Piet de Pauw · Head of Marketing · Enfoc...
On the final afternoon of Printing United Expo in Orlando, Wayne Beckett from INKISH stopped by the Enfocus booth to speak with Piet de Pauw from Enfocus. With only a few hours left before the show closed, Piet was still full of energy. âItâs been a good show as always,â he said. âHonestly, this is my favorite show of the year. The organization is fantastic, and we partner with many other vendors here. Weâve got six partnerships on display this time, alongside many others at the show. Itâs been an amazing run.â
Wayne noted that collaboration seemed to be a big part of Enfocusâs approach. âAbsolutely,â Piet replied. âThatâs the heart of what we do. For example, weâre working with Kongsberg here at the show, demonstrating how our solutions tie together. Weâre showing two things in particularâour Mini MIS, which we launched at last yearâs Printing United in Atlanta, and this year weâve added a layer of magic to it. Instead of just uploading a picture and removing the background with AI, we now turn it into a magic version of yourself. Weâve even designed a playable card game where your picture becomes one of the cards you can take home.â
After a laugh about the âmagicâ theme, Wayne asked for an overview of what Enfocus software actually does. âSwitch is built to be open at its core,â Piet explained. âI like to joke that Switch doesnât do anythingâof course, it does a lotâbut what it really does is connect best-in-class systems. A modern printer has to invest in a wide range of software: imposition, MIS, web-to-print, prepress, finishing automation, and more. That creates a complex tech stack. Printers donât necessarily want to spend time figuring out how to make all those systems talk to each otherâthey just want things to work. Thatâs where Switch comes in. It ties everything together, seamlessly. The best Switch installations are the ones where users forget itâs even thereâit just runs quietly in the background doing all the work.â
Wayne asked how that applied specifically to the partnership with Kongsberg. Piet smiled and grabbed a sample. âLet me show you,â he said. âImagine you take a full-body picture at a family gathering and you want to turn it into a life-size cutout. Normally, thatâs a long processâyouâd use Photoshop to edit the photo, clean the lighting, cut out the background, and then generate a cut path, which takes time. In Switch, it takes 30 seconds.â
He explained how the workflow operates: âYou upload the image, and Switch sends it to an AI tool that removes the background. Itâs then automatically enhanced by Viesus software, which adjusts lighting and image quality. After that, the file goes into PitStop, which generates a smooth, accurate cut pathâbecause if there are thousands of points, the cutting table either crashes or takes forever. We smooth those lines, add the base, and send it to our nesting software, Griffin, where we nest the file on a 48x96 sheet. The whole thingâphoto cleanup, enhancement, layout, nesting, and cut prepâhappens automatically. At this show, the printed sheets go to the Digitech booth for printing, and then to Kongsberg for cutting. From photo to finished, cut-ready fileâ30 seconds flat.â
Wayne laughed. âThatâs incredible.â
Piet nodded. âIt is. Thatâs the power of automation when all the systems work together. It saves time, eliminates repetitive manual work, and lets people focus on creativity rather than file prep. Thatâs the magic behind Switch.â
Wayne smiled. âWell, Piet, as always, itâs great to see you. I think next year youâll have to make the theme a bit more obvious.â
Piet laughed. âWeâll work on that for next year. Always a pleasure, Wayne.â