creo vs fiery?
- Thread starter sbs01
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mattbeals
Well-known member
It's not a religious war for me, I like Mac's and PC's equally well. But based on my experience going back to the Fiery 125 I have never liked the interface. The tools "work" on the Fiery for the most part but the way they work is just not very friendly for "me". The Creo RIP's I believe have a better interface and the tools "work better" for "me". It's hard to quantify, it's a feeling.
What I can say is that with the Fiery RIP we had horrible, horrible, did I say horrible?, color problems with their color management on the SJ300. We brought in Konica and their experts, spectro's, Profilemaker, etc and had nothing but color problems. When we brought the Creo in we had the same "experts" set up the Creo and our color problems went away.
I've simply never met a Fiery that I have liked... Will I use a Fiery? Sure, if I have to. I feel confident in my ability to use CWS4/5 for production. But I'd rather have a Creo.
I like Windows 7 more than XP, but I'll use XP. I like Mac OS X 10.4/5 but I'll use 10.6. I feel just as comfortable on Windows as I do a Mac. A lot of it just comes down to feel and that is just very difficult to quantify.
What I can say is that with the Fiery RIP we had horrible, horrible, did I say horrible?, color problems with their color management on the SJ300. We brought in Konica and their experts, spectro's, Profilemaker, etc and had nothing but color problems. When we brought the Creo in we had the same "experts" set up the Creo and our color problems went away.
I've simply never met a Fiery that I have liked... Will I use a Fiery? Sure, if I have to. I feel confident in my ability to use CWS4/5 for production. But I'd rather have a Creo.
I like Windows 7 more than XP, but I'll use XP. I like Mac OS X 10.4/5 but I'll use 10.6. I feel just as comfortable on Windows as I do a Mac. A lot of it just comes down to feel and that is just very difficult to quantify.
What I still don't understand is that as far as I know the color management is the same, based on the Adobe RIP engine. It's like two different cars that have the same engine. Color experts I know state that both EFI and Fiery should be able to produce the same results, as long as you do the right things. I know some color specialists that have a EFI tattoo on their forehead that say the exact opposite (they hate creo). Myself, I am still undecided... And just so you know I respect your opinion
Steve_S
Well-known member
Just from experience, the Color Management is NOT the same. Now whether that is the way both of them chose to utilize the Adobe RIP is up to the experts to dissect. But in practical "field" usage, they do not perform anywhere near the same.
CathieH
Well-known member
I chose the Creo over the Fiery after much discussion. A couple of considerations were that the Creo handles color better than the Fiery, and with the Fiery, although less expensive than the Creo, needs enough add-ons to equal the Creo that it actually makes it more expensive than the Creo once those add-ons are purchased.
Now, I don't know these for a fact but was told about these things by multiple experienced users. Now that I have the Creo, I love the user interface, love the ease of tracking job codes with output quantities, color manipulation, etc.
Cathie
Now, I don't know these for a fact but was told about these things by multiple experienced users. Now that I have the Creo, I love the user interface, love the ease of tracking job codes with output quantities, color manipulation, etc.
Cathie
Steve_S
Well-known member
DZung -
The external RIP gives you the extra tools needed to have more control over quality and productivity. It is not automatic, so you must want to learn about what you can control and what you can make better. The 6501 is a very capable machine if you are willing to learn and make it perform a its peak.
mac_man_luke
Well-known member
We recently had our C6501 installed, we went with creo.
After using their showroom machine while waiting for our machine (showroom machine had fiery) im very glad we went with creo, so much more user friendly, better image quality out of the box - more logical overall. much quicker too.
Fiery does have some positives though eg spot library is more flexible, imposition software is more graphical which is useful in some instances.
After using their showroom machine while waiting for our machine (showroom machine had fiery) im very glad we went with creo, so much more user friendly, better image quality out of the box - more logical overall. much quicker too.
Fiery does have some positives though eg spot library is more flexible, imposition software is more graphical which is useful in some instances.
I've been using a Fiery for about 4 months now and found that the system is just way too over saturated with functions. Its great that they offer so many functions and several places to do the same funtion, but I find that you can easily get lost in it all. I do like the imposing software, but I wish it had a few more adjustments for pages and moving things around on the sheet. We've had lots of issues wtih our Fiery server as well, 4 days after it was installed it crashed, and has crashed several times since, including once after we used the clone tool to backup the drive.
I guess I'm just spoiled coming from a tradiitonal offset printing side and jumping into digital. I'd love to try the creo and see in in action since we already use some of their products in traditional printing.
I guess I'm just spoiled coming from a tradiitonal offset printing side and jumping into digital. I'd love to try the creo and see in in action since we already use some of their products in traditional printing.
Hi, I need a better rip for my Xerox 3535. Can anyone tell me what the best external rip for Xerox 3535.
