whenever you need to use something out of the ordinary.
What if there was a user-friendly tool for your Versant 411 or Iridesse that completely took the guesswork out of media selection and printer configuration? We are, of course, talking about Xerox’s PredictPrint Media Manager software.
Let’s learn more about it:
How Does Xerox PredictPrint Media Manager Work?
Your production printer’s settings are how you optimize prints. PredictPrint is, to coin a somewhat confusing phrase, “optimized optimization.” That will make sense in a moment.
The way PredictPrint is actually really, really cool. You scan the barcode of the stock you’re using, and—thanks to crowd sourced cloud data and advanced artificial intelligence—that’s it: the optimized settings for that stock will be applied. It’s actually kind of magical to see in person.
When you scan the barcode of a media type, PredictPrint retrieves pre-defined settings optimized for that specific stock. These settings encompass crucial parameters like color profiles, density adjustments, and transfer characteristics—everything needed to ensure consistent, high-quality output.
PredictPrint’s interface walks you through each step of the process. No more poring over settings or wasting time and valuable print resources to “get it right.” The interface for PredictPrint is so easy that it makes it possible for even absolute beginners to start getting great-quality prints without half a day’s worth of trial-and-error.
Time Savings and Reduced Errors in Real-World Production Environments
Obviously, being able to optimize your print settings for nearly any piece of stock media in just a few seconds is a huge time saver. But it also minimizes the risk of human error. You’ll enjoy far fewer wasted materials due to incorrect settings (even pros sometimes have to reprint when they’ve made a small error and, say, the colors are off). PredictPrint helps you have far greater accuracy from the first print run, and that’s going to help you focus on your clients or projects.
Print shops need to implement this technology as soon as they can. In an industry increasingly dominated by short-run orders, with many different types of stock and client demands at play, being able to quickly switch between different paper stocks without sacrificing output quality or spending too much time fine-tuning settings is going to translate to faster turnaround times pretty rapidly.
For in-house print departments, you’ll enjoy faster project completions and the ability to assign non-technical or inexperienced staff to print tasks. Thanks to PredictPrint’s ease of use and automated configurations, you’re less likely to find yourself short-handed when it’s crunch time.
Here’s How to Start Learning More about How to Get the Most out of Your Print Environment
PredictPrint is just one of the many ways Xerox technology supports print shops and production printer operations. If you missed it, be sure to check out our blog post from last time, Print Shops, Here’s How To Avoid Costly Mistakes by Standardizing Job Setups. If you need an experienced, helping hand, our team at QDoxs are standing by to assist you with whatever you need. Feel free to contact us today or request a free online quote.
