We're going to buy a workflow

[budafist]

Ok, we're at the stage where we need a workflow system. What workflow system are you currently using?

We deal with a couple of companies for our printing supplies and 2 companies have offered us 2 different workflows. I've never used a workflow system in my life but I'm expected to make a decision over the next week or so. I'm getting both companies to provide me with working demos to trial our own problem files with.

One is called Puzzleflow (http://www.print21online.com/index.cfm?art=3413&comid=1&titleTag=Grafika%20Links%20adds%20another%20piece% 20to%20the%20puzzle) (more here) (http://www.printingtalk.com/news/acc/acc107.html) and the other is Compose (http://www.compose.com.hk/). They look like they do the same thing.

Anyone got any experience with either of them?

What should I be looking out for specifically when comparing the two products?

[doubting_thomas]

I've never used either of those, but I may have a couple things for you to
think about. Do you already do online ordering for clients, or is that a
direction that the higher ups have decided you're going to go? What benefits
exactly are you looking for from the workflow vs. what you're doing now in
preflight/prepress/imposition/trapping? Are you CtP now, or will you be making
that jump at the same time (yikes). How much training do you get with the
packages? Will they handle Postscript Level 3 easily(I'd hope so)? Are there
administration costs that you have to pay for? Who does the service if
needed? Who does the web hosting of the online modules?

I don't use a formal workflow like one of those here because we don't need
it for what we do. Sounds nice though. You might want to ask the question
over at prepressforums.com. I'd bet you could get some input there. So much
at that site is workflow specific.

Good luck!

[budafist]

Thanks Thomas.

preflight/prepress/imposition/trapping
We don't have any preflight and our imposition is all done manually! Trapping comes with the RIP of our ctp but we have little or no control.

We don't have a website let alone online ordering. Is this something that we should look into? Most of our clients are pretty computer illiterate. Not sure if we would benefit from going online.

[SpugNothuson]

I've not read the Puzzleflow information yet. But I will, I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to this stuff.

Compose however is my old system. We binned it for various reasons. Unless the Compose System has changed drastically in the past 18 months in is essentially a bunch of standalone programmes that have a few scripts added in to link them together. This can become quite a problem when you want the system to do something different.

Sometimes the way the system traps it is not the way you want it, the computer doesn't always know best. Trying to fool the system is difficult.

Don't get me started on PRI2 from Compose (Post RIP Imposition).

I can go into greater detail for you a little later if you want.

On a side note, we opted for Apogee X (from Agfa) here. It's served me well but I do know that it has its haters.

[panzer]

what exactly do you want it for budafist

[SpugNothuson]

Ah yes, that brings me to a question that I forget to ask.

What CtP machine is it being hooked up to. It can maken a big difference on compatability issues.

[obesebee]

Would someone be able to explain, simply, what a workflow system does and it's pros and cons. I haven't heard much of it and it sounds interestingly useful...

[SpugNothuson]

At my printers (I say mine I just work there). We run Apogee X, which is a PDF workflow system. It works basically as follows.

Get the document, if its not a PDF already use it's native programme (InDesign / Quark) and print it to a postscript file.
Upload PDF or ps into Apogee
Assign job title
The file then runs through a preflighter with a set of rules defined for your inhouse workings. i.e. Missing Fonts? Hairlines? Registration used instead of black?
It then drops into the Imposition Manager, choose your predefined template.
Off it goes into the renderer where it traps the document, converts to CMYK (or keep spots depending on job), assign colour profile and/or overprinting rules and finally puts a screen on it.
Then it wizzes off to the CtP machine that churns out a bunch of perfect plates at the other end.

Almost all of this is automated. User interaction required on uploading document, naming it, choose imposition, verify the plates are ok to make.

Job done.

[obesebee]

I see, I thought I was missing out on something to make the design part of the process a little simpler! Thanks for the explanation.

[SpugNothuson]

Design, simpler. I wish.

I come to work for a break. :D

[jimking]

Buda, If Spug disliked composer or whatever it's called, scrap it. ApogeeX is a very good workflow but not cheap (my favorite). Prinergy and PrintReady are very good but very expensive. One system I've heard alot of good things about is Xitron Systems. It's a pdf workflow, very stable, user friendly and cheaper than most top end workflows. The salesman in your earlier thread stated that you do not need Pitstop, you need this system instead because it automaticly finds and fixes every error known to man is selling you a lot of jive. Be very careful in what you choose because you'll have to live with a lemon for a long time trying to find work arounds. Check out http://www.prepressforums.com/modules.php?name=Forums for various workflows.

