Ink Presetting Colorbar issue

[zoran]

Hi,

We have latest release of Prinect workflow, 2010 and older version 3.something of Ink Key presenting software.
They work just fine however older ink presenting seems to have brain of his own and does not respect colour bar assignment from the workflow.
In the workflow we are using "new" feature since version 4 "Automatic colour assignment" to colour bar which significantly reduced need for multiple colour bars so now we are re-using several colour bars for all the jobs.

This works great, but if we have e.g. black and spot job, in 4cp colour bar, black and cyan are assigned properly in workflow and plates but ink key preset software changes it to black and X spots.
In such case we have to manually adjust assignment on ink key preset console from X to cyan to match the plate.

I have not found a workaround, Heidelberg rep told me that we have to live with it, get a pressman to manually re-assign or we have to do it or upgrade to Pressroom Manager that supposedly takes care of it.

Anybody with same/similar experience and what is your workaround if such thing exist

Help would be much appreciated as manual intervention leads to error, angry pressman, forgotten assignment, etc..
Not sure when will I have funds to upgrade to Pressroom Manager as it is costly piece of software, actually not even sure that Pressroom Manager would support automatic assignment so if you have positive experience with Pressroom Manager, please post here so I can at least get independent confirmation that it works.

Thanks

[akalaray]

Hi,

We have latest release of Prinect workflow, 2010 and older version 3.something of Ink Key presenting software.
They work just fine however older ink presenting seems to have brain of his own and does not respect colour bar assignment from the workflow.
In the workflow we are using "new" feature since version 4 "Automatic colour assignment" to colour bar which significantly reduced need for multiple colour bars so now we are re-using several colour bars for all the jobs.

This works great, but if we have e.g. black and spot job, in 4cp colour bar, black and cyan are assigned properly in workflow and plates but ink key preset software changes it to black and X spots.
In such case we have to manually adjust assignment on ink key preset console from X to cyan to match the plate.

I have not found a workaround, Heidelberg rep told me that we have to live with it, get a pressman to manually re-assign or we have to do it or upgrade to Pressroom Manager that supposedly takes care of it.

Anybody with same/similar experience and what is your workaround if such thing exist

Help would be much appreciated as manual intervention leads to error, angry pressman, forgotten assignment, etc..
Not sure when will I have funds to upgrade to Pressroom Manager as it is costly piece of software, actually not even sure that Pressroom Manager would support automatic assignment so if you have positive experience with Pressroom Manager, please post here so I can at least get independent confirmation that it works.

Thanks

We have Cockpit 2010, Meta 2010, 2 Signastion and PrePress Interface ver 3.2
We have no problems

[zoran]

Are you using automatic colour assignment with 4cp colour bar for spot colours too?

[chevalier]

This is a known issue and has been present since 4.5. We run a LOT of spot colors (pretty much every job) and we have constant problems with this.

The only improvements we have found is to disable "Allow Spot Colors to BCMY" on the job inspector tab (I believe this can be turned off by default in the preferences). The other improvement is when using a CMYK+SPOTS to go alphanumeric in assignment of spot colors. Example: CMYK-X(Pantone 109)-Z(Pantone 350) instead of CMYK, X(Pantone 350), Z(Pantone 109).

Beyond that I am not aware of any fix.

[zoran]

This is a known issue and has been present since 4.5. We run a LOT of spot colors (pretty much every job) and we have constant problems with this.

The only improvements we have found is to disable "Allow Spot Colors to BCMY" on the job inspector tab (I believe this can be turned off by default in the preferences). The other improvement is when using a CMYK+SPOTS to go alphanumeric in assignment of spot colors. Example: CMYK-X(Pantone 109)-Z(Pantone 350) instead of CMYK, X(Pantone 350), Z(Pantone 109).

Beyond that I am not aware of any fix.

Thanks for response.
That is what I was afraid of, ..sigh
All I need is confirmation that this works as advertised in Pressroom manager.

[chevalier]

Lucky for you that I am upgrading to pressroom manager within the next month or two. I will follow up but I seriously doubt this will resolve the issue.

[zoran]

Lucky for you that I am upgrading to pressroom manager within the next month or two. I will follow up but I seriously doubt this will resolve the issue.

I am really curious if it resolves this issue.
It makes sense that it does since at least to me it looks like those old colour bars are hard coded to config on the old system so it just ignores what it gets from workflow Automatic assignment and allow spot to CMYK is new thing in PDF workflow and came out long after the last version of ink presenting software while Pressroom manager is brand new.

Fingers crossed