Prinergy 5 + Epson 7600

[gsherrold]

Hello,
I need to connect a Epson 7600 to a Prinergy 5.2 workflow for contract (high res) proofs.
Do I need a RIP to connect Prinergy to Epson or can Prinergy connect and drive Epson without any other software?
Thanks

 

[Stephen Marsh]

You need proofing software. For a Prinergy user, Kodak Proofing Software (KPS) is a good solution as it has a direct connection to the workflow using the same colour controls and RIP engine from Prinergy for integrity of proof to plate data when proofing contone PDF files. KPS comes in three versions (basic, commercial, packaging) depending on the end users needs, which makes it a very affordable solution compared to other proofing RIPs. KPS provides very easy "out of the box" proofing with Kodak Matchprint Inkjet media. If you wish to use non Kodak media, then you will need a license option for creating custom media configurations and you will also need to have a custom device ICC profile created for each media/resolution setting (or purchase custom media configuration files and ICC files from Kodak or a Kodak reseller/service provider).

Something else to consider is proof certification via measuring colour bars, is this something that you need to do? If it is, you would need the commercial edition at a minimum (basic edition does not support colour confirmation).

If you use a proofing RIP from a different vendor, then you would need to send your Prinergy refined/normalised PDF files or 1-bit TIFF seps to a hot folder for output.


Hope this helps!


Stephen Marsh

 

[gsherrold]

Thank you very much, Stephen.

By the way, if I need only imposition proof (low res), is the proofing software also necessary?

 

[Stephen Marsh]

KPS is required to drive the Epson from Prinergy or another vendor's RIP can drive the Epson with files being submitted from Prinergy into a networked shared RIP hot folder. AFAIK Prinergy can't drive the printer directly (somebody please correct me if I am wrong). If you are only after content checking of an impo and not colour critical proofing, you could refine your imposed PDF files and output them to a network folder - then use Adobe Acrobat and the standard Epson driver to print the files. You would of course miss out on the seamless workflow and would be introducing more steps, time, adding extra operator involvement and possibility for error between the PDF data and the plate data. Kodak Proofing Software is not that expensive in the overall scheme of things, it can commonly come in around 20-50% of the cost of other proofing RIP's, depending upon user requirements and license options.


Stephen Marsh

 

[gsherrold]

Ok Stephen,

Thanks again for your help!

Regards

 

[Sev]

KPS is required to drive the Epson from Prinergy or another vendor's RIP can drive the Epson with files being submitted from Prinergy into a networked shared RIP hot folder. AFAIK Prinergy can't drive the printer directly (somebody please correct me if I am wrong). If you are only after content checking of an impo and not colour critical proofing, you could refine your imposed PDF files and output them to a network folder - then use Adobe Acrobat and the standard Epson driver to print the files. You would of course miss out on the seamless workflow and would be introducing more steps, time, adding extra operator involvement and possibility for error between the PDF data and the plate data. Kodak Proofing Software is not that expensive in the overall scheme of things, it can commonly come in around 20-50% of the cost of other proofing RIP's, depending upon user requirements and license options.


Stephen Marsh

We drive our Epson proofer with KPS, and the results are amazing. Our main workflow is EskoArtworks Nexus, so we send the tiff's from Nexus to a hotfolder on the network, which is polled by the KPS RIP. We also have Prinergy, but the license is for plating only, using Kodak's Trendsetter. But it was really easy to setup to create the proofing files from Nexus to KPS. During the installation, it first wants to hook up to Prinergy, and we bypass that step and move to the next step, which is to create the hotfolder to accept the files to run through the KPS RIP. We have also experimented with running our older Epson 7600 to be driven directly from Nexus, which would not be for color contract proofs. The results were ok, not great. But to have KPS drive our Epson 7890, the results were almost an exact match to the press. We did have custom profiles made from Kodak to match our press.
Hope this helps.

-Sev