Nexus vs Prinergy

[dgreen64]

I have been looking at several workflows for months. It's really been a hard decision on what workflow will be best for my company. Can anyone tell me any advantages of having one over the other? I'm leaning towards Nexus because their training is in a classroom at their training center. Kodak's training is a web-x which I don't think will work very good.

Thanks!

 

[Franknater]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

Diane,

It's going to be a matter of how much you plan to spend, type of work and workflow. Pinergy will fit you if you have a large volume. If you are a very small shop, small presses, Nexus would probably be better suited for you.

Frank

 

[marktonk]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

Hi Diane,

Have you considered Prinect Printready? We have several versions starting with Printready P, which is scalable all the way to the very robust Printready X. Our training consist of both classroom to allow for fundamentals without interruption along with onsite to help integrate the system. Our headquarters is located in Kennesaw so we are also in a close proximity. At least you may consider seeing it and we can arrange a demo for you. If you want more information, please pm me and I will have a representative contact you.

Regards,

Mark Tonkovich
Heidelberg USA
Product Manager, CtP & Proofing
[email protected]

 

[G_Town]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

brain fart sorry

Edited by: G_Town on Oct 17, 2007 8:40 AM

 

[G_Town]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

Are 50" presses small? and we got a pretty big building with lots of printing type stuff in it.

We use Nexus here for packaging and it works great, support has always been so so to crappy IMHO but with the esko artwork merger that may change (at least I'm hoping it will).

And they won't try and sell you anything on a printing community forum ;-)

It all really boils down to your type of work to what suits you best get demos and the like and keep posting, when I first saw AWS step and repeat module years ago I was soooooo excited (yea I got no life) after having used preps, but again it fit OUR type of work (folding cartons).

 

[chris_r]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

we just switched to prinergy within the last year, and we had plenty of classroom training for several prepress operators, at their training facility in Vancouver. we didn't have any Web-x training, and i agree that i wouldn't care for that too much.

cr

 

[GinSu]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

We've been using Nexus/PageFlow for ten years now. I like that I can print from the native application and use PPDs to set the parameters (neg/pos, eup,edown, linescreen and lots of others). I think Prinergy is a NORM workflow making everything a PDF first, but I'm not sure. You can do that with Nexus as well, but I've learned that keeping things native when printing yeilds the most consistent and predictable output.

 

[disbellj]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

The one thing I would ask you to ask yourself:
Am I going to be asked to do type changes on incoming PDFs, and if so, how will I do them?

If you do need to do type changes on incoming PDFs (and want to do them using the embedded fonts in the PDF and not have to use some other font that may not match what the customer sent in), then I would look at Neo and not Artpro/NexusEdit.
I have used Nexus for years, and this is the one weakness to their Vector workflows that I wish were changed but probably never will be.
If it wasn't for this one thing (imagine me needing editable type, how could I want such things?!), then I would consider Nexus about a perfect workflow.

I too have wanted to upgrade to an all-PDF workflow that I could trust, but I don't know of one (haven't tested anything other than Neo, which I thought would do what I needed as far as PDF editing, and really don't have time or inclination to get much into testing because it's cumbersome when I got a working workflow).

Don

 

[chris_r]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

i have heard much about neo for pdf editing. we currently use pitstop pro, and for the most part have no problems with it. we do have to make text changes now and again, but most of the pdfs we get have fonts fully embedded, so we rarely have a problem with that.

id like to check out neo, though, to see how it works. ive heard it is VERY expensive. it also doesnt have action lists i think ive heard, and i love me my action lists.

cr

 

[dkinsac]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

The web-x is just to get you familiar with Prinergy. They come out and do one day on-site set up and two days training. Or at least that's what we got. Prinergy is very cool, lot's of different ways to set up work-flows. I'm still new to it, but seems to be awesome and limited only by numb-skulls.

 

[mattbeals]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

You can get more than two days for Prinergy, and it definitely takes more than two days. It all depends on how comfortable you think you are with it and how much tinkering you're up to. With Brisque and PS/M we got a week for each and a week on the Brisque Impose/Preprs side of things.

 

[Franknater]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

50" Press...Oh yeah...Small. LOL S. M. ALL

Actually, I was talking about small volume and that can be a difficult one to judge! Volume as measure isn't the same when referring to a stream of data calculations that just may be treated differently by various software.

I haven't worked with Nexus, so I can't compare. I've only run into it at small shops where there is not a large volume running from operators. I do have quite a few OLD friends all around town and I stopped in to see one that uses Nexus. He's an old Rampage person that moved into Nexus. His comparison was not to Prinergy.

I do know of one shop that has Prinergy, used it sparingly for the last 6 months since they installed it. They're trying to figure how to bring in the older prePrinergy jobs without any problems.

Now, our Rampage is really too slow for 3 operators. It's not totally upgraded, but if we need to make a type change on press. ONE LITTLE LETTER, it takes an about one hour to get a new plate. I've not been impressed by Rampage as of yet.

I did see Nexus in a Compaq box. Is that for real?

Frank

Edited by: Frank on Oct 20, 2007 1:13 AM

 

[G_Town]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

An hour for one letter!!! HOLY SNIKEYS!

Just had to make a color change on press and had them a new plate in 20 and that included the PS work and comparing the one bits to make sure the change was what i wanted.