Print on Demand
Print on Demand
Last edited:
hello, has any one got a new xerox clour 550/560 with the external creo rip? i had a chance to test the external efi fiery rip and currently i am testing the creo external rip. to my surprise creo is not doing as well as i have expected - i think it has got something to do with the printer, because we have a creo rip with our xerox colour 1000 press and it works just fine and seamlessly, but the creo with the cx560 cannot rip almost anything and quite often it crashes. as much as i have not had very good experience with efi rips, the one a tested did very well, did not crash once and ripped everyrhing... what really surprised me was that our old integrated efi rip connected to a xerox dc 250 did process a file which the new creo failed to... has anyone had similar issues with this combination - xerox c550/560 and the creo rip?
as for the comaprison of creo and efi in general, creo uses better hardware and the "architecture" of the rip is more advnaced - you do not have to re-rip every time you change something in the job settings.
it is also said that the implementation of the appe on creo is better than on efi; they seemed to me both working fine.
both rips give you i think fairly the same amount of functions; however, there is one that i have not found on creo, but is on efi: the possibility of setting colour mode for exception pages in a job.
the speed of processing jobs was practically equal, creo was a few seconds faster in my tests (this did not include any vdp since this is not our concern for this installation).
user interface and control: it is often a matter of getting used to it and also of the set up workflow (you may have a lot of software tools and ways to work with files in pre-press so you do not need them in the rip...). personally i think efi's command workstation is more flexible than creo's interface - you can install it on every pc, use drag&drop for submiting files, you can select more jobs and change their settings simultaneously and this can be very useful sometimes.
for a production environment i would go with creo, but for a print shop with hundreds of small jobs and files a day i would choose efi (but only if i could test it for some time before purchasing it and see for myself that it is somehow stable and not full of bugs - this is unfortunately also typical for most of the efi products).
colour and image quality: i did not have any significant issues with colours or image quality in my test prints, colour was good (which is not to say exact - i did not demand it here) "out of the box" for creo as well as efi, i did not do any profiling. and i also did not have any large colour issues with any of our two efi fiery rips we have used (which i profiled and got good results...). there are minor diferencies between creo and efi in colour flow settings (and some really odd "solutions"), but it would be too much to discuss it here.
as for the comaprison of creo and efi in general, creo uses better hardware and the "architecture" of the rip is more advnaced - you do not have to re-rip every time you change something in the job settings.
it is also said that the implementation of the appe on creo is better than on efi; they seemed to me both working fine.
both rips give you i think fairly the same amount of functions; however, there is one that i have not found on creo, but is on efi: the possibility of setting colour mode for exception pages in a job.
the speed of processing jobs was practically equal, creo was a few seconds faster in my tests (this did not include any vdp since this is not our concern for this installation).
user interface and control: it is often a matter of getting used to it and also of the set up workflow (you may have a lot of software tools and ways to work with files in pre-press so you do not need them in the rip...). personally i think efi's command workstation is more flexible than creo's interface - you can install it on every pc, use drag&drop for submiting files, you can select more jobs and change their settings simultaneously and this can be very useful sometimes.
for a production environment i would go with creo, but for a print shop with hundreds of small jobs and files a day i would choose efi (but only if i could test it for some time before purchasing it and see for myself that it is somehow stable and not full of bugs - this is unfortunately also typical for most of the efi products).
colour and image quality: i did not have any significant issues with colours or image quality in my test prints, colour was good (which is not to say exact - i did not demand it here) "out of the box" for creo as well as efi, i did not do any profiling. and i also did not have any large colour issues with any of our two efi fiery rips we have used (which i profiled and got good results...). there are minor diferencies between creo and efi in colour flow settings (and some really odd "solutions"), but it would be too much to discuss it here.
fourpaula
Member
I have questions about Fiery VS Creo as well. Currently we use the standard Fiery on our C900 & CPP650. The issue is when we use Direct Smile & PrintShop Mail for VDP. The standard Fiery takes 36 hours to process & hold a 4up postcard of 10K records.
I have been told we need to upgrade to the bigger Fiery or a Creo. I understand the Creo is designed for VDP but our concern is loosing quality with the Creo. I have seen the bigger Fiery & I wasn't all that impressed. What are reasonable expectations for these machines to process 10K records of VDP?
I have been told we need to upgrade to the bigger Fiery or a Creo. I understand the Creo is designed for VDP but our concern is loosing quality with the Creo. I have seen the bigger Fiery & I wasn't all that impressed. What are reasonable expectations for these machines to process 10K records of VDP?
Steve_S
Well-known member
If anything, your quality would go up with Creo. What king of image files are you using for your VDP runs that are taking that long? We RIP PrintShopMail files to the Creo all the time using Creo VPS language, and they take minutes.
I went from EFi Splash to Fiery and now I'm on Creo, so I have worked more than a year with each. We are a traditional print shop which means our standards are pretty high.
I prefer the Creo because:
1) built-in imposition that can re-impose without re-ripping is awesome
2) you can tweak the color to you heart's content
3) you can automate EVERYTHING, but only if you want
4) it updates itself automatically, and updates actually fix bugs in the program!
5) it can even print live spot color transparency correctly (the Fiery used to drive me mad with this, had to flatten, then watch out for color shifts, etc.)
6) mostly everything is included in the package. With Fiery you have to order all the extra bits, which I could never convince the boss to do (do we really need the whatever?)
7) I won't even mention VDP
That said, I think you should try each one for yourself if you are the one making the decision AND the one that will be working with it.
I prefer the Creo because:
1) built-in imposition that can re-impose without re-ripping is awesome
2) you can tweak the color to you heart's content
3) you can automate EVERYTHING, but only if you want
4) it updates itself automatically, and updates actually fix bugs in the program!
5) it can even print live spot color transparency correctly (the Fiery used to drive me mad with this, had to flatten, then watch out for color shifts, etc.)
6) mostly everything is included in the package. With Fiery you have to order all the extra bits, which I could never convince the boss to do (do we really need the whatever?)
7) I won't even mention VDP
That said, I think you should try each one for yourself if you are the one making the decision AND the one that will be working with it.
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