CIP3 Consortium

Large and renowned prepress, press and postpress enterprises have joined together in the scope of an international co-operation and founded the CIP3 consortium.
CIP3 means "International Co-operation for Integration of Pre-press, Press and Post-press". The co-operation resulted in an interface used across the companies, which has been developed by the Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung (IGD) under the name "Print Production Format" (PPF) and adopted by all member companies. The PPF aims at the computer-integrated manufacturing of printed products.
This producer-independent interface allows to interlink the process steps, which are usually divided into pre-press, press and post-press stages. This saves both time and material.