Yea as far as I know it runs on any winders box that meets the requirements, it also runs on a OSX which I'm trying to get us to switch to.

i hate winders ;-p

 

[jinthebay]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

I'm a newbie to Prinergy EVO, about 3 months. Seems pretty stable. Wasn't a big fan of it at first, but all in all, its' pretty straightforward. Came from a shop that was using Nexus (8.3). I guess it's whatever you get used to. We used Preps at the old shop as well as here with the new operation. One advantage to using EVO with it being a PDF driven workflow and such is, if you're using Preps, you can view your PDF's imposed much easier than with Nexus. The workflow that we built using Nexus was a raster workflow. It would create it's proprietary page and a low res eps link to use in Preps. Viewing the link in Preps was difficult because it was VERY low res and small details were hard to see and catch. I'm not sure if that's how every Nexus workflow behaves but that was my experience.


On the plus side, Nexus seems like it has almost endless possibilities as far as being customizable. Regardless of how or what you're printing, a very detailed, very specific workflow can be built, modified and updated whenever you need to change or grow.

Just my 2 cents. Good luck.

 

[disbellj]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

In Nexus, vector workflow (using NexusEdit or Artpro to edit), the fonts are outlined, and so a type change can take a while to get done correctly. This is why Neo is so much better when a small type change is needed - it uses the embedded fonts in the PDF (benefit other than speed by not having to look for a replacement font: You know you're using the customer's fonts, which prepress really wants to do).

Don

 

[disbellj]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

" The workflow that we built using Nexus was a raster workflow. It would create it's proprietary page and a low res eps link to use in Preps. Viewing the link in Preps was difficult because it was VERY low res and small details were hard to see and catch. I'm not sure if that's how every Nexus workflow behaves but that was my experience."

All Raster/Impo workflows do the same thing: Raster (trapped or untrapped if you like) Page (hires), Link (lores) from Nexus Raster workflow. Use Link (lores) in Preps for imposition layout, and send to Nexus Impo workflow where the Links (lores) are replaced by Pages (hires) and screened. You can make a higher-res Link if you need to. It'll just slow the workflow down some. I don't do it because I have DotSpy which I can look at the screened imposition with.

If you have a Vector workflow, you can make OPPO and Links. Or you can make a custom workflow to lead the Vector front end (import) into a Raster back end (rip and trap), and make Pages and Links. Either way you'll want to use the Impo workflow to make sure you have a ROOM environment IMHO. Once a page is worked, if it doesn't change, you don't want it to change, and ROOM is the only way of making sure this happens.

Question: Are any rip workflows that have the Adobe PDF Print Engine ROOM workflows (making sure the appearance doesn't change between proof and plates)?

Don

 

[ArtproPro]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

We have been using Nexus for about 5 years now. We couldn't be happier with this rip. It has provided us with all the tools we need in our high volume shop. We have about 10 different output devices and more on the way. We currently use Nexus 8.5 for our premedia dept and 8.2 for our imposition team. Everyone here loves using Shuttle with the total rip. It's pretty much like the infomercial says " set it and forget it". All you have to do is take some time and create your xml files right and it will save you hours of production time. Before we would Import PDF files and fix anything that went wrong durning import then send it through a workflow with like 5 different branches then release one branch and abandon the other 4. This doesn't sound too hard but it took a really long time to do. Especially the Import process. Now with the TotalRip and shuttle all we have to do is open the PDF in Neo and if we like what we see we submit it and move on to the next one. We went from running 3 Artpro Stations to send all of our proofs to just 1 station. It's the same amount of work but with less effort. I have never used Prinergy so I can't and won't comment on it all I could say is that if I had my choice I would defenitly stick with Nexus. A bit of warning though The TotalRip is still a young piece of software and still needs to be beefed up. The PDF trapper isn't up to par and there are a lot of bugs that go along with the TotalRip. I have really high hopes for it though. Neo is also a young piece of software. Like Nexus, the trapping in Neo isn't up to par. But If they get their act together Neo, in my opinion, can become the #1 PDF editor out there. As far as service goes if I email them right now they will probably get back to me within an hour or two. There is one thing that Prinergy does have that AWS doesn't... a modem that will give them access to the system to help you troubleshoot any issues. That to me was impressive.{<----That's me not commenting on Prinergy } Nexus Vs --Prinergy-- No contest in my eyes.

 

[disbellj]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

ArtproPro,

"A bit of warning though The TotalRip is still a young piece of software and still needs to be beefed up. The PDF trapper isn't up to par and there are a lot of bugs that go along with the TotalRip. I have really high hopes for it though. Neo is also a young piece of software. Like Nexus, the trapping in Neo isn't up to par. But If they get their act together Neo, in my opinion, can become the #1 PDF editor out there."

This is what I'm saying when I talk about having to "beta test" AWS stuff. How long has Neo been out? How many years? In the amount of time the software has been out, you'd think the problems that have existed since the beginning would have been fixed by now. PDF trapping hasn't improved yet? What's wrong with this picture? Am I asking for too much to see software actually get fixed? Improved? Especially basic stuff in printing like trapping?

Don

 

[ArtproPro]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

I totally agree with you buddy. Development is moving really slow. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt and think that they are taking their time to get the next release right not right now. Maybe i'm to optimistic though. I am hoping that EskoArtworks is a better company than Artworks Systems. I am still sticking to my story and believe that both Nexus and Neo have great potential. I have no regrets sticking with AWS.

 

[disbellj]

Re: Nexus vs Prinergy

I agree with the potential part, just think that more $$ needs to be poured into getting these things ironed out/fixed. Who doesn't need trapping to be correct?

Don