FREMONT, Calif. - Electronics For Imaging, Inc., and Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta) announced today the launch of a new EFI? Fiery? digital front end (DFE) that delivers superior image quality and advanced job management to further enhance the performance of Konica Minolta bizhub? PRESS 1052/1250 black-and-white digital presses. Using the new Fiery DFE helps customers get the most out of their bizhub PRESS digital printing investment.

"This expanded partnership will bring Fiery tools and workflow uniformity to our monochrome bizhub PRESS," said Kevin Kern, senior vice president, Business Intelligence Services and Product Development.  "EFI's market-leading development platform is one of the best and we believe the integration of our solution with theirs creates a compelling offer for a broad range of companies."

The new EFI Fiery MIC-4150 DFE is built on the latest Fiery FS200 Pro platform, which delivers robust functionality to achieve high definition in monochrome imaging, and streamline the print process with automation and other productivity-boosting tools. Among many other features, it includes:

- Fiery Command WorkStation?, the intuitive, centralized user interface that allows users to manage the monochromatic Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS 1052/1250 printers driven by this Fiery DFE along with Fiery DFEs on color digital presses in a seamless and tightly integrated workflow

- Fiery Grayscale Calibration, an innovative feature that ensures consistent and accurate image reproduction by automatically enhancing shadow details and preserving upper and lower tonal variances

- The optional Fiery ImageViewer for Black and White, a full-resolution raster preview tool that gives users the ability to make black curve adjustments to maintain output consistency between multiple devices

- The optional Fiery Impose and Fiery JobMaster?, visual makeready tools that streamline complex tasks, giving users more power and flexibility in imposition, tab insertion and design, page-level ticketing, finishing, scanning and late-stage editing

Bring Fiery productivity to high-volume black-and-white digital production

"This is the first monochrome Fiery DFE to bring the industry-leading Fiery technology to the Konica Minolta black-and-white print engines," said John Henze, vice president, Fiery marketing, EFI. "We are very excited to launch this new offering and give Konica Minolta customers in the in-plant CRD, print-for-pay, and commercial print spaces the ability to integrate their black-and-white and color operations for a consolidated, more efficient Fiery Driven? job-management environment."

End-to-end integration for greater efficiency
The Fiery MIC-4150 DFE also enables integration into existing production workflows for digital color and offset printing through JDF implementation, which seamlessly connects with automated estimating, scheduling, job ticketing, accounting and other processes managed by EFI's suite of industry-leading MIS and Web-to-Print products, including EFI's Quick Print and Midmarket Print Suites and Digital StoreFront? software.