[panzer]

jdf ?

[SpugNothuson]

Don't get me started on jdf and how pointless it is unless you're about to spend nigh on a quarter million quid and possibly new presses to match.

[doubting_thomas]

We don't have a website let alone online ordering. Is this something that we should look into? Most of our clients are pretty computer illiterate. Not sure if we would benefit from going online. The reason I ask is if I remember right from last night (was having a couple beers
at the time), both of those workflows included the option, or feature, for online
ordering modules. I was curious if you already did that as a shop. I would think
the set up would be a bit time consuming unless you're used to working with that
sort of thing. The owners may not have sprung that on you yet :cool:
How much money are you going to be spending? If spug says Compose is bad
I wouldn't go with it either. Like jimking said, companies don't buy these very
often.

[budafist]

Ok, we're still going to accept the free trial of Compose just to get my head around for comparison, but I definately respect Spug's opinion on this stuff! I'll look into the Apogee system.

We are looking to buy a metal CTP system. We are using polyester at the moment and we are having plenty of problems. We've been presented with 2 different metal CTP systems - Cobalt and Presstek's Vector. We are leaning towards the Vector now because it is totally chemical free and very low maintenance. Only water is used in the process which impressed me.

Vector TX52 CtP systems. The Presstek Vector TX52, using Freedom printing plates, is a chemistry-free platesetter for small-format production (52cm or smaller). It provides an economical metal-plate solution for printers, guaranteeing higher productivity, a clean shop and low production costs. After imaging, the Freedom plates are automatically water-rinsed in the integrated plate-cleaning stage of the Vector TX52. Neither gumming nor special cleaning solutions are required to bake the Freedom plates, which results in environmentally friendly production with less waste. The plates are ideally suited for high-value jobs in short runs of up to 25,000 impressions.

The sellers of Cobalt are pushing the Compose, and Presstek are pushing Puzzleflow. Since we are leaning towards Presstek's Vector anyway, I doubt that we will go for Compose.

Compatibility is a big issue, as is ongoing support. Puzzleflow offer support where their technicians can view my computer from anywhere in the world to fix problems.

How much are we willing to spend? The 2 workflows we've seen are about the same price so we've got that on our minds. We expect to pay around that price I guess. We want something that works though. Paying less for something that is rubbish isn't really an option. If Apogee is significantly more expensive that these 2 then we'll have to have a rethink.

[budafist]

Oh yeah, the Puzzleflow guy told me not to get Pitstop as it doesn't fix all your problems, but the Compose guy said that all workflow systems used Pitstop to fix their problems.

What are they talking about?

[jimking]

Oh yeah, the Puzzleflow guy told me not to get Pitstop as it doesn't fix all your problems, but the Compose guy said that all workflow systems used Pitstop to fix their problems.

What are they talking about?
I had a meeting with two Presstek reps a couple of weeks ago and was impressed with their digital offset presses and their chem free ctp. It was these reps and a friend of mine who mentioned Xitron Systems to me. You need to ask this guy why Pitstop isn't needed. There are other pdf editors out there that are pretty good too but not as well known as Pitstop so it could be a feature add-on, you need to get to the bottom of this. Also, is Puzzleflow a pdf workflow, or Postscript or a hybred of the two? I strongly advice you to stick with a 100% pdf flow. Apogee for example will also except eps and ps files too but its engine is pdf based, not the other way around. If you don't mind me asking, how much are they asking for this Puzzleflow?

[budafist]

The Presstek guys reckon that Puzzleflow is the way to go. Puzzleflow is the same price as Compose - can I talk about actual numbers on here?

[jimking]

My car cost me $50,000 so, how much is that workflow? :)
I think you're not suppose to talk about price for services not gadgets.

[budafist]

Around $30,000NZ give or take a few thousand.

NZ dollar is going up (or the US is going down) that's more than $20,000US.

[jimking]

Apogee is around $50,000 US and I think I heard Xitron Systems is around $35,000 US but that only means they maybe charging that for folks around my area. Is Puzzleflow a pdf workflow?

