Wow! I think I found my Software?

[WildWestDesigns]

The Monster ones that I got were about 80 a pop. The ones that are about 6 bucks, I just use for charging the small electronics and when I just need more outlets, but I use the more expensive ones for the high dollar machines. Also the surge protection portion of those devices tend to only last a short time on the cheap ones, then their value is just really that of more outlets.

 

[Suz]

Well alright then, thanks Wild! Looks like I'll have to get the spendier ones for the machines. We get lots of rain and thunder in WA State, so it's a wise thing to do especially for my shop!

Have a great rest of the weekend Wild!

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Well alright then, thanks Wild! Looks like I'll have to get the spendier ones for the machines. We get lots of rain and thunder in WA State, so it's a wise thing to do especially for my shop!

Have a great rest of the weekend Wild!

It's been a long weekend here. Just brought 2 young Alpacas to keep the mini horse company. His last Alpaca buddy just died and he was close to going of feed. Needless to say been busy, yours?

 

[Suz]

Oh, sad! Sorry you lost one of your pets. That's tuff! That is nice you were able to get some new ones though. Animals do have their friends too, don't they? Just like us, they have to have a couple of friends in life. I always thought it was cool how you can have different kinds of animals in the same place and they can become friends. Doesn't happen as often in the wild, but when forced to live together, anything can happen!

I used to have a cat who would lay around near the bird bath, just waiting for birds to appear above her. Squirrels would come right up to her and she would just sit there and they'd get close enough for her to nab, but she just let them circle around her. Her game was to go after the birds, but she could care less about going after the squirrels. That used to make me smile. Either they were good friends, or she was smart enough to know she would never catch one of them.

Today the agenda is to back up the Mac Mini before loading Caldera. Looks like there are a few options. I'm reading on the support.apple.com website, and there is something about OS X Recovery Disk Assistant. We have Lion 10.7, more to learn!

Getting excited!

 

[signswi]

Buy UPC active battery backup units with amperage 25-50% over your active draw. It's not cheap but neither is frying a computer or losing work to a rolling brown out.

 

[Suz]

Thanks signswi! I will look at those and buy something.

Buy UPC active battery backup units with amperage 25-50% over your active draw. It's not cheap but neither is frying a computer or losing work to a rolling brown out.

 

[Suz]

Mac Mini is loaded with Caldera

We're getting ready to do our 15 day trial of Caldera. This will be our first time using it, although we did make some attempts with the set up on PC and Debian, never got to the point where we had it working. Too much to do!

It was soooooooooo much easier just loading the Caldera software on the Mac Mini! Yay for that! Got our code from Ernst, so next step (per Ernst) is to load all the patches with his directions, and then use the code he gave us to begin the trial.

At this point, I can at least poke around in the program and see what it looks like. Gotta wait for this evening though for my hubby to do all the rest of the stuff and hook up the Mac Mini to the printer. So excited!

Side note: I have to admit though, I've really enjoyed using the Shiraz software. What I like the best about Shiraz is that when you load new material into the machine, Shiraz enters the exact width of your material into your visual layout space that you place your images to print inside of. I love that!!! It is a time saver and so easy! Very intuitive.

For how Shiraz handled PMS spot colors, I do want to say that I'm not thoroughly pleased with what my initial results were. For example: I mix my colors custom in CMYK, and I pick them from my PMS fan (color key). The colors are not dead on, but they are vibrant at least. I'd prefer that the were vibrant, rather than muddy, if I'm not going to get dead on. I make this point because I do not rely on what I see on my monitor to choose the colors that I design with. Again, I use my PMS color key. With all of this said, I should also mention that I did not do a print out of a PMS color chart, and I mention this because it has always been the most reliable way for me to find out what colors I will get from my own printer(s). I would also have documented my process to assure that it is repeatable. I went ahead and made my trial prints from Shiraz on real jobs, and overall, my results were very satisfactory. My intent was to see what colors I got right out of the box, without making any adjustments or compensating in any way between what I expected to get and what I actually got for color.

Given more time using Shiraz, I think I could hit my colors dead on, because the color results I got were so vibrant. I know from my color mixing experience that I can get any color that I need, so long as I begin with vibrant colors. I like knowing that I can get a good warm tone and a good cool tone of the three primary colors: red, yellow, blue. This is possible with the Shiraz driver. So, I believe possible to get all the variations of color that I could want. If the colors tended to print out muddy, that would concern me and probably drive me away from considering Shiraz as a possibility. But that's not the case! The colors were great.

