Judges in this year’s Printing Industries of America InterTech technology awards have been named… but you’ll have to wait until next week to hear what judges were thinking.

Among winners is QuadTech’s colour control and web inspection system including the maker’s AccuCam technology and a data management system, Enterworks Enable for managing content and digital assets and publishing them to multiple channels and media.

PIA technology and research vice president Mark Bohan says InterTech judges were impressed with the QuadTech system’s ability to control colour and provide automatic water control to minimise scumming in newspapers. One judge said he wished he had had this in the past: “It would have made my life so much easier”.

The AccuCam system provides closed-loop colour control using an image-based system.

QuadTech says recent research and development efforts have resulted in the new water control capability, in which the system monitors and controls press damping levels.

The company says it had to provide testimonials from users, and these came from Newsprinters group technical services director Mark Ellington, Herold Druck technical director Ulrich Müller and  Toru Uesaka, director of the production bureau at the Sankei Shimbun.

Twelve technologies were selected for the awards – which carry the right to use the famous lucite star – based on their innovation and likelihood of advancing the performance of the graphic communications industry. The other winners are:

• Kodak’s red fluorescing solution for its NexPress digital presses, which images a clear ink on top of other images and graphics that fluoresces red when illuminated with UV light;

• EskoArtwork’s i-cut sign cutting software;

• Fujifilm’s J Press 720 inkjet sheetfed press;

• Heidelberg for its web-based Prinect Performance Benchmarking system which sheetfed printers can use to compare the productivity of their presses withthose of peers;

• Keen Systems’ MIS and web-to-print solutions;

• Sun Chemicals’ SunPak LMQ (for low migration quality) ink and related products for food and tobacco packaging;

• Technique Business Systems’ iTechnique mobile interface to the company’s management information systems via a universal app on iPod, iPhone and iPad;

• Utopia Digital Technologies for its Avatrex transportable imaging system, which allows users to created inkjet images which can be transferred to a variety of products and surfaces – one licensed user is Kodak, which markets it as Shoe Art Film which consumers can image on an inkjet printer and use to decorate their shoes.

• Xeikon’s X-800 VariLane software for label imposition, Xeikon;

• X-Rite’s redesigned i1Pro2 spectrophotometry system for photographic, prepress, publishing and digital printing markets (pictured);

Awards will be presented at PIA’s Premier Print Awards and InterTech Technology Awards Gala in Chicago, Illinois, on October 7.