[budafist]

Puzzleflow is pdf but I haven't got a brochure or anything yet for it to confirm if it is pure pdf.

[panzer]

now im upset
there was this lovelly green afro chick

now all i see is a zombie

me runssssssssssssssss very fastesticcccc = fast

[budafist]

Sorry Panzer, the zombie must've eaten the brocolli girl.

[SpugNothuson]

PuzzleFlow isn't Pure PDF, it'll take ps and others it has a Normalizer, Preflighter and PDF creator built in. From what I've read. It's quite powerful.

Check your PM for more details. Sorry about the length of the message, I can waffle for hours about this stuff.

[budafist]

Thanks Spug and thanks for the waffles :)

[SpugNothuson]

Ooooh, now I want waffles. I'm off to raid the freezer!

[frailer]

Sorry I'm a bit late on this one, buda...TREAD CAREFULLY! I concur with all the cautionary notes from jimking, spug, et al. There's so much you might only find out about later. A minefield.
It really depends on 1] budget 2] what you're trying to/being asked to do within that budget. We just went from filmsetter/Harlequin RIP to Fuji violet platesetter/Fuji Celebrant RIP. I opted for "workflow" features, [late page replacement+drop-it-in-the-bucket type features...i.e. the pages can be imposed on the fly in a template, and can be swapped out of the impo in the post-RIP stage.
Guess what. Don't use it. Just don't have the volume to justify the cumbersome, IMHO, file management overheads that all that entails. Instead we use the [very powerful] RIP'n'trap, which also has heaps of controls and colour management built in. We were already imposing in PREPS, and continue to. It works well. RIP is superfast/reliable.
If I had my time over, I would have not got the "workflows" on top of the RIP, but would have got their Primer option, i.e. PDF creator/cruncher/normaliser. PDF's the big path now, I reckon. Also, be aware of what each vendor's "normaliser" does. Some wander away from Adobe's CPSI standards a bit. {Configurable PostScript Interpreter}.
Also, don't forget Adobe's Print Engine, just out, which now by-passes the PostScript stage, and RIPs live transparency. Fuji already has theirs on the market, XMF Workflow...[there's that word again]. Try not to be rushed on this. You'll have to live with the decision for some time. Good luck.
Bounce any questions you might have about the minefield we've just been through.

[frailer]

Oh, forgot...don't exclude PitStop Pro. It's a lifesaver; especially now as more and more stuff comes in as PDFs, but often PDFs with problems. e.g white overprints and other stupidities. Almost nothing you can't rectify with it. Saves having to explain stuff to the PDF supplier and waiting for them to send another. There's usually not time anyway!

[jimking]

Oh, forgot...don't exclude PitStop Pro. It's a lifesaver; especially now as more and more stuff comes in as PDFs, but often PDFs with problems. e.g white overprints and other stupidities. Almost nothing you can't rectify with it. Saves having to explain stuff to the PDF supplier and waiting for them to send another. There's usually not time anyway!
Something doesn't square with this rep stating that you don't need pitstop and their system fixes everything on the fly. As Frailer states, you need to get yourself, or if not you, somebody who's going to work with this workflow to see if it fits your shop, and do not sign on the bottom line until you're satified!! Years ago when our shop had the first version of Apogee installed (Apogee1 not ApogeeX) the owner was eager to purchase and sign the contract. I jumped in and told him do not purchase this product because it's full of bugs and at this stage it's no faster than our old system using TrapWise and PressWise, he agreed. This pissed the Agfa reps off but too bad! About a month later Apogee2 was released and it was installed for free and worked much better. If we would have purchased version 1 our cost to upgrade would have been several thousand dollars.

[SpugNothuson]

Good call jimking, Apogee 1 sucked!

2 was iffy, 2.5 really brought Apogee into it's own.

X has a special little place in my heart. :) (Until the little red waring signs start appearing for no flipping reason).

[kyao888]

check out Axosoft OnTime. Many design and development companies use them

[jimking]

check out Axosoft OnTime. Many design and development companies use them
We're talking about a totally different animal.

[budafist]

I think the main reason why the rep didn't recommend Pitstop is that it doesn't tell you what the problems are right? You can fix them easy, but until you print it out and see that 1 white word has been set to overprint on a coloured background, you don't know to change it.

Had that bite us badly once. There was white text on a job, but 1 line was set in overprint. Didn't even see it until the client got the job back. Totally the client's designer's fault, but what do you do?

