OPI Solutions

[Bill W]

Greetings,

We are a Prinergy site and we still use OPI with one of our sister plants. Since Creo (now Kodak) purchased ScenicSoft they acquired ColorCentral which included Sampler, the program we use to make OPI. Unfortunately it only runs under OS9, and while we still have a few computers capable of running OS9, this will soon change as we upgrade to Intel based machines.

Does anyone know of an alternate (hopefully Mac based) OPI solution?

FYI - I will be cross posting this to the Kodak forum.

-Bill-

 

[markf]

Opi

Opi

Have a look at Xinet FullPress and Helios they seem to be well used OPI solutions...

MarkF..

 

[CHM]

Well if you still work in OPI you will restrict yourself.
Now most of the WF's and applications are working in High res, so you can make use of the transparencies and other modern stuff in the new apps today.

So maybe its time for you to look into working in high res instead of low res.

 

[Bill W]

Greetings CHM,

Our challenge is receiving files to rip for one of our sister plants in Illinois. We are a flexo printer located in California and impose many images around and across our print cylinders. Unfortunately there are still artists that crop images in Illustrator (chosen application for flexo) rather than in Photoshop. Stepping a 20 MB file 8 times instead of the properly cropped 1 MB file creates larger than needed files. Sending those "larger than needed" files with the full res image is not productive. OPI is a great help.

In our CA plant we only use high res files. I have tried countless time to educate both artists and our sister plant staff that a properly cropped image is the better way to go. Seems to fall on deaf ears, so OPI has fixed the problem - in a round about way.

Thanks though for your thoughts, even though not a solution to my challenge.

-Bill-

 

[prepressguru]

Hi Bill, I'm a little confused with your question. If you have Prinergy you have OPI capabilities. You do not need sampler. Just write your thin ps from Quark & Indesgin if you are outputting from these apps. Now if you are working with Illustrator I can see where you may need sampler to swap out hi rez with low rez sampler file. I thought Kodak was working on a OS X version of Sampler.

 

[Bill W]

Greetings prepressguru,

We are working from Illustrator so I need to make low res files with something. My first choice would be to continue to use Sampler on an OSX box. I have talked to the Kodak response center and if Kodak is making an OSX version the center does not know. They offered to supply me with a copy of Sampler that will run on Windoz - maybe the only solution unless someone knows of a low res sampling program that runs on OSX. So far no one has responded with such a beast.

I am not familiar with outputting from InDesign as thin ps so I will play with that to see if maybe we can use it to modify our Illustrator files and then send them to Prinergy.

Always a chance to learn something new in prepress.

-Bill-








-Bill-

 

[markf]

Opi

Opi

Xinet FullPress does run on OSX and is more developed/up to date than the OPI solution you used to use.
You can use transparency with OPI as the swap takes place before submission to the workflow so OPI isn't restrictive as mentioned in one reply , add WebNative and you have a drag and drop web based opi solution to use between sites..

 

[prepressguru]

Hey Bill possibly the windows option may work. Been along time since using sampler. If it has an option to watch a hot folder you could set it up on a hardly used PC.

Good luck

 

[Bansheei]

try, Unbeatable Performance - Unbeatable Value

Polkadots has an OPI engine (Pre-page it) that runs through a Harlequin RIP together they produce OPI's that then work with a workflow called Manage-it (or Client)...

 

[Bill W]

Greetings,

Thanks to all that responded. The challenge appears to be that I only need something to make the OPI swap our file, I do not need a complete OPI solution as I have Prinergy which will do the swap.

It seems that all suggestions, good as they are, include a complete OPI solution - something that I do not need.

-Bill-

 

[Shawn]

Hi Bill

I'm not sure if it completely fills your needs, but the Adobe Studio Exchange has a bunch of "deEmbed" and "package" scripts for Illustrator. A javascript or applescript programmer could probably customize a solution enough to work, or you may be able to modify a script from the site yourself to extract all images to a folder as links and then downsample them to 72dpi.

Adobe Studio Exchange (free membership required):
Adobe - Illustrator Exchange

Many of the links go to this site:
Javascripts for Illustrator [Illustrator Praxis]

Shawn

 

[mattbeals]

Helios is what Kodak uses for their OPI software. Helios is a lot better than Xinet in my opinion. Let me know if you want some info on it.

