proofers

[rbailleu]

what do most people do for proofing. since heidelberg doesn't support the latest proofers, do most people use a third party rip solution. if so whats the most popular. or just live with the old proofers.

[Slammer]

Hard or soft proof, for me personaly if I do not have to send a hardcopy I use FirstProof from Hamillroad it is pretty acurate.

[toronar]

We use an Epson 9600 for our proofs.
But a lot of newer models are supported, too - not the latest and greatest, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

[Vee]

But a lot of newer models are supported, too - not the latest and greatest, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Bingo. Latest and greatest aren't always the best idea for consistent production.
If memory serves me correct, the latest Epsons will be supported as of Feb-March'ish 2009. So expect to see an update soon.

[Niels]

Hi,
Running 10 Epson 4800 today (internal and remote proofing) and waiting for the 7900 models to drop in. We're using GMG Flexoproof for color management but the ouput module only supports 8 CMYK's today. The Green and Orange, which we NEED in a hexachrome printing environment, will only be supported in a couple of months. I don't expect anything usefull before summer. I ran some tests on the 7900 last week with the build in Spectrophotometer, a blessing for managing the remote proofing setups.

niels

[meddington]

] I ran some tests on the 7900 last week with the build in Spectrophotometer, a blessing for managing the remote proofing setups.

Not to hijack the thread, but...are you doing remote (over internet) proofing driving the spectro, or remote (LAN) proofing? If the former, do you have an application on the client side, or are you communicating with the spectro via internet? Just curious as too the feasability of driving the spectro from the host site over WAN.

[Niels]

We do remote proofing over internet, the calibartion is done on a central location, we just have the calibration sheets send to us, we recalibrate and use the calibration profile again for proofing --a work around but pretty tight. Driving the spectrophotometer over internet is indeed the challenge...we never succeeded in making that work properly. As we try to base our solutions on standard modules and products we haven't done any programming ourselves..but, Epson to the rescue, can't wait for this solution.

[meddington]

We do remote proofing over internet, the calibartion is done on a central location, we just have the calibration sheets send to us, we recalibrate and use the calibration profile again for proofing --a work around but pretty tight. Driving the spectrophotometer over internet is indeed the challenge...we never succeeded in making that work properly. As we try to base our solutions on standard modules and products we haven't done any programming ourselves..but, Epson to the rescue, can't wait for this solution.

That's been our experience as well...snail-mail cal targets back to host. Inelegant, but effective. There are other options, but for completely client hands-off, this is still the best. That is unless driving the spectro over WAN can be achieved. Out IT guy says he can do it...but we don't have a printer with an on-board spectro at a remote location...yet.

[Niels]

That is the good thing about the GMG FlexoProof software (Home of Color : GMGColor). Their new version 5 makes it possible to do just that. It can keep track of the calibration status of the Epson 7900, local and off-site. The machine itself can be setup to run active calibrations at specific time and date but it can also check per proof it is out of range, it even has a 'holiday' schedule when it's not going to be used for some time it will self maintain through that period. Again something that is usefull as not all of our customers have a high through put on the machines.
Our experience is that the Epson proofers are so stable that we only calibrate every 4-6 weeks. The average DeltaE gap is between 1-3, which is acceptable for our customers. Of course we aim for maximum control and the Epson-GMG solution seems to be spot on again.

[janezl]

Rob, which printers exactly, are "latest" one?

Janez