I'm hoping that the workflow we get will have alarm bells when it receives a file like that.

[Ned]

My workflow goes like this...

Somebody puts something on my desk. I do stuff to it. I give it to somebody else.

[budafist]

Well, that's our workflow at the moment too. Doesn't work so good when one of us are away though.

[doubting_thomas]

I think Pitstop has a pretty nice preflight routine that it can run. I'm not sure
if it catches overprints or not, but it does give a pretty nice report and has
many different profiles that can be used. So does Acrobat, btw. If your doing
anything close to a pdf workflow Pitstop should pay for itself pretty quickly.

[budafist]

Update.

Puzzleflow is coming to NZ in 2 weeks so I have to wait until then to see it. They tried sending me a dongle for it and I've installed it on my computer but apparently it is PC based though a Mac can access it via a network. I've never used a workflow before so it's too difficult for me to install it and test it without any training. So when it comes, the salespeople will install it over at their offices so that they can show it to clients like me. Puzzleflow is from Poland so the email support is difficult given the time difference. You would think that with $30,000 at stake they would be trying to help me out quickly and efficiently but sometimes it takes days for them to reply to me or they might not reply at all and contact their NZ sales people instead who in turn contact me.

I'm going to visit a local printing company that use Pitstop to see how it works for them. This print company had an Agfa workflow (came with their platemaker) but they don't use it. They prefer to use Pitstop which I found very interesting! If Pitstop is enough, then that would be a cost effective way to do things.

Thoughts?

[SpugNothuson]

If you have any major problems with the Compose system you'll not get help amazingly quickly there either. After you've submitted the problem to your local Compose HQ they then submit it to Hong Kong, thats where their main HQ and programmers are.

The print company you're going to see must use something on top of PitStop as that programme is basically a plugin to Acrobat that helps you iron out any problems with PDFs (almost any). They must still have a RIP or Workflow of somekind to handle trapping, separations and all that gubbins.

Most people find PitStop a must, persoanlly I've never needed it. Acrobat Professional and my AGFA Apogee Workflow have always coped. Along with some indepth pre-press knowledge and the occasional inventive solution. :)

[budafist]

You never needed PitStop Spug? Now I'm confused. I've never used PitStop but I was starting to think it was the industry norm.

Don't worry, I'm not going with Compose now. I found the training incredibly dry and difficult to understand and the plate maker that Compose was going to be packaged with isn't the platemaker that our Production Manager wants to get anymore.

So for now, we're probably just going to go with the plate maker we want and then we're going to sort out the workflow stuff when we can. Which is probably what we should have done in the first place.

[SpugNothuson]

PitStop will most liekly fix all the problems that I'm used to doing in Acrobat and my Workflow, it may even do them in a easier way.

Problem is I've one it my way from the start and I'm a dab hand at cheating the system. We got PitStop installed almost a year ago and I found it a pain in the arse, mainly because I didn't know my way around it and I was getting frustrated because I already knew a method that would work.

From the way people rave about PitStop I'd say get it. But you'll need a Workflow to go on top of that to process the PitStop verified PDF.

Almost any platemaker can be run from any Workflow system, they all want your money so they'll do their damndest to support it. :) I'd love to see PuzzleFlow in action, from what I've read and digested about it, it seems quite impressive, I could be judging the book by its cover though.

[budafist]

Yes, Puzzleflow seem good but with all the promises of 24hour technical help, they are very hard to get hold of for help with the dongle! That worries me.

If we did get Pitstop in, I would insist that both of us here receive proper training in it as well as the people in the copy centre (if they're interested). It's always good to have a few problem fixers in the company.

[jimking]

Buda, That copy center may use Pitstop Server which is part of EnFocus and I believe is a workflow, I think. Pitstop the plug-in is a tool that will get into the guts of the pdf in order to minipulate it like the native program that created the pdf although limited. For example if you get pub files, you can perform global changes on it. Select one rgb letter, convert it to black only, and hit the global change and all text with that same rgb will change to black. Add bleed, move objects, set type and find and embed missing fonts etc. Make client changes to the pdf in your new pdf workflow without having to go to the raw files (be careful of future reprints).

