Nesting photos

[digitex]

We are a small print shop with both Fiery driven digital printers, and large format HP photo printers. We do a lot of jobs where we have to arrange many small photos to fill a 24" or 42" wide roll, and so far have always done it by hand, which is very tedious and time consuming. I'm wondering if there is a program where I can just pick a folder full of photos and have them automatically arranged to best fill the space, saving me a lot of time and paper. I'm sure there is one, I just don't know how to find it. It would also be nice to have it work with letter-sized paper and save it as a multi-page pdf in case we want to run it on our digital printers.

 

[pdan]

The are good answers in this forum, but for my Fiery specific questions I also check here
EFI Fiery Forums
Fiery SeeQuence Impose offers Gang Up but to my limited understanding can only look at a multi page file, not a folder.
You might use Acrobat to Create a PDF of a full folder, than process that.

 

[Ultimate]

Imposition for JPG / PDF

Imposition for JPG / PDF

We are a small print shop with both Fiery driven digital printers, and large format HP photo printers. We do a lot of jobs where we have to arrange many small photos to fill a 24" or 42" wide roll, and so far have always done it by hand, which is very tedious and time consuming. I'm wondering if there is a program where I can just pick a folder full of photos and have them automatically arranged to best fill the space, saving me a lot of time and paper. I'm sure there is one, I just don't know how to find it. It would also be nice to have it work with letter-sized paper and save it as a multi-page pdf in case we want to run it on our digital printers.

Ultimate TechnoGraphics has several versions to impose JPGs on sheet/roll for digital and output an imposed PDF. It accepts, files, folders and XML job tickets.

Contact me directly to discuss your specific needs.

Ray Duval
Ultimate TechnoGraphics
raymond @ imposition.com

 

[johnny_jay]

Kodak Prinergy has this option for output to our Epson proofer. We queue out pages and by predetermined perimeters, it fills the sheet based on paper width of the roll. The last sheet will not be full but the sheet will cut short as to not waste paper.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Have you explored the options that came with your Fiery and HP devices? Generally this is a feature found in RIP software.


Stephen Marsh

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Other options include:

QimagePro - ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/index.html (Windows only)

ImageNest - bluecubit.com/imagenest-product-features-page/ (Mac only)

A printer driver that is similar to a RIP (Mac or Win, however it may not support your printers):

mirage.dinax.de


Stephen Marsh

 

[WharfRat]

I just use "Bridge" in the Creative Suite.
Can not imagine why that would not work for you.

MSD

We are a small print shop with both Fiery driven digital printers, and large format HP photo printers. We do a lot of jobs where we have to arrange many small photos to fill a 24" or 42" wide roll, and so far have always done it by hand, which is very tedious and time consuming. I'm wondering if there is a program where I can just pick a folder full of photos and have them automatically arranged to best fill the space, saving me a lot of time and paper. I'm sure there is one, I just don't know how to find it. It would also be nice to have it work with letter-sized paper and save it as a multi-page pdf in case we want to run it on our digital printers.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

I just use "Bridge" in the Creative Suite.
Can not imagine why that would not work for you.

MSD

MSD, how exactly would you use Bridge in this case? I don’t think that this is as simple as using a one size fits all contact sheet, as although every image is “small” - they may all need to be different sizes, all stepped/nested/ganged onto the same sheet. If it is OK for every image to be the same size, then using a contact sheet may be a workable solution.


Stephen Marsh

 

[pamarcu]

Another cheap ($18.99) option, but only for mac users, is FitPlot -> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fitplot/id507242938?mt=12&ign-mpt=uo=4

It has many features such as packing / nesting, imposition, pagination, last minute photo retouching, duplications, resizing, trimming etc.
There is also a trial version named FitPlot free, also on the Mac App Store

 

[rich apollo]

We are a small print shop with both Fiery driven digital printers, and large format HP photo printers. We do a lot of jobs where we have to arrange many small photos to fill a 24" or 42" wide roll, and so far have always done it by hand, which is very tedious and time consuming. I'm wondering if there is a program where I can just pick a folder full of photos and have them automatically arranged to best fill the space, saving me a lot of time and paper. I'm sure there is one, I just don't know how to find it. It would also be nice to have it work with letter-sized paper and save it as a multi-page pdf in case we want to run it on our digital printers.

You should be able to automate much of this with the tools in your RIP. I'd be happy to try to help. PM me if you'd like to work together on it.