RIPs: Adobe, Harlequin or whatever?

[Laurens]

I set up a poll on Prepressure.com to ask people about their favorite RIP.

In the past, the right RIP choice used to be a big issue to many people. I would get elaborate test files that people had created to check if our systems could process the files, how fast this happened and what the screening looked like. I guess the technology has matured so much that the choice isn't that important anymore. Test files have vanished and in-depth questions about RIP-technology are also a thing of the past.

I've used Adobe RIPs all my career but have occasionally played around with Harlequin systems. I still like Adobe technology but am not exactly a die-hard fan, so I voted 'It doesn't matter anymore'.

What do you prefer and why?

[ninjaPB_43]

Im voting Adobe based mainly because it's the only one I have any real experience with..  Was working with Taipan(Agfa?) at old job, but its been too long to remember much other than I hated the POS.

[Joe]

I voted "It doesn't matter anymore" for the reasons you stated. I use neither an Adobe or Harlequin. It's Nexus and they march to the beat of their own drum and I'm not die-hard about it.

[jezza]

I always found Harlequins rock solid, just calibrate the image setter (lino preferably) once a week and every time you change the film and you can't go wrong. Although one did once famously tell me to eff off!

So long as it's true postscript and not emulated, I don't think it matters so much now, and even some of the emulaters are cool so long as Adobe don't change something...

Apologies to all those that have seen this picture before

[frailer]

I'm with Joe on this, pretty much, but given my limited experience...well, here's my 2c worth. Our Screen OEM'd Harly was pretty good, but it was an entirely different kettle of fish to our current, gruntier, more up-to-date Celebra. Things just never stand still, I guess. I was just "warned", in the nicest possible way, that we could start to expect the occasional "problem", as we get later-versioned files.     [new RIP 12/06]. Sometimes ya just feel like freezing the "upgrade time/space continuum" for 18 months, to get a break from it all! Still gotta make those profits... :rolleyes:

Celebra is supposedly fully CPSI compatible. I'm assuming it's an 'Adobe' RIP. Ditto for their XMF workflow, [read Print Engine].

[David]

Esko Flexrips have been the RIP of choice here for over 12  years now.
I was told, don't remember who or when, that the Esko FlexRIPs were better than the Adobe RIPs.
(Don't quote me on this, it's probably just a rumor, but, you never know.)


But as stated before, I don't think it really matters anymore, as long as the one you are using is from the last decade.

[EmptyWords]

I second what Joe and Frailer said, I have had all three, Adobe to Harlequin, back to Adobe, then to AWS both Nexus & Odystar. The first adobe was pretty good, slow as sh*t, but overall not bad. I really liked the Harlequin, very fast at the time, only had a few problems. Now the switch back to Adobe (vendor will remain anonymous) was utter crap from day one, both the vendor and Adobe did a very poor job with the rip/workflow, of course any problems were shifted to something else and the blame game started, it's not the Adobe libraries or the implementation of the libraries by the vendor, blahh, blahh, blahh. We switched over to AWS, they are not Adobe nor Harlequin, they license all the Adobe libraries and do their own thing, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but they have beaten most others to the market with support for new formats.

[Zimmy3]

I had experience with Harlequin,Nexus,Esko.
I think it depends on what your outputting.
Believe it or not I prefer Harlequin. It was fairly easy to understand and doesn't
seem to have as many variables as the other 2.

[almaink]

LOL, And here I almost forgot what that RIP GUI looked like, does it still have "classic" windows Jezza or was this screen shot taken in Classic?
RAMpage is such a different animal.

[jezza]

Must be about  8 or 9 years ago alma, was on a Mac 9600 with a flavour of 7.5 I think

[beermonster]

the latest are the same but mine has a windoze xp gui

[hagar_uk]

the latest are the same but mine has a windoze xp gui

Not that much has changed over time on the GUI, but thankfully some of the OEMs bolt on their workflows
such as quickflow from Highwater and GPS from Xitron, and a few others around which bring it into 21st century.