Direct Smile

[Jim_T]

Hi All,

Anyone have any feedback on Direct Smile? I've purchased it after seeing what it can do - very interesting app.

Rampage JVX
Brisque 5.x
Preps 5.x
OS 9 - 10.x
Win9x, XP, NT, 2000 Workstation,
2000/03 Server G4, G5
Epson 10600, 10000, 9800, 9600, 9000
Hyphen Impoproof
HP3050
Canon Image Runner 125

 

[jctremblay]

Re: Direct Smile

Hi Jim...

SInce you have purchased it, maybe you are better placed than everyone else to send your impression of it. ;-)

We also have purchased it last december, so far we have been using it only for our own marketing promotion materials. It’s indeed really powerfull. The learning curve is not easy, the UI of the appllication is not that friendly but when you get to know how it work it could do really complex personalized document and images sets.

JC

 

[tgreer]

Re: Direct Smile

I've seen and worked with it a bit, since Printshop Mail now has a DirectSmile plugin. I would agree: powerful, a bit complex.

 

[Tony Pierce]

Re: Direct Smile

We use uImage from XMPie. InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator are behind it so it is super easy to use. Slower than Direct Smile, but they say that the next release addresses that. They just did some new release at Graph Expo that is supposedly easier still.

 

[tim_perrett]

Re: Direct Smile

> We use uImage from XMPie. InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator are behind it so it is super easy to use. Slower than Direct Smile, but they say that the next release addresses that. They just did some new release at Graph Expo that is supposedly easier still.

Correct, there was a new release at GraphExpro - version 4. The problems with speed up until now have been down to using Adobe system at the core of there products. InDesign server can run multiple instances on a single physical server, whilst Photoshop, Illustrator and friends can only run in 'single instance' mode; so during production if you have uImage elements in your design, uImage cant keep up with the processing of the rest of the job within InDesign. I would suggest that wont change until Adobe release a server version of photoshop/illustrator.

As for a hard performance test, uImage vs DirectSmile, DS would probally be a bit faster, but thats what i woudl expect in all honesty. DS only variable image composistion, where as photoshop is the tool we all use day in day out for pretty much any image editing task - its horses for courses as they say. I have no doubt XMPie will speed the process, to make it more acceptable.

Cheers

Tim

 

[JP@Service2Sales]

Re: Direct Smile

Hi all,


DirectSmile comes with a very powerful bridge to InDesign (DirectSmile SE and up). All functionality of InDesign becomes available in DirectSmile that way.
Further to that, DirectSmile is so much more than just Image Personalisation. It has a full scale VI solution outputting to any PS device supporting PPML and Optimized PDF. It will run calendars in a special calendar mode.
It comes with expression builder tools such If Then Else statements and such.

The tool will have you create mailings, emailings, PURL, SMS (TEXT), MMS, Animated Gifs etc.

The designer software uses the same tools as PhotoShop such as transparency, drop shadow etc...using the same shortcuts and key combinations.

Thanks JP