Prinergy w/ColorFlow Pro and Epson P9000

Started by RMPrepress, June 20, 2019, 10:30:14 AM

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RMPrepress

Just hoping to get some feedback from Prinergy 8x users with ColorFlow Pro and Ink Optimization.
Are you happy with the Ink Optimization?  Is it working as you expected?
Also how are you driving your hard copy proofs to your output device, in our case an Epson P9000.

Manager/Default IT Guy - 2022 Mac Studio, Apple M1 Max, 64 GB - Ventura 13.6
Kodak Prinergy 10.0, Kodak Insite 9.5 and Kodak Proofing System 10.0
Epson SureColor P9000 w/XRite Spectroproofer - G7 Master Printer
Heidelberg Prinect 2022 + Suprasetter 106 CTP

born2print

No help here, we love Harmony and ignore Colorflow.
How will I laugh tomorrow...
when I can't even smile today?

Joe

Quote from: born2print on June 20, 2019, 10:58:22 AM
No help here, we love Harmony and ignore Colorflow.

Same here. Plus we don't have Prinergy driving any printers.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

David

We used Colorflow with Ink optimization at the old building (5 years ago). It mostly worked well, the ink optimization had some bizarre effects on some images, but you can set it up with ton's of options and you will probably get good results. It can save you a buttload of money on ink if set correctly.
The biggest problem we had was with the database Colorflow uses. If you continue to modify the settings, you have to save a new snapshot. These snapshots bloat the database and causes the app to lock up and you have to reboot the sever.

YMMV
Prepress guy - Retired - Working from home
Livin' la Vida Loca

born2print

Quote from: RMPrepress on June 20, 2019, 10:30:14 AM
Also how are you driving your hard copy proofs to your output device, in our case an Epson P9000.
We use a PC running Fiery XF, Prinergy sends TIFs to it, P8000 epson printers.
How will I laugh tomorrow...
when I can't even smile today?

David

You can set up Colorflow to output to all your devices (proofers, press, etc). We had ours set to output for an Epson 9800 for proofs, and we had all our sheetfed and web presses profiled.
Basically you have to profile all your outputs, put in the profiles into Colorflow and you should be able to hit your proof target at press. Our workflow worked well, but in a lot of our jobs, we had to not use the ink optimization because we couldn't get the saturation we needed on press.
But, we did have some web runs that we used it on and it worked well and we saved a ton on ink. A web press can eat up some ink in no time, so in this case, it all added up to major cost savings.
Prepress guy - Retired - Working from home
Livin' la Vida Loca

RMPrepress

Thanks for the input...
Right now we use Harmony to create our press and plate curves for Prinergy.
We also have Fiery XF v6 driving our Epson 9900. Our curves for G7 are applied at the Fiery.
We were using the ALWAN solution for GCR but have not kept it updated and now it cant be trusted to handle current PDF's.
We had very good results with ALWAN especially with uncoated jobs, the inks savings were a big plus and dry times were faster.
We purchased Prinergy about 2 1/2 years ago and we would really like to have the ink optimization/GCR all in line and use it on most of our work.
We are also about to install a new Epson P9000 so I really want to tie this all in.
I do realize that we will still need Fiery XF driving the Epson but all curves would come from ColorFlow Pro.

Manager/Default IT Guy - 2022 Mac Studio, Apple M1 Max, 64 GB - Ventura 13.6
Kodak Prinergy 10.0, Kodak Insite 9.5 and Kodak Proofing System 10.0
Epson SureColor P9000 w/XRite Spectroproofer - G7 Master Printer
Heidelberg Prinect 2022 + Suprasetter 106 CTP

johnny_jay

We GCR with Prinergy without ColorFlow. We apply a device link profile on refine that does the heavy lifting. We had Kodak help set it up in '09 or '10 but this is not offered any longer since it can be done in ColorFlow Pro.

You could have someone create the desired device link profile that would do the same thing.

We decided to do it on refine because we first applied it on output and sometimes we had some odd results. It's been so long, I forget details but had a reprint or two.

I have heard of workflows by using ALWAN with Prinergy but am not familiar with how to set that up. I think one shop I heard about processed all pages through ALWAN before bringing into Prinergy.

We also still use Harmony for all curves. We currently Use KPS for sending proofs to our Epson P7000 but are looking at other options.

Good Luck!
Kodak Prinergy and InSite
Preps
Epson P7000 driven by Fiery XF
Screen 16000N
Screen R36000ZX
3 web presses, 1 sheetfed press
G7 Expert

scottrsimons

We GCR our offset jobs through Alwan here before they go into Prinergy.

And even though we have ColorFlow, we still use Harmony for our press and plate curves.

And send proofs from Prinergy through both Fiery (up to date) and GMG (not up to date), to both an Epson 4900 and 9900. And also book proofs through IMPOProofer software pushing two Canon iPF9400SE(s).

We are G7 cert, and that is also applied to our Fiery and GMG.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!" - Homer J. Simpson

johnny_jay

Quote from: scottrsimons on June 24, 2019, 05:15:40 AM
We GCR our offset jobs through Alwan here before they go into Prinergy.

Do you use RBA to automate any of that?

Thanks,

John
Kodak Prinergy and InSite
Preps
Epson P7000 driven by Fiery XF
Screen 16000N
Screen R36000ZX
3 web presses, 1 sheetfed press
G7 Expert

scottrsimons

John,

We do with some jobs, but not the majority of jobs.

But we use RBA for a lot of other things.

Scott
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!" - Homer J. Simpson

RMPrepress

We have a dated version of Alwan and it is just not feasible any longer to stop jobs in Prinergy and move them to an Alwan hot folder and then back into Prinergy.
We have also seen Alwan screw up badly the look of complex layering and transparency.
We also use InSite and we have about a 1/3 of our customers uploading files with some processing rules attached so often times the processed PDF's are ready for imposition.
The cost to upgrade Alwan is almost the same as adding ColorFlow Pro w/Ink Optimization with 3 days of on site support and install.
Manager/Default IT Guy - 2022 Mac Studio, Apple M1 Max, 64 GB - Ventura 13.6
Kodak Prinergy 10.0, Kodak Insite 9.5 and Kodak Proofing System 10.0
Epson SureColor P9000 w/XRite Spectroproofer - G7 Master Printer
Heidelberg Prinect 2022 + Suprasetter 106 CTP

joaodaffonsojr

Quote from: david on June 20, 2019, 12:52:05 PM
You can set up Colorflow to output to all your devices (proofers, press, etc). We had ours set to output for an Epson 9800 for proofs, and we had all our sheetfed and web presses profiled.
Basically you have to profile all your outputs, put in the profiles into Colorflow and you should be able to hit your proof target at press. Our workflow worked well, but in a lot of our jobs, we had to not use the ink optimization because we couldn't get the saturation we needed on press.
But, we did have some web runs that we used it on and it worked well and we saved a ton on ink. A web press can eat up some ink in no time, so in this case, it all added up to major cost savings.
Quote

Do you have Prinergy driving your epson 9800 ?
is it connect via 9000 template driver ?

thanks !