ApogeeX 4

I guess I will be the first to post.

We are upgrading from Series3 and already purchased ApogeeX 4.0. I will be interested to hear from other ApogeeX users to see what issues crop up and discuss work arounds and the such. I had only recently started using PPF to get ready for the transition to ApogeeX, but was disappointed to find that it will no longer be. I am glad to see that a lot of the PPF members are comming over here and putting there 2 cents. I have already seen them make some improvements to the sight from users suggestions. Lets just hope that they take them all the way through the beta stage.

I look forward to discussing ApogeeX topics and as many other topics that come up.

Sincerely,

Pete Shovels
<PeterGr8>
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

I had my first look at ApogeeX 4.0 last week. Impressive!

Don't forget to also join Agfa's own Apogee User Forum. It is always useful to have two places to turn to in case of questions.
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

One of the most important features of ApogeeX 4 is that it now includes the Adobe PDF Print Engine for directly rendering PDF with no intermediate PostScript. It includes full support for live transparency and color management.

- Dov
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Don't expect an unbiassed answer about ApogeeX 4.0 , since I work for Agfa and have been an :X-fan from day 1 ;-)

Some of the things that I like in ApogeeX 4.0 are
- the search window: there is a little 'Google'-alike search-window at the top of the job list. Type part of a job name and the system automatically filters on that search string. Very useful!
- Next to the Adobe PDF Print Engine, there is support for PitStop 7 (about time, I admit)
- I love the new tooltip feature: hover the cursor over a job or a page,... and a little window pops up giving you more information about the job.
- In front of pages, you can now have little icons that show page offsets, you can have the creation date of a job in the job list,... The first impression I got is that the new Client (native on Intel Macs, another nice one) is more tweaked for power users.
- There are a number of new options. The one that I am going to have to master asap is the versioning option, allowing you to automate multi-language or multi-edition jobs.

I am going to need some time to discover the 742 other improvements myself. I haven't even had time to go through the release notes yet.
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Hi everyone,

We are getting ApogeeX 4.0 this coming Monday... can't wait to check it out. I'll make sure to post my impressions!

Cheers, Tony
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Hi Laurens,

How soon does Agfa expect an upgrade installer for those of us already using ApogeeX?

Thanks,
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

:^0 Hey Toney Glad to see your getting things going. I go for my training on the 24th and they will install on Oct. 1st. I will check with your postings to see how you like it. Happy Xing

PETER-S
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

ApogeeX 4.0 is currently available only for new installs. I checked the PIM and release notes but there is no info in them on the availability of the upgrade installer. I'll ask around tomorrow.

As for ColorTune 5.0: sorry, I never got into our color management stuff after a brief love affair with our Horizon scanners. I did notice today that you can have your monitor installed as a separate color management device in ApogeeX 4.0, for more accurate softproofing. Maybe it is indeed time to take a look at colormanagement again. Another cool (but optional) feature of ApogeeX 4.0 that I discovered is DQS, not on PrintDrive but fully integrated in 4.0.
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Thanks Peter,

Yea, as Laurens mentioned, ours is a new install so we are going straight to 4.0. The rep phoned today to get some final specs of our shop before he comes up Monday and he was raving about the new Adobe PDF Print Engine saying it was ripping through complex jobs in under a minute that would previously take 30mins to render. Can't wait to see this in action...

Cheers, Tony
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

> {quote:title=hopkinsprinting wrote:}{quote}
> How soon does Agfa expect an upgrade installer for those of us already using ApogeeX?

