GMG or EFI - Question for decision

[rich apollo]

No. You cannot move profiles between gmg and efi nor any other color rips. They all are using proprietary file formats for their color profiles. eg. epl, mx etc.

I don't think that's quite accurate. The linearization and calibration files are proprietary, but ICC profiles can go anywhere.

[tmiller_iluvprinting]

I'm using Serendipity MegaRip. It's akin to BlackMagic, but without spot color capability. We don't run spot colors, so for us MegaRip accorded us a chance to save a few dollars.

Hi Rich,
Thanks for the info. I had a chance to check out Serendipity's BlackMagic and it almost seems too good to be true?
Is it pricey?

Regards,
Todd

[stargate]

I don't think that's quite accurate. The linearization and calibration files are proprietary, but ICC profiles can go anywhere.

gmg and cgs are using proprietary color conversions and are not compatible with anything else. You can use ICC profiles instead of gmg technology but what for? You would miss a lot of great stuff. Why buy gmg if you want to use ICC profiles unless you do some multi color work. You can also import or export ICC profile from them but you cannot use gmg mx4 or cgs rfp in other systems. Out of the major 3 players efi is the most ICC based. As Rich said lin is proprietary. If you are talking about BlackMagic check their support. I used to have a BlackMagic and replaced it with other system. Interested with older BlackMagic dongle?

[rich apollo]

Hi Rich,
Thanks for the info. I had a chance to check out Serendipity's BlackMagic and it almost seems too good to be true?
Is it pricey?

No, it's not pricey. Not at all.

To Stargate's point on support - you would rely more on your reseller. I haven't run into very many issues, but I have had a couple of questions.

Todd, I don't know where you're located, or who you like to deal with.

Eric Magnusson at LeftDakota knows the software in and out and Eric will be totally straight with you about it's capabilities and shortcomings.

David Piccus with Piccus4Color sells and supports it. Son Do with Rods and Cones sells and supports it. Troy Buccini with Mid-States Papers sells and supports it.

You can also contact Bob Miller at ColorHQ. He's the guy that introduced me to the product, and he can make you aware of other folks that are supporting the software. ColorHQ sells the product, but they farm out installation and support. My experience with Bob and ColorHQ was very positive.

Any of the guys I've listed are trustworthy.

By the way, Stargate, thank you for your clarification.

[Johu]

I don't think that's quite accurate. The linearization and calibration files are proprietary, but ICC profiles can go anywhere.

That is actually also not very accurate. As such all of the previously mentioned systems can take and operate with ICC profiles. BUT even if EFI (or any other proofer RIP) uses ICC profile as the output profile, it does not mean that it is interchangeable with some other RIP that uses ICC profiles This is because almost all vendors use proprietary halftones in proofers. This means that ICC created for EFI does not work as the output profile for some other vendors RIP.

To my knowledge CGS is the only vendor who actually has OEMd printer manufacturers halftoning for atleast Epson, Canon and HP. Even then using CGS ICC output profile (if somebody actually wants to use those in Color Tuner) to print with just printer driver that uses the same dithering is most likely going to fail, because of linearization and the fact that printer drivers mostly use RGB profiles where as Proofing rips ofcourse use mostly CMYK profiles.

To answer the original question of EFI or GMG. If you really want your different sites to have accurately the same result take GMG. CGS does the same with nice extra features like color accurate softproofing over a web browser and web browser driven UI, but it is unlikely that you would totally want to change your system.

[MonsterBabyBLN]

even if this thread is a lil old i would like to share my experience.

everyone gives pros and cons.. but noone gives reasons ? besides the very interesting list of the black magic!

i tried to work with EFI. i used tons of paper because sometimes the swatches for the DTP-20 just didnt came out right and EFI couldnt read them!.. bugs when building the profiles, too. it was a very rough way to finally get a very good ISOcoated match!
after month i was off around dE 4 avg.. so i tried to relinearize.. not possible. rediciulous reading results and no change at all in the lin.
so i moved to colorgate.. which is very easy to handle as it only has cantone drivers for my printer that do the job in this case.

BUT.. EFI has one major advantage in my eyes.. it has the patented dynamic wedge!
meaning you can choose instead of the fogra wedge up to 64 patches from the pdf you are proofing!.. then read them.. and optimize the profile just for that picture.. i loved that!