Hi everyone,
It’s been a while since my post about choosing between Hybrid Software and Esko. I finally went with Hybrid and wanted to share my experience with it since June 2024.
We got Packz and Cloudflow for our folding carton work, and I honestly love our new setup. It's really changed how we handle prepress - everything's more standardized, faster, and accurate. We can now turn around repeat jobs in under 5 minutes from approval to print-ready files. That's a huge for us since we deal with lots of repeat jobs needing artwork tweaks.
Packz is solid and fits well with our prepress workflow. The only hiccup is that most of our customers still send everything in AI format, so we need to convert files to PDF first. My team's still getting used to switching from AI to Packz - it's a bit of a learning curve when you've been doing things one way for years. But I've set up Cloudflow so that once they use Packz, everything else is pretty much on autopilot.
Speaking of Cloudflow - this can do so much. Many functional nodes already provided but if you want to get fancy with complex workflows, you'll need to learn some JavaScript. Some people say it doesn't match AE's features (can't compare myself since we didn't go that route), but with scripting possibilities, you can make it do pretty much anything. What need to be aware is that when Hybrid updates the default workflows (if they will), it can wipe out your scripts, so make sure to duplicate and rename them first, so your flow will be untouched.
The cloud setup is great - I can work from anywhere. Though trying to fix workflows or do scripting on mobile phone is a no-go. Not sure if that's a Cloudflow thing or just how HTML5 works.
One thing I've noticed - Hybrid's definitely more focused on labels and packaging than commercial stuff. You can do multiple-page step and repeat, but it's slower and resource-heavy. For books and magazines, we still need different software for imposition. Would be nice if they added better commercial printing features since those layouts are pretty standardized. (If you already have but I don’t know, please let me know)
If I had one complaint, it'd be about their manual. I use it a lot while developing workflows, but sometimes it's not clear enough and I have to contact support. Better examples would save everyone time.
Huge shoutout to Jean, our training technician - super talented guy who really helped us build a solid workflow for our specific needs. I’m sure no two companies use the system exactly the same way, so customizing everything wasn't easy.
Overall, no regrets about our choice. It's been a game-changer for our automation. Happy to answer any questions about our setup or experience.
It’s been a while since my post about choosing between Hybrid Software and Esko. I finally went with Hybrid and wanted to share my experience with it since June 2024.
We got Packz and Cloudflow for our folding carton work, and I honestly love our new setup. It's really changed how we handle prepress - everything's more standardized, faster, and accurate. We can now turn around repeat jobs in under 5 minutes from approval to print-ready files. That's a huge for us since we deal with lots of repeat jobs needing artwork tweaks.
Packz is solid and fits well with our prepress workflow. The only hiccup is that most of our customers still send everything in AI format, so we need to convert files to PDF first. My team's still getting used to switching from AI to Packz - it's a bit of a learning curve when you've been doing things one way for years. But I've set up Cloudflow so that once they use Packz, everything else is pretty much on autopilot.
Speaking of Cloudflow - this can do so much. Many functional nodes already provided but if you want to get fancy with complex workflows, you'll need to learn some JavaScript. Some people say it doesn't match AE's features (can't compare myself since we didn't go that route), but with scripting possibilities, you can make it do pretty much anything. What need to be aware is that when Hybrid updates the default workflows (if they will), it can wipe out your scripts, so make sure to duplicate and rename them first, so your flow will be untouched.
The cloud setup is great - I can work from anywhere. Though trying to fix workflows or do scripting on mobile phone is a no-go. Not sure if that's a Cloudflow thing or just how HTML5 works.
One thing I've noticed - Hybrid's definitely more focused on labels and packaging than commercial stuff. You can do multiple-page step and repeat, but it's slower and resource-heavy. For books and magazines, we still need different software for imposition. Would be nice if they added better commercial printing features since those layouts are pretty standardized. (If you already have but I don’t know, please let me know)
If I had one complaint, it'd be about their manual. I use it a lot while developing workflows, but sometimes it's not clear enough and I have to contact support. Better examples would save everyone time.
Huge shoutout to Jean, our training technician - super talented guy who really helped us build a solid workflow for our specific needs. I’m sure no two companies use the system exactly the same way, so customizing everything wasn't easy.
Overall, no regrets about our choice. It's been a game-changer for our automation. Happy to answer any questions about our setup or experience.