[budafist]

Update:
We have decided not to go with the PuzzleFlow workflow. Reasons are:
Preflight requires a different workflow for each preflight setting.
Preflight is done at the other end and so far, hasn't picked up known error files.
Imposition requires a different workflow for each imposition. We would need at least 50 different workflows just to accommodate our impositions. 4up business cards with 4 mm gutters would be a totally separate workflow to 4up buisness cards with no gutters. We were under the impression that there would be 1 workflow for the pdfs that needed imposition and then we would sort it from there but that is not the case. We would need 1 workflow for every variation of imposition.
Imposition needs to be set up on the PC that outputs the plates. We would prefer if the imposition could be done at our (art department/mac) end.

We've had the Puzzleflow for a week and a half and the only thing we are using it for is for trapping. $30,000 is a lot to pay for trapping, so we are going to go another route.

That other route is Pitstop, separate trapping software and possibly Quite Imposing.

I'll start another thread for my questions about them.

[SpugNothuson]

I'm a little bit surprised by the lack of apparent usability in PuzzleFlow. A thought does come to mind however (feel free to tell me shut my trap :)).

In our system we need to essentially create a different workflow for every variation of imposition, spot/full colour/mono, different plate size, etc. The list could go on. If I totalled up the amount of individual workflows that we have running it would be over 1,000 (at present we have 659 different imposition files).

We don't however have over 1,000 workflow templates saved in the sytem, it would be seriously impractical to find the correct one. What we do have are 2 templates, these templates are set up with the most common worklow in mind.
i.e. Job in ->
Preflight (check for missing fonts and hairlines) ->
Imposition (1pp 2up SRA4 CMYK) ->
Trapping (Trap entire document) ->
Seperator (CMYK convert all spots) ->
Screener (200lpi) ->
Plate Info (B3 or B2 (this is defined by which template I open) ->
Platesetter.


For me to create a new job from scratch it goes a little like thus;

1. Choose which template to create a new workflow from (either B2 press or B3 press)
2. I don't touch the preflighter.
3. Choose imposition from dropdown menu.
4. I rarely change the trapping settings. On occasion I may need to turn this off or do something special if a metallic ink is being used.
5. Tell the seperator if I'm running Spots. (This is also where I map colours if needed).
6. I don't touch the Screener (it's set to 200lpi and thats the way every job here runs).
7. I don't need to adjust plate info or platesetter as this is where my two templates differ.
8. Lastly I assign it a job number and title and click Submit.

All of this happens from start to finish in less than 1 minute.

After all that waffle and blurb what I'm saying is rather than having hundreds of different workflows can you not have a basic set that you make minor changes to on occasion?

[budafist]

Hmmm...that would be awesome if we could make changes to the imposition settings without having to use a different workflow. From what I saw, we couln't just save a bunch of imposition templates and leave them lying around outside of the workflow because the workflow wouldn't run unless all the puzzle bits were connected.

One of the biggest problems with our Puzzleflow trial is the technician that they flew over here from Australia to do the metal CTP install as well as to get Puzzleflow up and running had NEVER seen Puzzleflow in action before. So it took him 3 days to get his head around it (as it would) before he could even begin to show me the basics of it. He was only here for a week. We've made complaints not on the workflow side of it, we're just not going to buy the workflow, but we are having problems with the CTP platemaker so it looks like he's coming back to NZ very soon to fix some things.

It's possible that the Puzzle flow could work in the same way as yours and not have a separate workflow saved for each imposition, but that's not the way this guy showed it to me. We did get an email from the main guy in Australia that knows about Puzzleflow urging us to persevere with it and really try and get our heads around it before ditching it. Thing is, the last 2 weeks have been really hard with none of the 4 workflows that were set up for us running as they should. At present all we want the workflow to do is trapping and it's not even doing that.

Another problem of having the imposition in the workflow and not separate on the Macs in the art dept is that imposition settings can only be altered on the PC that makes the plates. The computer can't process plates and alter the workflow/imposition settings at the same time. It's either 1 or the other.

Also, there are now 3 prepress people here all doing imposition at the same time. Would the plan in the end be to wait in an orderly line behind the PC and jump onto it whenever the computer wasn't running plates? These days, the platemaker is running constantly. It just isn't feasible.

I'd like to keep as much as possible at this end of the building as possible. Our CTP maker and the PC are next to our factory across the other side of our building. Going back and forth between the Art dept and the CTP maker is kept to a minimum if possible.

The end...for now...