The updater should be available by early October but of course the roll-out depends on the planning of Agfa Services as well.
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Hi Peter-S,

Well, we now have ApogeeX 4.0 up and running. Haven't had a real chance to play with it yet, our installation has been pretty haphazard with the techs getting called away to already booked jobs, etc, but my initial impressions are that its going to be great. We have the new Adobe PDF Print Engine renderer running and it has had no problems processing any jobs we've thrown at it. Very quick too! I still have a number of jobs I want to try but since we are still at the inital plate calibration / press check stage I'll hold off for a little bit. Busy exporting all of our Preps templates across to PJTF format at the moment, pretty easy task, then we should be fully setup to go. Easy as to pick up, this is a brand new installation (everything manually done before) and we've picked it up in under a day, like how the system is very straightforward and all of the options you need for a job (approval, proceed, checks, etc) are available from multiple locations in the system so you are not held up seaching for the correct button or menu to verify a query. All in all I think this is going to speed up our production a lot once we learn the little ins and outs of the system.

And the Acento is awesome!!!

Cheers, Tony
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Glad to here all went well with the install. I am off the Boston for my training next week and they start the install on October 8th. Thanks for keeping me up to date with your progress. I'll try to keep you informed of our status.

PETER-S
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Have fun Peter!! We finished final press tests, etc today. Our installation has been a bit drawn out but come Monday morning I am ready to start running live jobs. Only one issue to iron out, the CIP3 generation. We currently can't get 1 CMYK ppf file per side, always generates black separation only. We can generate 4 individual ppf's per side, one per separation, so the press guys are gonna have to live with that for a day or two until its sorted.

Press tests today were brilliant, colour proofs off the EPSON 7800 matched the press sheets perfectly. We have upgraded from polyester plates to metal, and the boss was concerned about matching our previous prints, but after seeing the improved quality and the match to the proofs he is extremely pleased and now wants to concentrate more on how we can sell this new improved product to customers rather than attempting to match the old and obviously inferior quality from the polyester plates.

Press operator loved the Azura plates, only thing we had to change on the press was the packing for the different plate thicknesse. Otherwise everything else stayed the same...

Cheers, Tony
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Oh yea, forgot to mention the Adobe PDF Print Engine. We did a test today rendering a job through the old Adobe CPSI engine then rendering the same job through the Adobe PDF Print Engine. Honestly it took about a quarter of the time to render the page using the PDF Print Engine... Final output looked exactly the same so obviously the CPSI engine does a good job with the flattening of the file, but being able to maintain live transparency through to plate is vastly quicker and in the end I think will help people rest easier knowing that their screen view, with live Effects, is going to match the final output. We still have some customers hesitant to use Effects because of past experiences with other printers where their file hasn't been flattened properly and resulted in a less than desirable finished job... Now they can go crazy on their designs!!

Cheers, Tony
 
Re: ApogeeX 4


Wow, rendering live transparency! Now that is gonna be so cool to have at our disposal. We have an EPSON 7600 so I hope we have the same sucess that you are having with your 7800. We always seem to have a problem with solid blues, they generally always come out looking more purple than blue. Hopefully ApogeeX resolves that issue. I'll check in with you later.

cheers,

Pete
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

We are having X installed sometime mid October along with QMSx, new Epson proofers, Web Approval and
OPTiInk. We already have Agfa Platesetters and Proofers.

Should do my training sometime early Oct..hopefully in Santa Ana.

Also, anyone using OPTiInk in a commercial shop, web or sheetfeed.
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

I'd still like to know when ApogeeX is going to include a built in imposition editor that is capable of automatically generating impositions. Or maybe this has changed since I used 3.0.
 
Re: ApogeeX 4

Hi Dean,

We are running ApogeeX Prime 4.0 and have to export our templates from Preps in PJTF format for them to become available in ApogeeX... think the next version up, Commercial, has the Preps template editor, making it a bit more seamless, but you still need the third party app (Preps) to make it work.

Initial offer from AGFA included another imposition program Dynastrip, but again we would have had to create impostion templates and export to PJTF, so we just went with Preps as we already had it with a large number of templates that we are slowly exporting as required.

In fact, the imposition aspect of ApogeeX is one of the only things I'm not completely impressed with...

Cheers, Tony
 

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