Esko’s Trapper tool receives InterTech award

The InterTech Technology Awards program has been operating since 1978 and honors the development of innovative technologies predicted to have a major impact on the graphic communications and related industries.

‘We are deeply honored to receive this recognition for the Esko Trapper, which has been received so well by our customers and the industry,’ said Frank Woltering, product manager, graphic editing at Esko. ‘Printing United Alliance is committed to advancing the graphic arts industry so to be recognized for our efforts in improving trapping to boost accuracy, productivity and efficiency, makes our job worthwhile.

‘Achieving a consistent, aesthetic trapping result with the correct distance, direction or color you give to a trap, and to make it as least visible as possible, is difficult even for expert prepress operators. If a job is trapped by 10 different people, then there will be 10 different results. The Esko Trapper is a new trapping product that will help get the job done not only in less time but more importantly also in a much safer way, closing misregister gaps and accommodating individual exceptions to ensure all colleagues in a team can and do achieve exactly the same trap result, delivering a right first time trap file to press.’

James Workman, vice president of technology and research for Printing United Alliance added: ‘InterTech Technology Award judges were impressed with the uniqueness of being able to set the exceptions for trapping objects and have that stay with the object even if the design is altered. Some of the judges were surprised, he said, that this level of automation was possible given the complexities of trapping designs.’

‘This is not just an improved process of aesthetic trapping, it is designed specifically to maintain exceptions across files,’ said Woltering. ‘This is the very first time this unique functionality has been achieved and is protected across numerous patents.’

Supporting the Esko submission, one of the company’s largest customers detailed how the innovation led to a 70 percent reduction in the time spent on trapping.

‘This is the average time saving reported across users, leading to increased productivity, greater throughput and increased efficiency. The improved accuracy also minimizes wastage through errors, in terms of both materials and time,’ concluded Woltering.

Following an initial phase of pre-release beta testing, the new Esko Trapper was first made available commercially to customers in 2020, within Esko Automation Engine, DeskPack and ArtPro+ 20.0.

Esko has also recently has been recognized by the European Flexographic Industry Association (EFIA) with a 2020 Bronze Award in the technical innovation category for suppliers for its Share & Approve tool.