Going from Onyx to Caldera

[Ditchmiester]

I'm going to be upgrading from Postershop 10.2 to a rip that can do ICC profiles and I was wondering if anyone has any stories of going to Caldera from Onyx and what are the advantages. Also I'll be running Windows for design does having to use Linux or a Mac Mini cause any problems design wise. Thanks.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Just out of curiosity why not upgrade to Productionhouse from Postershop so you can do profiles within Onyx? No new hardware or OS to deal with, no new program to learn, etc., and probably would end up being quite a bit cheaper overall. Profling in PH is really easy.

 

[Ditchmiester]

I'm not against going to Production House just want to test all my options first.

 

[ProWraps]

you can profile in caldera but you will need a spectro. i would recommend the caldera easy color as its automated which takes a ton of the labor out of scanning the targets.

works well so far for us. it aint cheap, but it works good.

 

[danno]

Most RIP's can supply a 30 trial run. You might not be able to profile, but you could determine if the program would be friendly for you. I had a class last week and will be looking at the Ergosoft rip when time permits. I currently use Production House, but they seem to have fallen behind with some features to help me do my job.

 

[kindlekreative]

Most RIP's can supply a 30 trial run. You might not be able to profile, but you could determine if the program would be friendly for you. I had a class last week and will be looking at the Ergosoft rip when time permits. I currently use Production House, but they seem to have fallen behind with some features to help me do my job.

Danno - out of curiosity, what features do you feel are lacking. I just started using PH today and I've taken note of some things that seem inefficient. But I chalk this up to inexperience with the program at this point.

 

[danno]

I was looking at Ergosoft and Caldera and found that colour matching capabilities of Ergosoft would be better for our shop and save me some time. The colour matching is built into the RIP. It isn't an add on or something that needs to be purchased from another company. While PH has been great, I have found that I need to explore the other RIP's to see what else I might could use to make my job a little easier. Writing profiles is a must, but when we wrote a profile with the Ergosoft software, it seemed to go a little smoother and a little faster. Caldera's wasn't to shabby, but I am a little skeptical after talking with one of their reps a few years ago. Maybe they have changed since then. The new THRIVE version of ONYX is reportedly good. Going to SGIA in Orlando to talk with some people down there and get more information. We don't use the cut capabilities of the RIP software. We have always set our cuts up separately. I guess we have never really trusted how the RIP software would set the cut up.

 

[danno]

One thing I just remembered about the Ergosoft, was the ease of nesting. Sometimes in PH, you waste a little more than you intend to.

 

[Bly]

Onyx has Best Fit nesting as an option and really saves media by rotating and nesting to reduce waste.

 

[milchad]

We use Caldera and the nesting capabilities save us tons of time and media. We can drag and drop 100s of files onto one page and they auto-rotate. We can also pre-determine what is through cut and kiss cut on our Zund. As far as profiles, Easy Media is just that... Easy. We have a x-rite i1i0 automatic chart reader and a i1 basic pro 2 for creating profiles. Caldera also has an option to tweak the gray balance without having to create a whole new profile. Danno, please take the time to visit the Caldera booth while you are at SGIA. I know their sales reps might have come off a bit "snobby" in the past, but their RIPs and workflow is unbeatable in my opinion.