'Splitting' document with both color and black&white to different printers

[RobertK]

Dont know if this is supposed to be in Prepress/Workflow or Digital Printing discussion, but here goes.

We are investing in new printers. Canon Imagepress 1110 for black&white, Oce CS665 for color. They are replacing a Xerox 4110 and DC250.

Our work is short run book printing, which we perfect bind offline.

We print almost everything 4-up on max sheet size 13x19 inch. The size of inserter unit on 4110 is A3. So we currently cant combine color+black&white. Books that even have few color pages we print on the DC250.

With the new Canon we will have a 13x19 inserter unit, to insert the 13x19 inch color sheets. So now we can combine the color pages on the black&white machine.

But now, how do you do this? We have no specific software or workflow.

I have talked with OCE. They have PrismaPrepare, saw a short demo. This could be a solution, but its another software package you need to use. And it has features i wont even use, we have our own imposition software and such.

Canon told us EFI has a solution called color split which could work in your FIERY command workstation. I have someone in the office next week from Canon and EFI to discuss this.

But are there other solutions?? And i have some questions id like some feedback on. Not just for the splitting of color, but also practical, prepress and wokflow. I just dont want to go invest in some piece of software and end up with all kinds of headeaches..

1. I can have a PDF with 20 color pages, but my client only wants a selection of these printed in color. Lets say this person doesnt have software to make the photos black&white, he just supllies it as it is. What i do CURRENTLY is manually select batches of pages and make them black&white/keep them color. I do this within pitstop pro. like this for example MAKE BLACK: 1-5,8-13,16-25. LOT OF WORK AND A REAL PAIN.

Can i just tell the 'splitting'software before splitting which need to be black and which need to be color? So basically...im splitting it? ;-)

My idea was, dont know if its smart.. Couldnt i let my client do this for me? in some online tool. He selects pages to be color, uploads the file. Then goes into my workflow(which we DONT have, YET) which checks the file and auto makes the non color selected pages black.

OR after uploading the workflow makes a certain job with the color page info and splits it accordingly without needing to make non color pages black.

2. Sometimes text/photos/graphs etc LOOK black, but they arent. They are made up from RGB or CMYK values. But my client sees wat he sees in his document, and would assume these are black. And with this fact we dont even bother telling the client to let them know. But you also dont want any color-clicks for these pages. So like above, i go manually through the document and make these pages black..but page by page.

3. You print duplex. page 1 is color and page 2 is black. You still have to print page 2 on your color machine because they are on the same sheet.
And how does that go in practice with software? Because it would split color to the color machine and black to the black&white machine?

4. What if a inserted color page on the black&white machine jams, sheet ruined, there goes your color sheet sequence. What now?
Does software see this, give you a heads up, and auto/or asks prints a new colour sheet on your color machine?

As you might understand i have real reservations about this in practice. Maybe im thinking to difficult, or maybe i am just being realistic..i dont know. I just dont want to go around inventing the wheel again, if maybe relative easy solutions are there!

Thanks for reading,
Robert

 

[RobertK]

I must be spamming WAY to much info ;-)?

 

[rich apollo]

How do you send your documents to the RIPs?

 

[RobertK]

How do you send your documents to the RIPs?

We send/import already imposed PDF files to Fiery Command Workstation.

 

[kslight]

1. No idea if something like this exists.

2. We have to do the same on process black to make it register as a grayscale click on the color machine.

3. Our Xerox machines will auto register the black/color clicks as long as the black is not a process black image. You should have separate meters so watch them.

4. This is not an ideal way to do this IMHO, more predictable to insert by hand. Oftentimes when we have mixed color and black and white that has to run on different machines, we will split the job into sections and marry the sections together by hand. Not being familiar with the way Canon's work...on our Docutechs I can program inserts to be in sequence, so if there is a jam, the machine will purge the rest in the sequence to get back to the sheet it was on...but in my experience this is better done by hand as if you have a lot of jams and/or inexperienced operator this can become a nightmare in a hurry.


