We are very happy to announce that our final Beta is finally ready.   This final version of 3.5 has been through several versions of testing and internally we have found no errors.  Mac OSX 10.6 and 10.7 are supported with version 3.5

Beta 3.5 can be downloaded here and includes a reference of new features and how they work:   ImageNest 3.5 beta

Feature in beta 3.5 include:

• Option for performing high quality interpolation prior to printing
• Black Point Compensation
• 3 Editable Levels of Print sharpening
• Speed Improvements
• Improved memory allocation
• Improved color management

As this beta has been through many rounds of testing we anticipate that we will have a final release within two weeks.  Feedback is always appreciated and you can contact us.

Eric Hatch has posted a very good article reviewing uprezzing technology and has it works in ImageNest Version 3.5 beta.   If you are interested in an in depth article on some of our new features it is a great spot to visit:

Eric Hatch’s article on Uprezzing in ImageNest 3.5

We will be announcing the general release of our 3.5 beta later this week and the new 3.5 beta will also include an major new feature that has yet to be announced!

If your interested in color and color theory you will certainly want to vist:

http://www.color-image.com

This blog is maintained by one of the brightest minds in the color industry and will feature articles on Color Theory,  ICC Profiles, and a wide range of topics with in depth information of getting the best results from your color workflow.   The blog is written by Parker Plaisted:

About the Author
Parker Plaisted is the author of this site. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics-engineering from Washington and Lee University and a Master of Science degree in Imaging Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). While at RIT, Parker studied color science in the Munsell Color Science Laboratory under professors Mark D. Fairchild and Roy S. Berns. His classmates included Ricardo J. Motta, Mark E. Gorzynski, Mitchell R. Rosen, Taek Kim, Jason Peterson, Ranjit Bhaskar, Tom Orino, David Telep, and David Erdtmann. Parker’s primary thesis advisor was Dr. Ed Granger.

From 1994 to 1996, Parker was the Director of the Imaging Division at the RIT Research Corporation where he worked on color imaging projects with J. A. Stephen Viggiano, Milt Pearson, Nathan Moroney, David Brydges, Chris Sawran, Chris Pane, Jennifer Greenwald, Bill Hoagland, and Jeff Harman. His clients included Xerox Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Eastman Kodak Company, Kimberly-Clark, CalComp, IBM Printing Systems, and Heidelberger Druckmaschinen.

Parker has made technical contributions to the development of color imaging systems and to software applications that create and use ICC profiles. He has more than 10 years of experience working on the development and implementation of color imaging systems.

We look forward to contributing to Parker’s blog in the near future with complete analysis of some of the one of a kind technology that is being introduced in ImageNest Version 3.5

Version 3.5 is a giant leap forward for ImageNest.   Both print quality and Color Quality are significantly improved.   Our new print system processes all files in 32 bit floating point and automatically re-sizes them to final print resolution.  This change is largely transparent and happens automatically but the difference in print quality is striking.  How are we doing this?  Here is how printing is done from other applications”

Photoshop, ImageNest 3.0, Apple Preview, Lightroom, Etc:

Customer has a 300 PPI image open in their application that they wish to print.  They click Print and send the file to the print control panel for their Epson Printer

Printer Driver resizes the 300PPI image to 720PPI using nearest neighbor (low quality) or Bi-Liner (low quality) interpolation.  This happens in 100% of all print jobs that are printed from Photoshop, Lightroom, etc.   Why?  An inkjet printer has a native resolution that all images must be set to in order to print.  The same is true for canon and hp printer but their native PPI is 600 PPI.

Print Driver applies a microweave process that converts the PPI (pixels per inch) to DPI (Dots Per Inch with options for 720, 1440, or 2880 DPI  on an Epson printer- Canon and HP microweave to different sizes).   Printers don’t put pixels on paper,  they print dots on paper and microweaving is the process of converting pixels to dots.  There is no Image quality lost in this part of the process but a higher level of microweaving generally results in a higher quality print but a slower print time.

New ImageNest 3.5 Print Process:

Customer has a 300 PPI image open in ImageNest that they wish to print.  They click Print and ImageNest interpolates the image to 720 PPI using a very high quality Vector Based Interpolation.

Print driver recognizes that the image is at printer resolution and does not perform any interpolation.

Print Driver applies a microweave process that converts the PPI (pixels per inch) to DPI (Dots Per Inch with options for 720, 1440, or 2880 DPI in the case of Epson printer,  Canon and HP microweave to different sizes).

We have received many inquiries about our support for Apples upcoming release of OSX 10.7 (Lion) and we are very happy to announce that we will support 10.7 prior to it’s public release so any customers who are beta testing Lion will be able to test with ImageNest.

Here are some facts about ImageNest and OSX 10.7

ImageNest is natively programmed in 64 bit (cocoa) so it is capable of taking advantage of all the benefits of a 64 bit OS such as OSX 10.7

ImageNest does not run any of our code under Rosetta.  With Rosetta not being available in OSX 10.7 we will have no problems at all.   This is a major potential problem for any 32 bit (Carbon based) software packages.

ImageNest will continue to offer free upgrades so all improvements that we make to take advantage of new features found in 10.7 will be completely free to all users.

ImageNest is happy to announce that we will be supporting the Epson 4900 prior to its shipping date.   The Epson 4900 will be supported on both OSX 10.5 and 10.6   In addition to support for the Epson 4900 ImageNest is also adding the ability to Interpolate to native printer resolution automatically and apply print sharpening to all images in the ImageNest Photo Layout

The Epson 4900 is a replacement for the Epson 4880 and will include many improvements in speed an Image Gamut:

Key Features:

• 11-colour UltraChrome ink set (CMKY, Light CMY, Very Light K, Photo black, Matte Black, Orange, Green)
• Print speed of 46ml per hour
• High capacity front-loading cassette
• 200ml high capacity cartridges
• Optional inline SpectroProofer
• Automatic switching between cut sheet and roll paper
• Automatic switching between photo and matte black inks, which are pre-installed
• Energy Star qualified
• Choice of paper paths – cassette, top and front manual board feed or roll
• Print on media up to 1.5mm thick