Really, I think that we could be quite happy with Shiraz if I was pretty sure that I could get all of the profiles that I needed for the wide range of materials we will be using, without having to write them myself and break the bank investing in spectrometers and all that stuff right away. I'm thinking that those hurdles just put it out of my price range right now. Shiraz staff have been very helpful, even though they are so far away (England) they have responded within minutes or hours to my e-mails. I have even gotten calls from their Technician (Ramin) to help walk me through setting things up. I also liked that the Technician was able to basically take over my desktop via the internet and set up the program for me while I sat there and watched. Cool!!!! He also spoke to me over the phone while he was doing this. It was like I went to see the Wizard! Anyhow, they were all great at Shiraz! The whole experience has been excellent with them and I do highly recommend them. I think they have a quality software and service and I think they have put a lot of thought into designing a program that is fairly easy to understand and to use.

Since so many in the USA have not heard of Shiraz, my hope is that others might give Shiraz a try. It is a very nice option to have when considering software / RIPS. At Shiraz, they seem to care about what you are trying to accomplish, no matter what size business you have. That is so important to me. Thank you Shiraz!

 

[Suz]

Caldera is set up

Okay, time to post again... I now have 12 days left on my Caldera trial, yikes! At last, got it set up yesterday. A very nice Tech from Caldera answered my request for help walking me through setting up the Mac Mini (already loaded with Caldera) to talk to the printer. Turns out all the trouble we had with no communication between the two was a plug that came unplugged from my router. Geesh!!! Unnecessary frustration. LOL!

So, we had a case of PEBCAK - Problem Exists Between Computer And Keyboard. All is well now.

Okay, Caldera on a Mac... I must admit, it has been many years since I worked on a Mac. Although it was my first experience using a computer, and only a few little things are familiar, I don't remember much there. It won't take too long to get familiar with it, thankfully I do learn pretty fast and I'm not afraid to play around and experiment.

Regarding the Caldera Software, there seems to be a lot to it. I'm a bit overwhelemed, but I felt that way when I first started working with the Onyx trial and got over it. I did my first test print, using the exact same file I printed from Shiraz Software the day before. The image was the full dashboard and controls of a 172 Cessna airplane, printed on a lustre finish poster paper about 6 mil thick. This image area of the poster is printed the actual size of the Cessna Cockpit, approx. 35" wide. It will be used to train Pilots to fly this particular airplane. It's a good image to use, as the dashboard is black, and there are some bright red control knobs, some blue and green dials, and some creamy yellow colors in the photo. Using same file, same resolution, the print actually came out better when I printed it from Shiraz then it did from Caldera.

My colors were much richer, more vibrant in Shiraz. The blacks were blacker, the reds were more vibrant, even the halftone dot pattern was finer in Shiraz. I should mention though, the only profile that was available (came loaded with Caldera program) was 8-pass on the ink. I don't remember how many passes the Shiraz print was, but that would make a difference. Seems I had more options for ink passes with the Shiraz. I know I can get other profiles for the Caldera, but I'm at the mercy of whomever will send them to me if I don't already have access to more profiles. I'm amazed at the difference. I know this may raise eyebrows, but my print from the Shiraz RIP is much better overall. I'll have to do some more testing in the next couple of days.

The Caldera Software that we loaded is Version 9 - Visual Rip+, and the Software we loaded with Shiraz is Signature Solo, Version 8. Caldera Software (not mentioning price here) is $300.00 less than what I'd be paying for Shiraz. Shiraz Signature Solo is for just one machine, and they are throwing in the Color Profiling for Free. If I want to add printers, I can upgrade the Shiraz. Otherwise, I'm happy to start with just one printer.

I'd be willing to pay $300.00 more for the Shiraz if my prints are better. But this is just my first test with comparing Caldera Visual Rip+ to what I printed with Shiraz, so I have to do more to know for sure.

My plan is to also test some 13 oz banner material, Pressure sensitive adhesive back vinyl, and some clear adhesive back vinyl too. This list (including poster paper) seems to be the bulk of what I'm running right now.

It's a bit tempting to just go with Caldera, because of the $ savings, plus Caldera has the Cut Options and quite a few other goodies. I do not have a wide format cutter yet, and when I do get one it will probably be a Summa and it will probably have it's own software. So, I'm not sure the Cutter options are something I will really need. With this version of Caldera, you do pay extra for the color profiling feature though.

At some point in the near future, I hope to get the extra equipment needed to do my own color profiling. So I do need to consider this when looking at Software RIPs.

So, price wise, it may be a toss up. Color wise, so far it is not. Color is so important to me. Why go to all this expense with this big beautiful latex printer if I don't get the very best color possible?

I'll be asking myself that question during the next week and a half. We'll see.

