Pinnacle Awards for Hybrid Software print workflow ‘breakthroughs’
Hybrid Software has earned two 2026 Pinnacle Technology Awards from PRINTING United Alliance for innovations that deliver faster, smarter print production workflows. The award-winning products – Mako Core with Apex and PACKZ Max – each represent industry firsts: Mako Core with Apex is the first fully GPU-native renderer for print workflows and PACKZ Max is the first PDF editor with an integrated raster image processor (RIP).
Mike Rottenborn, CEO of Hybrid Software, says: “These awards demonstrate how we continue to challenge established approaches to print production and we are honoured that PRINTING United Alliance has recognised the impact these products are having across the industry.”
Mako Core with Apex, developed by Hybrid Software Helix, is the first software development kit for print workflows to incorporate a fully GPU-native renderer. Unlike conventional architectures that use GPUs only for selected acceleration tasks, Apex executes the entire rendering pipeline on the graphics processor and delivers rendering performance up to 30 times faster than traditional CPU-based approaches. It also enables post-processing functions, including halftone screening, to be performed directly on the GPU, reducing bottlenecks and providing a highly scalable platform for complex, high-resolution, and variable-data print workflows.
PACKZ Max, from Hybrid Software’s labels and packaging business, is the first PDF editor with an integrated RIP. It combines PDF editing and the Harlequin RIP from Hybrid Software Helix in a single application, enabling prepress operators to edit, preview, screen, and output files within one environment. Users can see exactly how a job will image before it reaches the platesetter, bringing tasks that traditionally require separate editing and RIP applications into a single workflow.
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