Ooh Media has rolled out the country’s first installation of Adstream’s Quickcut file delivery software, linking the ad agency with its clients and stable of large-format printers, which include Cactus Imaging, Aussie Signs and MMT.
Ooh Media operations manager John Purcell told ProPrint: “Quickcut creates an electronic job ticket with specs for billboards, which the client can open in InDesign with specifications pre-loaded. They can lay out and design a billboard, then the software does all the pre-flight checks.”
He said the tool runs 280 validation checks to ensure each file is 100% correct.
Cactus Imaging general manager Keith Ferrel told ProPrint: “It takes one big step out of the process. The number of bad art files we get is horrendous. This gets rid of that problem.”
“There aren’t too many clients who like to have you call up and complain about their artwork,” he added. “It’s early days, but the few files that have come though Quickcut have all been perfect.”
Purcell said that while the system is common for newspapers and magazines, it is a huge leap forward for outdoor advertising.
“Once the printer has the file, they could now print it immediately,” said Purcell. “For the time being, we will still get it proofed out, but newspapers and magazines skip this step because they have learned to trust the software.”
Purcell and Ferrel both agreed the software would become the norm across the outdoor sector.
Ferrel, who runs a fleet of wide-format HP digital printers at Cactus’ 60-staff Silverwater site, said: “It’s certainly the way of the future. It makes things so much more efficient. Outdoor has lagged behind but now it’s making great strides.”
He added that, despite the fact that print specs were the same 99% of the time with magazines, the variation in print specs within outdoor made it much more complicated to implement this kind of automated file delivery and approval.
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