Right now, I'm missing the Shiraz software. I feel like somebody took my car away from me. If I can get over that feeling pretty quickly, then I'll go for the Caldera. If not, then Shiraz is going to get my vote.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

You need to make sure to have the color matching settings right on Caldera. The first prints I did they were all turned off and the prints looked like CRAP! Once the tech realized that and got everything how it was supposed to be, the colors looked great. I don't have experience with any other RIP's with my HP as I just went with Caldera as that was what I heard others say they liked the best and got the best colors. I also do a ton of cut labels, so I needed to be able to cut out of it as well. If I remember right, the Shiraz doesn't have the cutting feature. PM me your email and I will see if I can get some profiles sent over to you.

For the pass count, I am not usually in that big of a hurry, so I run most of my stuff on 12 pass. I have also noticed that my cuts are more accurate too when I do that. I am assuming it has to do with the amount of heat.

 

[jhanson]

The cutting features start to lose importance in the RIP the larger your shop gets. At my shop, we don't even use RIP cutting features for the simple reason that we run jobs to about 5 different printers, running 3 different RIPs.

The Illustrator plug-ins that come with most decent cutters nowadays allow you to add the registration marks directly into the artwork, which you can then print and cut regardless of the RIP you're using. It also allows you do to more tricks with nesting and such, since you can nest things tighter in Illustrator than you can in RIP software packages.

 

[ProColorGraphics]

The cutting features start to lose importance in the RIP the larger your shop gets. At my shop, we don't even use RIP cutting features for the simple reason that we run jobs to about 5 different printers, running 3 different RIPs.

The Illustrator plug-ins that come with most decent cutters nowadays allow you to add the registration marks directly into the artwork, which you can then print and cut regardless of the RIP you're using. It also allows you do to more tricks with nesting and such, since you can nest things tighter in Illustrator than you can in RIP software packages.

I thought of that afterwards. Being a one man shop, it justs makes it easier for me, especially when doing multiple copies and nesting.

 

[FrankW]

The cutting features start to lose importance in the RIP the larger your shop gets. At my shop, we don't even use RIP cutting features for the simple reason that we run jobs to about 5 different printers, running 3 different RIPs.

The professional future for shops like yours will be to use 1 scalable RIP-Solution for every printer you use. Current Products of this kind e. g. SAi Pixelblaster or Onyx Thrive allows to share lots of printers over different RIP-Servers, but pool them in one single Frontend. They can do CMYK-Gamut-Simulation for the possibility to have consistent colors over your whole printer pool, and - not less important - pool every contour job of every printer into one output-queue, without a need to re-open every single job in the graphics application again. Having every plot job in one queue will allow not only to use batch-cutting-systems like OPOS Barcode, a system which recognizes the needed contour job on his own and pull it out of the queue independently, if needed multiple cutting jobs from one roll automatically.

 

[Suz]

Thanks everyone for reading and posting!

Hi All! So glad you read this stuff! Thank you.

Matt, I'm a "One Man Shop" too, just add "Wo" to the "Man"... I am glad you are willing to help me out with the profiles, I'll pm you for those, much appreciated!! You are correct, Shiraz has no cut options. I think during one conversation they mentioned they plan to add this in the future, but for now it's not included. About pass count, so 12 pass is slower than 8 or 10? That makes sense. Interesting comments about cuts being more accurate on 12 pass, but that makes sense too. I know that when I slow down my cad-cutters (only 24" wide) they do give me more accurate cuts. Anynow, thanks again Matt!

Jhanson, Thank you for sharing about how your shop operates and why you think RIP with no cut features is no problem. I'm with you on that, with some of my own testing done days after getting my Latex printer, I was able to successfully create artwork from Illustrator and Corel using the same kind of targets recognized by my smallest cad cutting machine that has an optical eye. This system will work for must of the smaller stuff I have to do.

I think the direction I'm headed in is mainly large format Artsy posters, Banners, Simple signage, Showcards, Sidewalk Signs, and Textiles!!!! None of that stuff is going to require so much cad cutting, at least it doesn't have to. Most of my Customers let me lead them into whatever materials or methods are used to come up with the product they are trying to create. I have a steady hand and I'm pretty good with a knife, so if I don't have a cad cutter big enough to cut around the larger stuff once in a while, I'll just do it old school! Don't laugh, but 30+ years ago, I used to hand cut my color separations for billboard signs using rubylith and amberlith, coat my large screens with emulsion, expose them in the sunshine, spray them out, dry them, tape them off, then register them on a 1-arm squeegie table and print. Sounds almost foreign now, but that is the way we used to do bus signage and larger graphics. Sometimes I'd use a direct cut water soluble emulsion, which eliminated the need to cut a ruby or amber master, but if you screwed up your screen, you had to cut it all over again! For the big stuff, this is just the way it was done. Either that, or piecing together film positives. Things has changed, Amen! LOL.

