Crosfield aids Lightspeed, graphics - Lightspeed Color Layout System

Boston-Crosfield Design Systems celebrated its apparent salvation from the threat of arch-rival Scitex Corp. by launching several new products at the recent Siggraph '89 graphics show, including streamlined prepress functions for its Lightspeed Color Layout System.

on the very same day Crosfield learned it was purchased instead by a joint venture formed by two companies with deep pocketsDu Pont and Japan's Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. (Folio:, september, page 8)-the company also rolled out a link between its film recorders and Macintosh, plus enhancements to other graphics design products.

Calling the Du Pont-Fuji buy "very good news for crosfield," Trevor Haworth, Design Systems president (and, coincidently, a former Du Pont executive) announced enhancements for its Lightspeed Color Layout System (CLS). The New CLS software will allow magazine, advertising, and other designers to lay out more complicated pages on a Mac II, while speeding processing and console time.

The new CLS can handle more complex line work and page geometry; automatically replace scaling and rotation information; record more comprehensive information for page production; and comes with better naming conventions, Haworth says.

The Design Systems unit also introduced an interface to the new Kodak XL7700 Digital Continuous Tone printer to produce photoquality color and black-andwhite prints from Crosfield's Imaginator II Design Station. Imaginator combines image creation and line graphic capabilities into one workstation.

Crosfield also unwrapped an interface that allows graphics created on the Macintosh to be output onto the firm's film recorders. In a magazine application, it could produce slides in formats ranging from 35 mm to 8 x 10 inches, from which color separations could be made.

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