Press Releases

December 13, 2004 Artifex Software Inc. of San Rafael, California is pleased to announce the release of Ghostscript 8.50, the most comprehensive software solution for page description languages. Ghostscript is a leader in PDF, PostScript, and PCL technologies. Ghostscript 8.50 features the following new capabilities:

  • • Support for PDF 1.5 rendering, including JPEG2000 images, compressed objects and xrefs, PDF 1.5 encryption support, and 16-bit deep images.
  • • First release of Ghostscript that supports multiple threads.
  • • New very high quality driver that uses Artifex's patented Even Tone Screening with multiple dot levels and color management, configured to drive Epson variable dot inkjets including the 2200, 7600.
  • • New device to produce separations to individual TIFF images from PostScript or PDF, including images corresponding to Spot Colors.
  • • Support for overprint preview to the display device.
  • • Improvements to the PDF writer, particularly for text and images, resulting in smaller files.
  • • Improvements in Asian font support.
  • • Improvements to shading (gradient fill) rendering that are faster and higher quality.
  • • Over 100 fixes and improvements from issues reported by customers and free users.

Artifex is a leading core technology provider with the most comprehensive software solution for the embedded printing market. Artifex's Ghostscript offers all the major leading Page Distribution Languages (PDLs) including Postscript, Portable Document Format (PDF), PCL5e/c, and PCLXL (together = PCL6), along with high-performance screening technologies and a combination of fonts compatible with leading printers. No other software vendor offers a solution this complete. Millions of users have benefited from its ability to preview documents on the screen or provide high quality raster for hardcopy output. In addition, Artifex's Ghostscript combines the tools, information and technical support needed in order to meet the reliability and performance requirements of its OEM customers. Artifex's Ghostscript has been integrated with over 80 OEM customers' products, including: Hewlett Packard, IBM, Macromedia and Xerox. Artifex's Ghostscript software solution set operates on all major platforms as well as most embedded system CPU's.