Frank W., you are very knowledgeable. Wow, way over my head! But I'll read again. Some good stuff there!

 

[Suz]

Played some more with Caldera and...

Friday was a busy day. Spent most of it doing some Graphics for an R44 (Robinson) Helicopter with Trailer Landing Pad and Truck. Fun, but lots of work. At last, I got to see the logo and signage I designed on the vehicles, turned out Awesome. Customer happy, I'm happy. Yay.

Okay, getting back to Caldera trial today and we got some very good prints.

Caldera is back up on top of the list. We poked around in it a bit this morning and found all sorts of stuff to control the color, ink saturation, ink passes, dpi, and on and on.

We made just a few adjustments and got the colors to print more like I want them too. In fact, I'm going to say that the print is pretty comparable to what I got from the Shiraz.

We were able to replicate or come close enough to be satisfied and so I think Caldera will be the one we choose as it offers more features, more readily available profiles for materials, and last but not least, it is the least expensive.

We like our Mini Mac and do want to keep it as our Operating System and Caldera is running on it right now and everything looks fine. The Caldera is not as intimidating looking as it was a couple of days ago and we were able to just get right in and print with no issues today.

The controls for the heat were easy to find, and the program seems to be layed out pretty well, so not to hard to find your way around once you make sense of what order to work in, and assuming you are used to working from a Mac computer if that is what you are using.

Okay, just wanted to post because it was a good experience. We have 10 more days on our trial. So I think we can make an educated decision at last.

Thanks for listening!

 

[signswi]

The professional future for shops like yours will be to use 1 scalable RIP-Solution for every printer you use. Current Products of this kind e. g. SAi Pixelblaster or Onyx Thrive allows to share lots of printers over different RIP-Servers, but pool them in one single Frontend. They can do CMYK-Gamut-Simulation for the possibility to have consistent colors over your whole printer pool, and - not less important - pool every contour job of every printer into one output-queue, without a need to re-open every single job in the graphics application again. Having every plot job in one queue will allow not only to use batch-cutting-systems like OPOS Barcode, a system which recognizes the needed contour job on his own and pull it out of the queue independently, if needed multiple cutting jobs from one roll automatically.

Exactly. Running cuts through Illustrator is a joke and a massive waste of human hours. Do you really want designers wasting time manually nesting and sending cut files? If you have quality designers being paid appropriately, that's going to be very very costly.

 

[Suz]

I bought Software this morning...

After much thought, I decided to spend $300 more and I am now the proud owner of...

SHIRAZ Signature Solo with Color Profiling Option

I just simply like it. It is smooth.
(Sounds like a Whiskey Advertisement)

Colors look fresh right out of the box, juicy in fact!

Least amount of trouble I have had with anything I have tried so far.

Best Customer Service. Ramin at Shiraz just Rocks! Okay, they all do!

They are not the cheapest but among the the most reasonable for price.
Simple to get to know. I like Simple! There are enough complicated things in life to worry about.

everyone who responded and made comments. It really helped me work through making a choice on software I feel we can get a good start with and grow with.

I'm really excited about this choice. Also decided to stick with using the quad core PC, I'm just used to PC's now and get around quicker that way. It's good to know though, Shiraz will let me load this software on any platform computer.

All around, it's the best choice for our business.

 

[Suz]

I Shir love my Shiraz. Haha!
Really, I do!

Oh oh, spelling police are gonna get me.
I love hamburgers too

 

[Johncerra]

Good Choice!!!

Welcome to Shiraz Suz

WE are based in Australia and having been using this software for about 6 years now.

it is just the most stable rip we have ever used and we have tried them all.

Onyx, Caldera, Ergosoft, Efi you name it.

Colours and profiling on both our Epson 11880 and GS6000 are just spot on.

Love it!!

John

 

[Biker Scout]

Since this is a 2 year old thread, Suz... would you mind giving us an update on Shiraz?

I'm in the RIP market right now.

 

[Suz]

Thank you John!

Yes, we are still loving the Shiraz. However, it does not seem the popular choice here in the USA.
We have gotten super results and our Customers are very pleased with the vibrant color we have
been able to produce using the Shiraz with our Latex printer.

Thanks for the welcome. Welcome to you too! Glad you are here!
-Suz

Welcome to Shiraz Suz

WE are based in Australia and having been using this software for about 6 years now.

it is just the most stable rip we have ever used and we have tried them all.

Onyx, Caldera, Ergosoft, Efi you name it.

Colours and profiling on both our Epson 11880 and GS6000 are just spot on.

Love it!!

John