Hello,

I work as A prepress operator In Sydney. We use Agfa's ApogeeX 2.5 for ripping our jobs. Anyone who has used Apogee X would know that To run a job to plate or to proof, you have to rip/render the job seperately for each process.

Although this is can be time consuming It's not A big deal so long as, They are both going to be same. And 98% of the time they are.

However We have had A few cases where we have Ripped A job to proof that has looked fine however when we ran It to plate some of the text had squashed up and condensed to one side.

Agfa say this happens sometimes when A PDF has been exported from Indesign, as opposed to printed to A postscript and distilled properly.

Fair enough: But why was this not represented on our proof? ApogeeX has A new version out now "3.0". Agfa say this should fix the problem.

I am skeptical. I have not used any other modern RIPS.

Are they all the same. Or are there ways of Ripping the job once and being able to use that Raster data to run to plate and proof with colour calibration and all?

Hi bdehaan:

Im not sure if this is what you are looking for but I have experience with one system only and that was Creo Prinergy. I am a platemaker and only learned what I could about the electronic imaging end of it but I remember the guys would strip the job up in whatever program it was that they used and that one ripped file would be used for both proofing and plating. Now, in the Creo system Integris was used for proofing and Prinergy was used for plating but I would just grab the same file to output to whatever device I needed, the programs would then interpret the file as they needed to produce either a proof or plate according to the output device. I also remember some of our plates not matching the proofs, even though it was one same file, (ie. courriered text, missing images...) very rarely though. My educated guess is, even though it is one file, the individual programs interpreted some of the information in the file just slightly differently than the other to produce different end products. Integris would automatically print everything as a composite for proofs and Prinergy would keep seperations for plates. Now, in my experience it most probably isnt the programs' problem really, other than how they interperate. Fonts are most of the time, they can cause all sorts of anomilies and the way the file was written from its native program, the list is endless here.
Again, not my area of expertise but that is what I learned. I would tell the guys that the plates are wrong, they would do something to the file (re-write it most of the time) and voila it would plate ok but what majic they performed I really don't know. I hope I wasn't too vague and that this helps in some way.

filmroom1

Plates run @ 2400 possibliy 1200 DPI and CMYK (or spots)
Proof depends on output device take the Epson 800 series runs at 720 or 1440 DPI and 8 colours (CMYK Light C, Light M, Light B, Light Light B)

That being the problem faced by all RIPS and PDF workflows they HAVE to some how re rip files to send the relevent data to the specific device.

As you say 98-99% of the time there are right but fonts need to be embeded properly things such as dentiy H, CID or double byte encoding are new ways of embeding fonts by Adobe but older rips didnt know about so yes you are going to have problems with such issues. I would guess thats why the AGFA guys tell you that version 3 works because the new rip would be able to handle that.
That doesnt help because I bet version 3 of the RIP doesnt handle the latest "features" Acrobat 8 has so you will need version 4 of the rip that wont handle Adobes next features. Its a never ending cycle and unforuntatley RIPS arent cheap no one can afford to buy the latest rip every year but with Adobe realeasing new PDF versions and functionality you almost have to (WHICH SUXS!!!)

Theres my friday afternoon whinge (been a long week)

Apogee current version is 4.0. I am using 3.5, latest updates, service pack, etc.
With 4.0 You get the Adobe Print Engine 1.0 which means You can render native pdf-s with transparency and other stuff, what makes Your life hard. Just think about this. All the standards in our prepress world need pdf version 1.3 which is Acrobat compatibility 4, what disqualify the transparency. WTF? Yes, this is the standard. Just try to export a pdf from InDesign CS2, and preflight it with a Ghent profile. I think, we have to wait at least the Adobe Print Engine 2.0. And We have to teach our customers to make correct pdfs and to use the regulations of the prepress and printing industry.
_________________
http://www.ctplemez.hu/ www.duotonerepro.hu/

quote:

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Originally posted by bdehaan:
Hello,

I work as A prepress operator In Sydney. We use Agfa's ApogeeX 2.5 for ripping our jobs. Anyone who has used Apogee X would know that To run a job to plate or to proof, you have to rip/render the job seperately for each process.

Although this is can be time consuming It's not A big deal so long as, They are both going to be same. And 98% of the time they are.

However We have had A few cases where we have Ripped A job to proof that has looked fine however when we ran It to plate some of the text had squashed up and condensed to one side.

Agfa say this happens sometimes when A PDF has been exported from Indesign, as opposed to printed to A postscript and distilled properly.

Fair enough: But why was this not represented on our proof? ApogeeX has A new version out now "3.0". Agfa say this should fix the problem.

I am skeptical. I have not used any other modern RIPS.

Are they all the same. Or are there ways of Ripping the job once and being able to use that Raster data to run to plate and proof with colour calibration and all?

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Sometime You can find this card on eBay, or You can buy it as a second hand stuff. As new i think it is about 1500 USD. Maybe You can ask old Agfa service guy. I know our service guy has dozens of this card. Maybe I can ask him.
_________________
http://www.ctplemez.hu/ www.duotonerepro.hu/

quote:

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Originally posted by Tunder Lala:
Sometime You can find this card on eBay, or You can buy it as a second hand stuff. As new i think it is about 1500 USD. Maybe You can ask old Agfa service guy. I know our service guy has dozens of this card. Maybe I can ask him.

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Found this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Agfa-APIS-In-card-for-imagesetter-Rip_W0QQitemZ180133399430QQihZ008QQcategoryZ26246QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
_________________
http://www.ctplemez.hu/ www.duotonerepro.hu/