XmPie vs Darwin

[Elgane]

Hello. I have some questions regarding XmPie vs Darwin. First off, I need to mention that the extent of my knowledge on this is limited work with datamerge in Indesign and doing both XmPie Udirect tutorials. And I should mention we are planning to print this on a Kodak Nexpress which allows printing of transparent raised ink (a clear, textured "varnish")

We are looking for a good VDP solution and I was wondering the benefits of using XmPie vs Darwin? I know there is a big cost difference for one, but can Darwin go as far as XmPie for complete solutions?

I think for now, we will not need to go huge with the entire XmPie software doing web, email, sms and server versions, we would stick to print and getting Udirect would probably be a good start off point, we may go as far as needing Uplan and maybe the server solution to not have to deal with the super long ripping of files. But we need to keep options open for the longer term for web, email etc as well.

The thing is, we are starting out, but we will want to put out high quality work, that means lots of transparency in indesign, specialy when we use the Nexpress feature for the raised ink (which is done as an added image on a top layer in multiply mode in indesign). One thing about this : Talking to a Darwin Rep, we were told Darwin did not support transparency output unless you went with a PDF? For XmPie, they told us, for a Kodak Nexpress, you should output to VPPL (not sure about the exact name).

So basicly i'm looking for opinions on both software, is doing alot of transparency unrealistic (is the technology too new to output these files), and to consider the Kodak Nexpress as the output (wondering if XmPie is working as well as Darwin with it).

Any comments would be appreciated.
Thank you.

[CSimpson]

I don't have a NexPress, but I do own Darwin. So, to give you a solid answer I need you to answer a question. To create the clear dimensional toner layer on your print are you required to use transparencies in InDesign or is that based on a gray-scale design in a separate layer?

If it needs to be transparency based within InDesign I would be a little cautious with Darwin. The reason is you can't use the more efficient output formats like VPS if you use transparencies. That being said Darwin is extremely fast, and I hear a lot people complain about how long XMPie takes to create the files. If that is the case, the Darwin PDF-rip-print time might very well be less than say the XMPie PPML-rip-print time. Now if you doing runs like 50,000 records I would suspect only having PDF output as an option might become a problem. If you plan on doing runs like that I would tell Kodak to let you test it for a week citing this concern and make it clear that if they don't you will just buy XMPie. Darwin is less money than XMPie and has some nice feature that I don't think low level XMPie systems have, such as adding actual pages to a document based on some varible in your data. I just think you are going to get a lot more bang for your buck with Darwin if this possible problem isn't an issue.

[youston]

Originally Posted by Elgane

Hello. I have some questions regarding XmPie vs Darwin. First off, I need to mention that the extent of my knowledge on this is limited work with datamerge in Indesign and doing both XmPie Udirect tutorials. And I should mention we are planning to print this on a Kodak Nexpress which allows printing of transparent raised ink (a clear, textured "varnish")

We are looking for a good VDP solution and I was wondering the benefits of using XmPie vs Darwin? I know there is a big cost difference for one, but can Darwin go as far as XmPie for complete solutions?

I think for now, we will not need to go huge with the entire XmPie software doing web, email, sms and server versions, we would stick to print and getting Udirect would probably be a good start off point, we may go as far as needing Uplan and maybe the server solution to not have to deal with the super long ripping of files. But we need to keep options open for the longer term for web, email etc as well.

The thing is, we are starting out, but we will want to put out high quality work, that means lots of transparency in indesign, specialy when we use the Nexpress feature for the raised ink (which is done as an added image on a top layer in multiply mode in indesign). One thing about this : Talking to a Darwin Rep, we were told Darwin did not support transparency output unless you went with a PDF? For XmPie, they told us, for a Kodak Nexpress, you should output to VPPL (not sure about the exact name).

So basicly i'm looking for opinions on both software, is doing alot of transparency unrealistic (is the technology too new to output these files), and to consider the Kodak Nexpress as the output (wondering if XmPie is working as well as Darwin with it).

Any comments would be appreciated.
Thank you.

I have tested both Darwin and XMPie for use with dimensional ink ... using a 20,000 record file with a small amount of dimensional ink usage, XMPie took 20 hours to prepare the files (processed on a uProduce server); Darwin took 10 hours to process the same file, but pretty much rendered my desktop computer useless for any other purpose for the entire time.

We're limiting our offering of dimensional + variable to very small lists (2000 records or fewer). Helps somewhat if the image on your dimensional layer is a vector image, but not enough to make any great difference.

I use the combination of XMPie/NexPress every day ... be happy to share any info you want.

Houston

[Elgane]

Thanks for the info, have you tried putting the raised ink images in overprint mode instead of multiply? I was wondering if that would cut down on flattening time.