Is ESKO running away from the commercial print market?

[naplajoie2000]

I keep getting feedback from our Metrix team that they have had conversations with Esko and they have indicated that FastImpose is End of Life, that Packedge is End of Life and Flexrips are End of Life. Any thought?

 

[Macmann]

I've heard PackEdge is end of life as well. They seem to be focusing on ArtPro and the packaging market. Just rumors though-I've heard nothing official.

 

[PDL]

PackEdge and Plato are not ‘end of life’. Both applications are at version 18 which is current with the rest of Esko product levels. Both have development and technical support from Esko.
At the same time they are developing ArtPro+, which is a cross-platform application, as it migrates the functionalities of both PackEdge and ArtPro into it while adding new functionalities such as text recognition, action lists, and Preflight.

You may download a free trial version of ArtPro+ here —> https://www.esko.com/en/support/downloadsandlicenses/trial-software.

FastImpose has been EOL for some time now. Though I personally thought FastImpose a great application, especially with it’s integration which AE, it did not gain enough marketshare even within Esko customers to warrant it’s further development.

Although the Esko page imposition application FastImpose is EOL Esko still supports commercial print through it’s Automation Engine which works with JDF imposition output from third party impositions. ArtPro+ does support multipage native PDF editing.

 

[Macmann]

I have had multiple support techs tell me when I have an issue with a complex file to "just do it in Illustarator - it's easier." So maybe not officially EOL but definitely end of focus. They are heavily invested in ArtPro+ and it seems there are less and less of us using PackEdge and Plato. Just an observation-no inside info.

 

[Dario]

I agree with Macmann - many Esko techs told me the same: they are going toward ArtPro+ while PackEdge and Plato are "upgraded" only in the version number - which follow the current year, by the way.
In fact if you use them then you can see no real development of those software in the last years.
And ArtPro+ is good & nice but still very "green".
I use Plato a lot and still cannot replace it with ArtPro+.
Think of this: they relied on so called "normalized" pdf until yesterday - now they are changing and focusing on "pdf+".
Of course they must keep money moving. My father used to say "Your bank is not a charity".

 

[Dersu]

Artpro still needs fixes and improvements. Packedge is powerful and solid editor which has great and fast tools. Interactive trapping and pair selection is one of them for example.
We tried artpro for prepress stages, some artwork files is impossible to trap, artpro waits at preparing endlessly... Hard to believe PE is x86 and AP is x64 architecture sw.
Packedge is nearly crash free app now. I cannot say same thing for new artpro app..

New Imaging Engine (Adobe RIP) is another story... If artwork contains heavy vector art, it cannot rip at all. We always use old native Flexrip in this case and it's always rip no matter what artwork contains.

Really frustrating...

 

[2ndShiftProblemSolver]

Pack Edge and Art Pro traditionally have done the same thing just on different platforms. ArtPro+ is being developed to replace both of them with all the same functionality but able to run on newer operating system and and on Mac or Windows workstations. If you haven't taken a look at ArtPro+ 18.1, I suggest you do. It's come a long way since the ArtPro+ 16, 16.1 releases. Its not quite ready to replace PackEdge or ArtPro, but it's getting closer every day.