Ventura Software Inc recently unveiled four new colour pre-press products for its Microsoft Windows-based desktop publishing software at the Color Connections Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. Ventura Scan, Ventura Separator, Ventura PhotoTouch and Ventura ColorPro were developed under a technology licensing agreement with Pre-Press Technologies Inc, Carlsbad, California, a company that specialises in colour software for Macintosh, MS-DOS and Unix environments. Ventura Scan is a dynamic link library that enables scanning from within Ventura Publisher, with available drivers for colour desktop scanners. It provides colour correction functions in the preview mode, optimising the scanning hardware in use. The user can scan directly into a Ventura Publisher picture frame while maintaining the aspect ratio of the original image, says the company. The scanning system costs $400, and is scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter. Ventura Separator is another dynamic link library, which separates Ventura Publisher pages with all text, graphics and continuous-tone colour images in place. It enables colour correction with brightness, contrast, colour saturation and sharpening controls, and it defines custom screen angles for PostScript imagesetters. It is DCS-compatible and accepts image-specific settings saved from Ventura ColorPro. Ventura Separator comes in at $500, scheduled to ship, again, in the fourth quarter. Ventura PhotoTouch is a professional re-touching application for both grey-scale and colour images. It has a range of professional creative tools to outline, air brush, sharpen, blur, blend, smear, and so on. Image masks for retouching and colour correction in selected image areas can be adjusted, moved and sized under control. The system can be operated as a stand-alone product or integrated with the Windows version of Ventura Publisher. Ventura PhotoTouch will ship early next year at $800. The Ventura ColorPro professional colour correction and separation application provides the capabilities of a high-end drum scanner in an approachable Windows environment, says Ventura. It enables users to work independently with the four process colours, and its features include tone curve correction, and colour correction for scanner deficiencies and ink impurities. The system, again, can be operated from within Ventura Publisher or as a stand-alone application. It costs $4,000 and will ship in the fourth quarter.
