Free image preprocessing app

exiton

Member
Shareware (free usage) with unique features for spot colors.

All conversions will be done without rasterization so vector content, jpeg streams, color profiles will be preserved
  • Map/Merge/Remove/Separate spot colors
  • Automatically split raster colors image into spot colors
  • Detect frames or crop marks to crop product rectangle from imposed image
  • Lots other features and standard preflight analysis
Link to download and more details http://exitonsoftware.com/ColorSplitter.html
 
The Mac version is not available at the moment - the app itself is portable and can be built for Mac but internal image processing modules are C++ - so we have to compile them for Mac.
So could you try it under Windows - if the functionality be really helpful and interesting - we will prepare Mac version for you
 
The Mac version is not available at the moment - the app itself is portable and can be built for Mac but internal image processing modules are C++ - so we have to compile them for Mac.
So could you try it under Windows - if the functionality be really helpful and interesting - we will prepare Mac version for you

Exiton, firstly thank you for freely offering your product.

I need to do further testing, however I like what I see so far and I have only played for 30 minutes or so with a simple 4C vector business card PDF! I think that there is a small core niche market that would find this very useful and a larger market that would use it far less – however they would be appreciative when they did need to use it.

Initial thoughts:

1. The installer downloads as ColorSplitter-1.1.5.msi.exe however the double extension of .exe appears to confuse Windows and it will not run, removing .exe so that it simply has the .msi extension will let the installer run.

2. In Australia we use the metric system, I don’t want to be confounded with inches as a unit of measure. How does one change the unit of measure to metric? There should be a program wide default that is remembered after being set.

3. There are no common metric sizes for business card “products” (yes, there is a product edit button to set your own sizes, which is helpful). They vary slightly between “personal standards” depending on the originator. 50x90, 55x90, 54x89, 54x88 etc.

4. Saving a small/simple vector file as composite or separated PDF file that has been processed (say 4 colour process mapped to only 2 spot colours) happens so fast that I hit the save button a second time as I thought that nothing happened, then I was presented with a message to override. So perhaps a “save completed” message to provide feedback would be nice. EDIT: I now see that there is a status readout on the lower left, perhaps it would be better placed on the lower right so that it is more visible directly after processing using the save button.

5. The right hand side panel for Info/Composite/Separations could potentially benefit from having the preview image area be resizable smaller when needed, so that the Color List area can be expanded larger so that one does not have to scroll in the small area provided to easily see all separations. Sometimes the color list is important to view without scrolling, othertimes the preview would be more important.

6. Having the ability to zoom/pan within the preview area would be great (similar to the left hand input preview), especially once a job has been re-separated/re-mapped.

7. Depending on the target market, a 1-bit output option may also be useful… However that would then mean that you would need a halftone output feature which may be expecting too much (600, 1200, 2400 and 2540 ppi)!

8. As processing changes are applied to each page separately, it would be good to be able to copy the applied changes from a previous source page to a target page. Why manually re-do everything again if it equally applies to the p2/back of the job as well as the p1/front of the job?

9. Once changes have been applied, being able to save and reuse the settings as a “preset” would be helpful. In order to speed up work if the file was changed and required reprocessing or if this was a regular, commonly repeating/reoccurring job.

10. Crop marks generated by the program are coloured 100%CMYK (400%) rather than in registration/all colour or overprinting in 100% of the new separated spot colours.

11. Saving to raster format (TIFF 600 or 1200) with the crops checked, no crops were produced? However creating a separated PDF crops were produced.

12. You have done a great job with the auto colour separation to new colours, however it would also be useful to simply split a CMYK/Spot PDF into it’s source colour separations without changing the input values (auto creation of native/existing colour separations to separated PDF, TIFF etc).

_________

So, despite my list above, you have done well for a beta/gm/rc/v1.0 release!


Stephen Marsh
 
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" 9. Once changes have been applied, being able to save and reuse the settings as a “preset” would be helpful. In order to speed up work if the file was changed and required reprocessing or if this was a regular, commonly repeating/reoccurring job. "

i have not tested the product, exiton … but recognize a "preset" option fellow member Stephen Marsh illustrated should definitely be a vital component of your software.

often we accept 200pg to 350pg books which incorporate themed designs inherent on each/every page within the book. a quick "preset" would alleviate doing this task manually on each page.

or, say, the same job comes back on correction-phase … same identical settings need to be administered … with a "labeled" preset, one can keep track per specific job-name.

oh … and welcome to printplanet.com forum, exiton … best wishes to the continued success of your venture.
 
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Thank you for your efforts. All advises and requests will be taken into account and implemented.
We can implement the command line version but to understand what functionality is most wanted - please try the current version and indicate which functionality you like to have available as CMD version
 
Thank you for your efforts. All advises and requests will be taken into account and implemented.
We can implement the command line version but to understand what functionality is most wanted - please try the current version and indicate which functionality you like to have available as CMD version

Just an idea, it may be too much work for a small subset users though…

I am sure that you are aware of the Robocopy CLI command (better than Xcopy). It can be hard for new users to learn though, remembering all of the switches, arguments, syntax etc. There is a GUI front end called “Robocopy GUI”, which allows a user to select in/out paths and various switches/options etc… then it can either directly run or write out a script in .cmd that is correctly formatted.

