Going Digital... Like everyone else. Advise.

[delooch]

None of this crap works as the salesman tells you it will.

Really?  :laugh:

"its all drag and drop"

[Joe]

None of this crap works as the salesman tells you it will.

Really?  :laugh:

Pretty damned profound today aren't I?

[gnubler]

LOL, you cynical old bastards.  :kiss:

[David]

old?
where...
oh you mean Joe, nvm

[Joe]

LOL, you cynical old bastards.  :kiss:

That will be the name of the movie they do about me. Like an updated Grumpy Old Men.

[gnubler]

I'll be in the movie, too.

[Aaron]

It bombs when it tries to trap it. Of course with digital you don't absolutely need trap so it may not be an issue. And it may only be a problem with the Kodak RIP because Kodak acknowledges it is a known issue in Prinergy.

Hey Joe, I think I'm getting a bit confused. Where does the APPE reside in a digital workflow? The controller (Fiery) or devise (Xerox 800 or Konica C8000)? It would be the controller, correct? The devise just spits out whatever is sent to it.

[Joe]

APPE is the RIP so yes, the controller but I'm pretty sure you won't find one with the name Fiery on it. You can get the digital option for Prinergy to feed a digital copier but it's big bucks. We did not get it. We just feed the Fiery and pray.

[Aaron]

That's what I thought. But I thought there was word on the street that EFI was about to announce the new release of Fiery and it was using the APPE 2.1.

Yeah thought about the digital module of Prinergy too. Well we thought about it until we saw the price tag. And since we are leaning toward a Fiery instead of a Creo box, the digital module wouldn't do anything with the Fiery. In researching Web-to-print solutions, EFI's DSF would best integrate with our MIS (ePace) and in that case would work best with an EFI Fiery box.

Although, don't you just use hot folder in either case?

Anyone out there using EFI DSF?

[gnubler]

If you're planning to run any variable data jobs on the new press keep in mind the Fiery does offer built in VDP tools while the Creo box does not. We ended up with the Creo and had to purchase FusionPro ($700) to do the variable data work.

[Aaron]

interesting. But the Creo box processes VDP faster, right?

[Joe]

That's what I thought. But I thought there was word on the street that EFI was about to announce the new release of Fiery and it was using the APPE 2.1.

Yeah thought about the digital module of Prinergy too. Well we thought about it until we saw the price tag. And since we are leaning toward a Fiery instead of a Creo box, the digital module wouldn't do anything with the Fiery. In researching Web-to-print solutions, EFI's DSF would best integrate with our MIS (ePace) and in that case would work best with an EFI Fiery box.

Although, don't you just use hot folder in either case?

Anyone out there using EFI DSF?

I hadn't heard about Fiery and an APPE RIP. It's about time though. Yes, with APPE you would need to use hotfolders to keep the transparency although Adobe was tooting their horns at one point that printing from an Adobe application to an APPE printer would not flatten but I haven't heard anything on that since CS4 was released. If true then Kodak must not have supported it because as far as I know Prinergy 5 has no way of "printing" to it.

[Aaron]

huh. So even if we had the Prinergy digital add-on and a Creo box in front of the digital copier(and assuming the Creo box used APPE), it would still be "printing" to the device (flattening) out of Prinergy. So would have to drop the pdf in a hot folder to retain the unflattened file anyway. Good to know.

[Joe]

I may be wrong on this but I think with the Prinergy Digital add-on, Prinergy is the RIP feeding the copier. I don't think there would be a need to have a CREO or EFI RIP in between Prinergy and the copier. And I've only had this "sort of" explained to me by a sales rep so it may not be exactly what I think. In fact it probably isn't. But I don't see why you would need 2 APPE rips (Prinergy and a Creo RIP).

[gnubler]

interesting. But the Creo box processes VDP faster, right?

The Creo box accepts VPS files (which is what I generate from FusionPro). It contains all the variable data plus the static image/background. With the Fiery you're somewhat limited because you have to feed it two separate files (I made PDFs to keep file size down). One being the variables, the other being the static background.