Our company is upgrading to CTP from film, we are currently running Delta. from the home work we have done,and price, the decision has come down to agfa's apogee and screen's Trueflow 3 platforms, Can anyone give me some info on how these 2 systems vary in the work flow.
Has anyone come across any problems with any of these systems.
Cheers

I've only used AGFA gear and apogeeX,
the first ApogeeX 2.1 ran like a dog.
But the latest versions are actually quite good.
In fact very good.
Provided you have fast enough computers running.
I once proccessed a 700 page (monoA4) PDF through It in one go, In about 7mins.
Big colour jobs with complicated transparency, paths and vector work can be time consuming. Apogee Is no good at converting RGB to CMYK. But I don't think any RIP Is. I have had troubles sometimes converting spot colours to CMYK (mainly with transparencys). Typically I will try to convert all my spot colours to CMYK before ripping them. (Again I think this a common problem for most if not all RIPS)

On the plate side of things The AGFA plate processors are very messy
and require alot of maintainance. I was talking to an AGFA technician recently though and he told me about new thermal, direct imaging platesetters that would eliminate these problems. Apparently they have no chemistry or water whatsoever. All you have to do Is clen down the rollers every 300 sqaure metres.

Also we have troubles with our AGFA plotters.
The nozzles block up quite easily, which means we have to run the plotter through a cleaning cycle quite regularly which chews through massive ammounts of ink.

Unfortunately I don't know anything About Trueflow.
However I have been told that most PDF workflow RIPS are the same.

I'm currently running Trueflow 3 and it does the job well. Since installing trueflow in 2001 we have only had it go down once and that was a hardware issue. We do 1400 jobs a month through it ranging from Business Card overprints to Packaging work through to perfect bound books. We send cip3 ink profiles to our heidelberg pressess and cutting profiles to our Guillotines. We only have 3 Trueflow operators do it all. It's extremely productive. As for the Agfa I've only seen demo's of it. I do know of one crowd who where having to split pdf's to single pages to rip them through apogee but I'm not to sure which version they where running.

Cheers for the info guys. We also have heidelberg presses, how do you send your cip3 files to the press, at the moment we have flash card with a writer that we write them on, we are using heidelbergs delta with there flash cards and writer.

You can setup trueflow to automatically generate a cip3 file when it plates a job. It writes it in to a folder on the trueflow server. Heidelbergs prepress interface software picks up the files and converts it in to the ink profile which we stick on to flash cards for our older SM52. Our CD74's looks into prepress interface via the network.

Hello Simon, Brad,

Welcome to the forums. I tested many/most of the major RIP platforms out there this year prior to buying an Esko-Graphics Scope workflow to replace my Creo/Scitex Brisque system. As I looked at all these RIPs I confess that I did leave out the Agfa Apogee X because Agfa is one of the last companies I would ever do business with again. I have always been very successful with DS Screen equipment and actually used to run a DS Screen demo center for awhile. So, I am very preferable to DS Screen as opposed to Agfa. But here's the main differences that I saw in all the RIPs and why I chose not to buy the TrueFlow for my operation.

The biggest difference to me was trapping. In all the RIPs I tested, there was very common functionality and feature because they were all based upon the Adobe RIP API. So, as you look at them all, there is very similar function and feature in normalizing and optimizing, settings etc. But most are trying to use their own proprietary trapping engines. And it is surprising how many will fail on very complex trapping tests, most fail to properly handle sliced flattened PDF files. Well, in my tests TrueFlow with the Taiga Trapping engine was placing traps on slices of a PDF where there were no color changes. So, the DS failed my trapping tests. But DS said that if I did not use jpeg compression in the PDF files that it would have done correct. Of course all PDF-X-1a are sliced flattened PDF and 80% or more of the PDF files in our industry are using jpeg compression. I found that to be too restrictive. I wanted a RIP that would trap all variations of PDF including sliced flattened or layered transparent and with jpeg too. Agfa Apogee X, although not tested by me this round, used Adobe IRT (in rip trapping) which will trap sliced flattened pdf and with jpeg compression etc just fine. Xitron has Adobe IRT which tested out to trap beautifully.

The other difference was in imposition. We are using Preps and have no desire to change that. Most RIP systems are trying to do their own imposition workflow and breaking away from use of Preps. We wanted a workflow that was easy to use Preps. TrueFlow was one of the least compatible to preps and forces a conversion from Preps that was clumsy and cumbersome in testing. Xitron, Esko Scope, Rampage, and of course Prinergy worked well with Preps in our testing. Esko Scope comes with Fast Impose software that was the best of the new imposition software that we saw. So in the imposition concern, Esko gave us full easy compatability to our current needs and a very nice move forward for later if and when we desire to change that. Again, I am not a proponent of Agfa Apogee X but I think it supports Preps and is more standard in terms of supporting normal imposition apps.

I think Simon and others who use TrueFlow are doing well with it. Have a look at the trapping and test it with some really sliced up flattened PDF files that use jpeg compression to be sure you are satisfied with that result. Also, look at the imposition carefully, that is a big difference but as I understand the Screen TrueFlows imposition works good, it just isn't compatible to using Preps or converting from it easily. As Simon is saying, it will work good for you if it tests out to handle your work and fit your needs. All these RIPs are pretty darn good.

I would encourage anyone to look at Esko-Graphics Scope really hard if you are buying a RIP. It is very powerful and the trapping and imposition support were the best we tested. Look at Backstage Edit too. With Esko Scope Backstage Edit you will have control over PDF editing that you will simply not believe. If you aren't a really big outfit, look at Xitron Xenith it's under $40,000 and is a great easy to use solution with Preps support and Adobe IRT. Xitron tested out great on everything, only drawback was that to see trapping on the proof, we had to trap with screened output and we wanted CT proofing. I would have bought that Xitron if our needs weren't so xtreme, I have too many presses to support and UV color with PMS touchplates, plastic and such. The Esko blew us away with the controls we could have to do business with.
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JoePostscript -- support administrator

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