 

[Bill W]

Greetings Matt,

I have read literature regarding the Helios server / OPI workflow. Is the OPI making "thingamagig" available as a stand alone application? It appears not to be. If so, is it capable of running on an OSX machine?

My remote site are Mac based running OSX and the sample file needs to be made at their site. Presently they can use Sampler because their computers can dual boot into OS9, however upgrades soon to be purchased will not longer allow dual booting.

I guess we could always keep an older computer to run Sampler.

-Bill-

 

[mattbeals]

Helios has a competitive upgrade price for ColorCentral to Helios Ethershare UB. Helios can run on Windows, Mac OS X or many flavors of UNIX/LINUX. The high res documents would have to be dumped into a directory for the FPO to be generated. Once that's done the FPO's get created pretty quickly. As long as your OS 9 users can get to the Helios server you're good to go. If you need more detailed or specific information give me a call. (206) 618-2537.

 

[Bill W]

Thanks Matt, but since I already have Prinergy for my low to high res swop, I only need something to make the low res file, not an entire system.

I have not use the full ColorCentral workflow for years, only its Sampler product to make low res files that I can swop using Prinergy.

-Bill-

 

[mattbeals]

Hmmm.... Well, with that I can't help other than to have Prinergy make the FPO's available across the WAN. Which at that point you might as well work with fat PostScript.

 

[David Ingram]

How many images we talking?

How many images we talking?

Surprised about the size issue. whats the problem with 8 20 Mbfiles across the cylinder?
OS9 and scenicsoft had HUGE issues with networking speed. I used to work all night getting 32 and 64 12x18 paginated film output from presswise. I learned to output a .sig file and sneaker net it to the RIP, saved me hours of networking time. Printing thru the chooser direct to the rip is a HUGE hassle, as OS9 made ANY cmyk .eps (say a 25 MB file) it had to rip all 25 MB for each channel ( thus each 25 Mb image was 100 Mb of processing) We finally upgraded to a Lvl 2 harlequin on a G3 266 (os9 based RIP) The issue was the networking and not the rip. The g3 266 could rip 32 plates before the 1st one was completely imaged. So think about ditching OPI, rebuild your DCS into .EPS (if necessary Duotones and clipping paths) otherwise use .tif. If you can try using your RIPs "hot folder" or "rip postscript file" options using a full HI Res Postscript file "networked Over to" the rip or burned to cd and loaded on the rips disc before printing begins. Printing thru OS9 itself may be your bottleneck. Give this a shot. ANY harlequin or Adobe lvl II or III rip should be able to chew those files for breakfast. Given a 10 year old machine was 266 Mhz, in the days of terabyte drives and GHZ multiprocessors, You should be able to find a workaround that fits

 

[PantherMac]

FullPress rocks. Just friggin rocks. Faster than fast. I admin'd a monster Sun box and ran their full suite w/ the Veritas file system on all FC-AL storage (hated the place, but man, that was a sweet box.... )

- Mac

 

[weesleywarrior]

Opi and Sampler

Opi and Sampler

We also use the Prinergy system and currently use the Sampler application installed on the Primary server. I know they say not to install anything on the Primary server but I believe one of the engineers did it for us as it doesn't really harm anything and Its only used once in awhile as we don't have that many issues anymore with OPI and I'm sure Prinergy 4 will iron out this issue anyway when we get there. This would get round your os9 issues as the Primary / Prinergy servers dont get updated that often so the application would be on their operational for some time - you should be able to use chicken of the vnc to remotely connect so can operate the app from any mac (obviously app not open on the mac).

Hope it helps..

 

[Bill W]

Thanks everyone for your input. Not looking for a replacement for Prinergy, just an app that can make low res files at my remote site using a Mac so they can send their stepped and repeated Illustrator files to me as "thin" as possible. We use full T1 lines between plants, but I still want to keep those files as "thin" as possible.

My present workflow is more than adequate, not the I am closed to looking at others. However for now Prinergy is my "ripping" app and will be for quite some time.

I just downloaded a PC version of Sampler and if necessary I will have my remote site use a PC to make their low res when the time to update to OSX only Macs arrives.

I am sure that all other suggested products are great, but we orbit around Prinergy and the capability to make low res in the remote site(s) for swaps will be a necessity for as long as we rip their film.

-Bill-