Scanvec Amiable Flexi 7.6 and PhotoPRINT 4.6

It’s been awhile since we looked at SA International’s flagship product, FlexiSign-Pro. The 15-year-old product line rates as the most complete signmaking package: for simple or complex vinyl signs, or digital graphics complete with contour cutting. We visited the Scanvec Amiable booth at the 2005 ISA Sign Expo to see what was new.

Scanvec Amiable didn’t introduce Flexi 8 or PhotoPRINT 5. Instead, they announced a fairly significant service release ? 7.6 for Flexi and 4.6 for PhotoPrint ? that adds numerous new drivers and adds or improves various features.

After an extended demonstration, and loading the new update onto one of our systems, we determined that the changes warranted a review. This review will be helpful if you’re a current owner of Flexi or PhotoPrint, or you’re in the market for sign-productivity software.

Many improvements and new features we’ll describe apply to both FlexiSign-Pro and PhotoPrint. We’ll indicate if the changes apply to both or a single product.

Overview

The Flexi product family is designed to meet the needs of all levels of signshops. Each product can be upgraded with added features. A signmaker can start out small and upgrade as needed.

Advertisement

The simplest product, FlexiLetter, offers tools for creating lettered signs that rely on imported files for additional graphics. It works strictly with vinyl cutters directly connected to a single computer.

FlexiSign, the next step up, offers a range of tools for creating original artwork, plus scan-and-trace capabilities. Flexi Expert adds bitmap-editing, job-estimating and project- management tools.

FlexiSign-Pro contains all of Expert’s features, plus a full Adobe? Postcript RIP for output to wide-format printers.

A design-only product, FlexiDESIGNER, can be used with FlexiSign-Pro in shops with multiple designers.

For shops that only need a RIP, Scanvec Amiable offers the PhotoPrint family. These products range from PhotoPrint SE, a standalone RIP for a single workstation printer, up to PhotoPrint Server-Pro, which can handle multiple users in a networked environment. Users can upgrade to leverage their investment.

FlexiSign-Pro has virtually every tool imaginable. So you may assume the product would be intimidating.

Advertisement

However, thanks to a tight tool organization and context-sensitive menus, users can get up to speed fairly quickly. A familiar set of tools, contained in a floating palette

(Fig. 1) lets you create original line art using vectors; draw such objects as rectangles, circles and polygons; and add text. Objects can be transformed using node-editing tools. Scanned bitmap images can be converted into line art via the trace tools.

Further editing and creative options can be accessed from items in the menu bar. You can modify bitmapped objects with various filters, including those that work with Adobe Photoshop?. These are just a few of the product’s creative capabilities.

Many tools can be intimidating, and even seasoned designers have problems navigating new programs. Flexi addresses this situation in several unique ways. For example, every object, when selected, will update a window called DesignCentral. This window, which knows the context in which the designer is working, will offer various options for dealing with the object or situation. For example, if a rectangle is clicked, DesignCentral will list the size, orientation, stroke color and other features that pertain to the object. The user can key in values to change the size, rotation, etc.

Improvements

Load speed has been improved for both products. Additionally, the accuracy of such file imports as TIFF, FS, AI and DXF has been improved.

Advertisement

PhotoPrint now supports the import of Adobe Illustrator? 10, 11 and CS files. Both AI and EPS file imports support overprint, which allows one printer to print over the same area a specified number of times. Backlit media may need overprinting to generate a proper image.

Flexi’s outline effect can generate inlines, outlines and object contours. An addition to the outline-effect parameters in DesignCentral lets you keep or discard the original object after the outlines have been generated.

In previous software versions, a conflict with the Warp 9 parallel driver used by Flexi, PhotoPrint and Gerber Omega software prevented PhotoPrint or Flexi from co-existing with Omega when both output to a Gerber Scientific Products EDGE. The new software versions resolve this issue.Gerber Scientific Products

Scanvec Amiable has been concentrating on a bane of the sign industry ? color management. Color management allows a logical flow of artwork from either the designer’s notes or a scanner, to the monitor and, finally, to the printer, where the colors will be consistent or at least as close as possible. Many signmakers and digital printers encounter this problem as their customers demand more accurate color matching. We’ll devote more on this subject in future articles, but, for now, we’ll note Scanvec Amiable’s improvements and additions that address this situation.

In pursuit of accurate color

Both FlexiSign-Pro and PhotoPrint have offered color-management tools for some time. As users have become more color-savvy, they’ve demanded tools that work the same from product to product. To address this concern, both FlexiSign-Pro and PhotoPrint changed color sliders to full-curve adjustments. Designers are more accustomed to working with curves. The tools offer both numeric and visual feedback.

"ICC profile," a buzzword used in color management, often confuses many neophytes.

So, what are they and how do they help? The International Color Consortium (ICC) strives to solve a major color-management problem. Quite simply, color can be defined numerous ways; devices rarely agree on a particular color’s definition.

For example, your monitor transmits light that comprises red, green and blue primaries to produce color, defined in a spectrum (or gamut) referred to as "RGB color space."

Your printer, however, creates color by reflecting light. The primaries ? cyan, magenta, yellow and black ? comprise the CMYK color space. Because color-producing methods differ so greatly, translating a color from one space to another is difficult.