So, my suggestion is that if the GUI version of ColorSplitter could “capture” the GUI entries selected by a user and write out to a text/cmd/bat file that would offer the best of both worlds!


Stephen Marsh
 
about questions:
1. We could not reproduce issue with extra .exe extension. The actual file is .msi What browser do you use? We will add extra filename tag to html link tag with next release - may be it help...
2. Measure unit selector will be added to next release
3. The list of products with sizes was added just as a sample. You can edit and save any preferable list of products
4. We will add popup notify about completed operation to next release
5/6. as a variant - we can remove image preview from right panel at all and move it to left panel with with switch button to manage what image is shown - original or processed. The left panel already has zoom/pan functionality
7. Do you mean that we should build halftone output by this app instead of RIP?
8/9. I agree with requests about presets and usage these presets from command line. I offer to return to this discussion after functionality discussion
10/11. Fixed. will be available with the next release
12. What kind of output do you mean? the current version can save recognized spot colors as single color black separations. Do you want them to be saved as separated files but colored with original colors or as single composite file with all recognized colors as spot colors or may be possibility to save some single color separated and the rest leave as CMYK/RGB raster image?
 
about questions:
1. We could not reproduce issue with extra .exe extension. The actual file is .msi What browser do you use? We will add extra filename tag to html link tag with next release - may be it help...

The downloaded file is named "ColorSplitter-1.1.6.msi.exe". It will not install on Windows 10. You get the message "This app can't run on your PC". Renaming the file to "ColorSplitter-1.1.6.msi" allows the installer to run.
 
The downloaded file is named "ColorSplitter-1.1.6.msi.exe". It will not install on Windows 10. You get the message "This app can't run on your PC". Renaming the file to "ColorSplitter-1.1.6.msi" allows the installer to run.

It was Safari on the Mac… I did not try from Windows, perhaps it is a Mac thing!


Stephen Marsh
 
about questions:
1. We could not reproduce issue with extra .exe extension. The actual file is .msi What browser do you use? We will add extra filename tag to html link tag with next release - may be it help...
2. Measure unit selector will be added to next release
3. The list of products with sizes was added just as a sample. You can edit and save any preferable list of products
4. We will add popup notify about completed operation to next release
5/6. as a variant - we can remove image preview from right panel at all and move it to left panel with with switch button to manage what image is shown - original or processed. The left panel already has zoom/pan functionality
7. Do you mean that we should build halftone output by this app instead of RIP?
8/9. I agree with requests about presets and usage these presets from command line. I offer to return to this discussion after functionality discussion
10/11. Fixed. will be available with the next release
12. What kind of output do you mean? the current version can save recognized spot colors as single color black separations. Do you want them to be saved as separated files but colored with original colors or as single composite file with all recognized colors as spot colors or may be possibility to save some single color separated and the rest leave as CMYK/RGB raster image?

Thank you for the reply!

1. Perhaps a Mac thing
2. Excellent, metric rules! :]
3. I did do the conversion from metric to inches to add a new “odd business card size product” and it was correctly auto selected. My point was that this is not as simple as in say the USA where there may only be one standard size for business card products.
4. Popups are annoying if you have to OK them, I like your “notifications” that fade in/out. Not every job will be small enough to “instantly” process.
5./6. Fantastic!
7. Just putting this “out there” as a future consideration, it is not a big deal. Some smaller shops that create “laser printer plates” could benefit. I really like that you can create a separated vector PDF. I am not sure what market sector requires 600 or 1200ppi 8-bit grayscale separated fies that may contain tints?
8/9. Presets are a must, CLI would be an option in my opinion as I know that you are offering your services to help with bespoke automation programming
10/11. Great!
12. Yes, if a job is 4C or 5C CMYK/Spot and there is no need to remap to a more limited or different separation set, then an option to split but retain original values would be a bonus feature of the software. It already separates RGB or other content to spots really well, so I was just offering a suggestion to flesh out the product which would add value to those that would like separated vector PDF files, despite the industry mostly moving toward a composite workflow.


Stephen Marsh
 
msi.exe is only on Safari on Mac. If you use Firefox or Chrome, it downloads correctly as .msi
 
Any new results of testing/evaluation?
We are working on discussed issues but are opened for any additional recommendations...
 
In v1.1.6 I am not having any luck with the “merge to…” feature mapping a split/separated colour to another colour (say first splitting to 4 spots, then manually merging down to 2 spots)… Tried in both composite and separated.

Looking forward to the next version incorporating previous feedback and seeing a Mac build too!


Stephen Marsh
 

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