APPE worth the cost?

[kdw75]

Could someone tell me the benefits of getting an external Fiery with APPE? I know it doesn't require flattening of transparencies, but we can get by just flattening them in CWS after imposing them.

For the added cost, what's the real benefit?

And are there any benefits to having the external RIP when it comes to variable data formats?

 

[cosmo]

that all depends, what machine are you running, do you do process a lot of different files, if so, then flattening them first will cost you a lot of time, especially with multi page books, the internal rips on most machines are really slow, i mean really slow, and they have the tendency to choke on memory and do strange things. Ive used fiery, they are good, we use creo, they are better IMO, but usually more expensive, as with all rips they will try and make you pay for extra features, impo, variable data, colour management, spot colour mapping etc, tell them you want the lot for the basic package price, they usually come to the party. Also, keep with the updates on the APPE, even though its pdf native they can still have issues if not up to date with the latest pdf standard.

 

[kdw75]

that all depends, what machine are you running, do you do process a lot of different files, if so, then flattening them first will cost you a lot of time, especially with multi page books, the internal rips on most machines are really slow, i mean really slow, and they have the tendency to choke on memory and do strange things. Ive used fiery, they are good, we use creo, they are better IMO, but usually more expensive, as with all rips they will try and make you pay for extra features, impo, variable data, colour management, spot colour mapping etc, tell them you want the lot for the basic package price, they usually come to the party. Also, keep with the updates on the APPE, even though its pdf native they can still have issues if not up to date with the latest pdf standard.

We currently have a Xerox C75 with the bustled RIP and it has Fiery Impose along with Color Profiler Suite and the spot color matching features.

We do a lot of color critical work that includes some catalogs, and in almost every case I get white boxes and strange anomalies until I convert the spot colors to CMYK and flatten the files. Our RIP seems pretty fast, but I am toying with upgrading to an external.

We are also planning to do larger volumes of VD mailings and I am wondering if an external RIP would work better with whatever VD solution we upgrade to, possibly Fusion Pro for starters. We are looking at runs in the 20-30K range, so not too big.

 

[mattbeals]

The external RIP's will have more features and higher performance. The APPE will be more efficient in processing jobs with VDP & transparencies. You won't have to use PostScript to flatten the transparencies, it's all native. It's just the smart way to go. Not cheap, but it's well worth the investment.