The Early Days: Automating Publishing Workflows

When callas software was founded in October 1995, PDF played no role in print production – but automation was already at the heart of the company’s vision. Prepress processes were largely manual, while publishing workflows for newspapers and magazines were organized in production stages, and each production stage required certain actions, e.g., to output special proof prints on dedicated printers. callas began developing solutions to automate that either via integrations in publishing workflow systems or via hotfolders with Quark extensions such as “Autopilot XT”.

The Rise of PDF

callas was amongst the companies that saw the potential of PDF for the prepress and print industry in the nineties, before the format had all necessary qualities, eg, sufficient support for spot colors. callas and other European experts published a “Whitepaper” asking Adobe to close this and other gaps. Adobe decided to address all these requirements with PDF 1.3 around 2000, and the format entered the prepress world. Drawing on its deep experience in automation, callas began developing Acrobat plug-ins supporting hotfolder-driven automation – “callas pdfBatchmeister” was there long before “workflow automation” became a buzzword.

Designed for Automation — and Reliability

In interactive software, it’s inconvenient but in rare cases acceptable if results aren’t perfect – a user can always step in to correct them. Automation, however, doesn’t allow that luxury. Automated workflows demand software that:

• Repairs whenever possible, even if the input has structural flaws
• Always delivers as good as possible results
• Never gets stuck in endless processing

In addition, an extremely high level of flexibility in setting up automation rules is needed to adapt to diverse production requirements. These principles are the foundation for what callas stands for today: precision, robustness, dependability, and flexibility.

Integration and Automation: Two Sides of the Same Coin

The guiding principles for integration are almost the same as for automation: reliable, unattended processing and predictable results. Xerox and Adobe were among the first companies to integrate the callas technology into their products in 2003/2004. Today, automation is key in prepress production, and callas’ technology is embedded into more than 75 OEM products, becoming the most widely used prepress processing engine that is directly or indirectly – as an OEM component – used by several millions of end users worldwide.

Getting ready for the next 30 years

We’ve taken significant steps in the past year to prepare for the next 30 years of innovation, integration, and automation.

In late 2024, callas software became part of the Durst ecosystem – a move that combines long-term stability with contractually secured strategic and operational independence, ensuring we can continue advancing our technology for end users and OEM partners. We welcomed David van Driessche as Chief Evangelist and Jeremy Spencer as OEM Director to the team – the ideal people for their respective roles. callas also moved to put more attention to its channel partners, and end-users by changing its distribution strategy. Combined with more marketing (a new OEM website, new end-user website, refreshed branding, more accessible videos are just the beginning), the company is more ready than ever for the next 30 years.