All CMYK isn’t created equal in the printer world. You must account for the printer’s output resolution, the type of ink, the dither pattern, and, in many cases, the actual number of colors used (some printers use light and medium cyan and magenta, for example).

The ICC profile acts as a translator. It knows "LAB," an intermediate color model, which directly translates both RGB and CMYK color spaces. Now, you just have to know the input profile, such as the monitor or scanner, and the output profile. Of course, much of the software that helps create and output the images needs to know how to handle the profiles, or they’re useless.

Consequently, Scanvec Amiable has made numerous improvements to both FlexiSign-Pro and PhotoPrint. It now includes the Adobe ICC input profiles. Adobe software is the heart of the Flexi and PhotoPrint RIPs.

In addition to the Adobe support, the Flexi and PhotoPrint software features improved third-party ICC-profile support. They accompany printers, and many after-market media and ink companies also offer them.

Separate RGB and CMYK rendering intents, which define how colors translate from one color space to another, increase the flexibility and accuracy of the color-management system within Flexi and PhotoPrint.

Ink-split control (Fig. 2) assists printers that utilize medium and/or light magenta and cyan. It adjusts boundaries where these light and medium colors transition in or out, so you can tune lighter tones of colors and decrease banding in light areas of a print.

Gerber-specific improvements

The Gerber Edge and Edge II are workhorses in many signshops. Significant Flexi improvements address specific Edge issues.

Importing Omega and Graphix Advantage artwork and clipart has been a serious problem. Version 7.5 now allows you to import and open Omega 2.0 and 1.56, Graphix Advantage 6.20 and Gerber GCA files. Imported Gerber files will come in as grouped objects, which allow simplified repositioning. Foil colors support spot, duotone, RGB and CMYKW.

This version now allows Edge printers to print all panels of a paneled job per color. Spot-color gradients now permit tint percentages for both top and base colors.

New stuff

Along with these improvements, several features have been added to both Flexi and PhotoPrint. We mentioned earlier that many maintenance releases add a few new drivers. For Flexi 7.6 and PhotoPrint 4.6, 145 new drivers were added, which includes drivers for both cutters and printers.

A cool new feature added to both Flexi and PhotoPrint, the Preferences Manager standalone application lets you save your favorite settings into a profile that you can load at application startup. This can prevent yelling matches when several people use the same machine.

If all else fails, built-in factory settings restore all settings to the same as a fresh install. In the old days, a full reinstall was needed to reset some settings.

Hooray! Multiple color palettes can be opened and displayed simultaneously (Fig. 3). Let’s say you need to open a vinyl library, the spot foil and the finishing foil palettes at the same time. No problem. You can also drag and drop colors from one palette to another.

The make-transparent setting for bitmaps (Fig. 4) allows you to select a color, such as a white background, in an image, and essentially eliminate the color (Fig. 5). When it’s used with the contour-cut effect, you can create exact contours (Fig. 6) for bitmapped objects, as opposed to rectangles or circles. Controls in DesignCentral let you vary the tolerance to achieve exact results.

Various new features work with printing. The poll-size feature now works with parallel, USB and TCP/IP devices. Poll size lets the RIP or Production Manager query the printer and determine what size media is actually loaded in the device.

Changes to the nesting feature of the RIP and Production Manager let you manually move images, in the nesting group, thus overriding the decisions made in automatic mode.

Making settings to accommodate various modes, media, scaling and other capabilities can be tedious (and overlooked) during output. The new software lets you define output presets that can be named, saved and recalled when desired.

The final two features relate to color-management issues covered earlier. Assuming we get all appropriate color profiles together, and fully understand how to apply them, wouldn’t it be great to simulate a job’s output to a smaller device for a test print? The printer-simulation feature in the job-properties menu allows this. You must have the appropriate ICC profiles for both devices, and the simulation won’t work for spot colors.

Lastly, the Pantone? spot-color library has been included for use with global color mapping, which applies to such vector-based graphics as AI and EPS, which commonly have filled objects. During the printing process, a pre-defined table maps a color to a specific set of output values. The Pantone library allows you to map the colors directly to output values that reproduce the color on your printer.

Judging from the number of new and improved items we covered in this review, Flexi 7.6 and PhotoPrint 4.6 could seem brand-new.

However, when you dig into the application, you’ll find many new or improved features that add tremendous printing, color-management and device-support functionality. Their best keeps getting better.

What about price? Surprise! It’s free to registered owners of Flexi 7 and PhotoPrint 4.

Key Information

Company: Scanvec Amiable International Plaza Two, Suite 625 Philadelphia, PA 19113-1518 (610) 521-6300 Fax: (610) 521-0111 www.scanvecamiable.com Company Background: Scanvec Amiable Ltd., formerly Scanvec Ltd., was founded as an Israeli corporation in 1990. The company, which merged in December 1998 with Amiable Technologies Inc., is headquartered in Philadelphia. Scanvec Amiable provides complete professional software solutions from design to production for the signmaking, digital-printing, screenprinting and CNC-machining industries. Contact: Judy Heft, director of marketing System Requirements: Windows 98/NT 4/2000/XP, Pentium III or higher; Mac OS X Version 10.2.8 or higher; 512MB RAM for both PC and Mac; 200MB install space and free USB port for key. List Price: FlexiSign Pro 7.6, $4,295; PhotoPrint Pro 4.6, $4,495