Billed for Color on B&W Printing

[GregNac19]

Alright I would like to open a can of worms here. Please anyone who has experienced this problem or can prove this statment is wrong please reply.
"The Xerox Free Flow Server is the only product that can sucessfully distinguish between color and B&W by page and not total job!"
Let me give you an example; Say a customer sends you a job and it is a publisher file with added clip art. You have 2 pages color and say 4 additional pages are B&W. The Fiery & Creo will charge the job color on every page with the clip art even if the clip art is B&W!
If I am accruate and some of your jobs are getting billed like this, the Free Flow server will more than pay for itself every month.
Remember, Xerox is still the only one with the Free Flow Server.

Please guys, I need to know if anyone has seen this problem.

 

[leetaylor]

Alright I would like to open a can of worms here. Please anyone who has experienced this problem or can prove this statment is wrong please reply.
"The Xerox Free Flow Server is the only product that can sucessfully distinguish between color and B&W by page and not total job!"
Let me give you an example; Say a customer sends you a job and it is a publisher file with added clip art. You have 2 pages color and say 4 additional pages are B&W. The Fiery & Creo will charge the job color on every page with the clip art even if the clip art is B&W!
If I am accruate and some of your jobs are getting billed like this, the Free Flow server will more than pay for itself every month.
Remember, Xerox is still the only one with the Free Flow Server.

Please guys, I need to know if anyone has seen this problem.

Nonsense!

We have a Fiery RIP on our X5000, and as long as "Black Detection" is enabled then only a Black click is registered.

 

[GregNac19]

Nonsense!

We have a Fiery RIP on our X5000, and as long as "Black Detection" is enabled then only a Black click is registered.

I don't think so. When jobs are changed from RGB to CMYK some files done from "publisher" will not tell you it is B&W. It will use process Black.

 

[che.c]

Uh? Fail? It detects black. You can tell it to detect RGB gray as black only as well. Sometimes it can't detect RGB gray if it's a rough scan or the colour's odd.

Or if you have registration crop marks on the job, they will, of course, put the machine into colour mode.

If you've priced a job black clicks it's imperative that you check the machine's detecting them..

 

[GregNac19]

Uh? Fail? It detects black. You can tell it to detect RGB gray as black only as well. Sometimes it can't detect RGB gray if it's a rough scan or the colour's odd.

Or if you have registration crop marks on the job, they will, of course, put the machine into colour mode.

If you've priced a job black clicks it's imperative that you check the machine's detecting them..

I am not saying this happens on many jobs, but you get one customer with a large job and wait for your $5,000 click bill. I hope you quoted the price right.

 

[che.c]

Nah I just run one copy to check it and look at the numbers before and after for colour/black clicks.

 

[sweatyclimber]

I don't think so. When jobs are changed from RGB to CMYK some files done from "publisher" will not tell you it is B&W. It will use process Black.

That is why I refer to that god awful monstrosity as "punisher"

 

[mattbeals]

Publisher isn't that bad. It's much maligned for color problems but if you know how to deal with them then it's not so bad. Have you looked at Callas pdfToolbox and what it does with RGB blacks/grays? have you tried Apgo PDF Enhancer? Those two tools can make dealing with Publisher color issues much more "pleasant" and help you avoid the color click charge for black pages.

On the Fiery SJ300 I worked with using a Konica Minolta C-500 we had a problem where we would send down a 4/1 job where the back page was black only. If the "black" page came down as K we would get two color clicks. If it came down as device gray then we didn't. I'm not sure if that is an engine problem or a RIP problem. Either way, it was a bad combination. So we ended up running everything duplexed manually and RIP each side independently.

 

[Craig]

Why can't this be solved through the impose/compose on the Fiery? Seems like it would be rather easy to select a page and "force" it to BW, save a lot of time and money.

 

[UberTech]

Detects b&w? Who cares? With the media manager on the either creo or fiery options on the c6501 you can TELL the machine what pages you want b&w or colour (yes you can make a colour page print b&w). Then you know exactly what you are getting charged.

This has been available on all our controllers since the c500.

 

[Savage]

At least the Fiery detects the B&W/Colour correctly.
Only exception is if you use Fiery's imposing software. Then, even if the job is B&W, unless you force it to B&W it will print as colour!

 

[che.c]

I've imposed a job with EFI Impose and it has detected black fine. Try changing the colour of your crop marks.

 

[X33]

I;ve seen the problem before ... it's a "bug" of MS Publisher.

we make it work with a Fiery controlled, even a Xerox WorkCentre office machine; don't remember how exactly, but here's a tip from Microsoft :

BUG: Grayscale graphics are printed as CMYK output in Publisher 2003

 

[exify]

my creo on c6500 does it right...

 

[GregNac19]

Detects b&w? Who cares? With the media manager on the either creo or fiery options on the c6501 you can TELL the machine what pages you want b&w or colour (yes you can make a colour page print b&w). Then you know exactly what you are getting charged.

This has been available on all our controllers since the c500.

Again read the post. Fiery would do this per job, not per page!

 

[UberTech]

Again read the post. Fiery would do this per job, not per page!

Read my post. You can change the color mode for EACH page in EACH job on EVERY RIP.

 

[SteveL]

UberTech, can you elaborate on that?
It's done using exception pages? Mixed Media? Acrobat/PitStop? Compose?

 

[UberTech]

UberTech, can you elaborate on that?
It's done using exception pages? Mixed Media? Acrobat/PitStop? Compose?

In mixed media. On the creo you will need the black only output profile which I can supply to you if you wish.

 

[SteveL]

Yep, I'm familiar with how to do it on a Creo and FreeFlow Print Server, thanks
I'm curious about how you do it on a Fiery.

 

[GregNac19]

In mixed media. On the creo you will need the black only output profile which I can supply to you if you wish.

Here is the example; please try this and tell me what you get. Scan a B&W document in color. Add this to a publisher file with the first page color and the 2nd page is your color scan. The scan looks B&W. You get billed for the Color cost all both pages though.
This is a real life example of a customer sending you an old photo with a publisher file and ASSUMING it to be B&W and billing the customer accordingly. Most people that do not have a technology background and with a $100 scanner do not know the difference in how to scan B&W only.
The fiery will not be able to know the difference between color and B&W. You must go into the actual file and change the properties of the scan to be B&W. If this is a large job or a job of over 20 pages it can take a lot of extra time.

So Ubertech, try this out and don't lie. Can it do it?