From what I can tell, the problem you are experiencing is not hardware/software related, I think it is how your workflow is setup. I don't think replacing your machines with one that has a larger inserter is going to fix the problem...if you have books with few color pages to me it makes a lot of sense to just print the black out either as a full set (with slipsheets), or in sections (divided by where the color gets inserted) and hand insert. I don't know of any software that will automate this workflow to make it easier.

 

[Harrob]

I have worked with the PrismaPrepare software before and this would be excellent for your application.

This will cover a lot of your issues such as:

You would not need to convert pages to black and white. With PrismaPrepare you can "mark" the pages that you want to print in colour and the rest of the document will be automatically be converted to B&W when sent to the Canon.

In terms of duplex print, say page 1 is colour and page 2 B&W. When the document is sent to the engine it will send page 1 & 2 for duplex which resolves another of your issues.

The only thing that would have to be tested is the inserting side of things. When I have used this software it has always been with Oce B&W engines. So when the job gets to the Oce all the tray calls work perfectly. So I have one tray for my stock to be printed on and another tray with my collated preprinted stock. I am not sure how the Fiery would handle this.

In terms of the engine jamming and ruining a sheet in the sequence, well then you would have to have a offline finisher with some sort of sheet recognition to know of a damaged sheet. I have seen this working in terms of mail inserting but it would cost a fortune.

 

[Harrob]

Just had another idea.

If you are running Fiery's on both engines then maybe EFI Balance would be a good option. I have not used this software before myself but I believe that this could do what you are after as I know that it will do colour splitting and might be a good solution to your problem.

 

[RobertK]

1. No idea if something like this exists.

2. We have to do the same on process black to make it register as a grayscale click on the color machine.

3. Our Xerox machines will auto register the black/color clicks as long as the black is not a process black image. You should have separate meters so watch them.

4. This is not an ideal way to do this IMHO, more predictable to insert by hand. Oftentimes when we have mixed color and black and white that has to run on different machines, we will split the job into sections and marry the sections together by hand. Not being familiar with the way Canon's work...on our Docutechs I can program inserts to be in sequence, so if there is a jam, the machine will purge the rest in the sequence to get back to the sheet it was on...but in my experience this is better done by hand as if you have a lot of jams and/or inexperienced operator this can become a nightmare in a hurry.


From what I can tell, the problem you are experiencing is not hardware/software related, I think it is how your workflow is setup. I don't think replacing your machines with one that has a larger inserter is going to fix the problem...if you have books with few color pages to me it makes a lot of sense to just print the black out either as a full set (with slipsheets), or in sections (divided by where the color gets inserted) and hand insert. I don't know of any software that will automate this workflow to make it easier.

The one thing i will not do, it doing it by hand! We sometimes do this with VERY few color pages, but it is not an ideal thing to do...

I think to i really have to look into workflow. I have some meetings with people next week.

 

[RobertK]

I have worked with the PrismaPrepare software before and this would be excellent for your application.

This will cover a lot of your issues such as:

You would not need to convert pages to black and white. With PrismaPrepare you can "mark" the pages that you want to print in colour and the rest of the document will be automatically be converted to B&W when sent to the Canon.

In terms of duplex print, say page 1 is colour and page 2 B&W. When the document is sent to the engine it will send page 1 & 2 for duplex which resolves another of your issues.

The only thing that would have to be tested is the inserting side of things. When I have used this software it has always been with Oce B&W engines. So when the job gets to the Oce all the tray calls work perfectly. So I have one tray for my stock to be printed on and another tray with my collated preprinted stock. I am not sure how the Fiery would handle this.

In terms of the engine jamming and ruining a sheet in the sequence, well then you would have to have a offline finisher with some sort of sheet recognition to know of a damaged sheet. I have seen this working in terms of mail inserting but it would cost a fortune.

Offline finishing would indeed cost a fortune if done right..

OCE told me that PrismaPrepare is platform independent, and could be used if you dont have any OCE machines. But i would have to see a proper demo of this first.

Next week Canon will show me some workflow solutions. It think it will be there Helix wokflow and the EFI balance.