Onyx Artifacting?

[RobbThurmond]

Hey guys,

It seems that onyx is misplacing segments of the print. Its kinda like the puzzle got put together wrong. The artifacting is not in the original image, and I havent been able to catch it before it prints or in the logs.

This was printed with the Onyx Layout Tool, 7.1 (not brave enough to weather the 7.2 storm yet)

Ive seen it a few times, but not regularly enough to capture whatever is happening.

RIP: Onyx 7.1
Printer: HP Z6100
I am including a picture of the problem. ( I Hope)

Thanks!

Robb

[ScottyDoo]

You know, I've seen that a few times in the past as well, with no idea why.

Did you have the RIP enlarge the image at all, or was it pulled in and printed at 1.0 magnification?

I'm going to pass you post along and see if this is a known issue.

[RobbThurmond]

No enlargement, I only print at 100%.

Its happened on two different printers, an HP 5500 and the Z6100, and neither are PS. The two printers share the RIP and the network connection. Packet loss would explain missing data, but not misplaced data. Ive been watching for a repeat on this error for about three months, and unfortunatly I wasnt the one that printed the file. The temp files were long gone when I finally saw the print and I wasnt able to see if the artifacting was in the ripped image from the Layout Tool.

[ScottyDoo]

I'm being told that this is an issue that was fixed in the 7.2 update.

There was an issue that in certain situations, caused the software to grab image data from a neighboring region. It wasn't common and was seen more in media manager on some of the swatches. But, the issue was found and resolved. It Shouldn't ever happen again in either media manager or layout.

What makes you hesitant to move to 7.2? I think it's a great update, been running it for over a month through the beta to final release.

[RobbThurmond]

Thanks for the info! Maybe I will install 7.2 soon.

My hesitations for upgrading to 7.2? Well to start with, documentation is an issue. I am fairly new at this profiling thing and they changed the entire profiling interface with 7.1. Infact, I have yet to see good documentation/instructino for anything from 7.0 on. 6.5 has a great manual, but it doesnt really help much in the 7.0 environment. At least not for me. Upgrading to 7.1 also changed the way I had the ports set up on the printers and I lost about 30 of vinyl when onyx did the "stop and spit blank media" thing. Over all, I am happy with the upgrade, but hesitant to have any more hickups in production.

What changes have you noticed in the 7.2 build that make it a worthwhile investment of time?

[ScottyDoo]

Originally Posted by RobbThurmond

Thanks for the info! Maybe I will install 7.2 soon.

My hesitations for upgrading to 7.2? Well to start with, documentation is an issue. I am fairly new at this profiling thing and they changed the entire profiling interface with 7.1. Infact, I have yet to see good documentation/instructino for anything from 7.0 on. 6.5 has a great manual, but it doesnt really help much in the 7.0 environment. At least not for me. Upgrading to 7.1 also changed the way I had the ports set up on the printers and I lost about 30 of vinyl when onyx did the "stop and spit blank media" thing. Over all, I am happy with the upgrade, but hesitant to have any more hickups in production.

What changes have you noticed in the 7.2 build that make it a worthwhile investment of time?

I can't say the documentation has been up to par either. It's been a complaint from end users for some time now. They're slowly addressing it. I like to tinker and troubleshoot on my own so I've honestly never really used the documentation that is available, but 6.5 did seem to have better docs, and yes the profiling is completely different from 6.5.

As far as profiling, they actually have a profiling wiki in the works that goes through everything in great detail. It's not public just yet, still testing it and figuring out the best way to roll it out, etc. I think it will be a great tool for many people.

The 2 main reason the upgrade is a worthwhile investment to me thus far as the RIP speed increase and transparency support.

There were a lot off issues with PDF's and transparencies, and they seem to have it figured out so far. I have also noticed that most of my RIP times have cut nearly in half. Not all, and that's not an exact measurement, but they are noticeably faster thanks for the new JAWS engine which is a large part of this update.

[RobbThurmond]

Yeah, I was in closer communication with Onyx about a year ago. They had me come to a color profile training class (one of the greatest works in futility I have ever employed). Johanna talked about the wiki then, but I havent seen anything of it yet. I think its a GREAT idea, but with less than spectacular follow through. I hope its released soon.

I am in the same boat, having learned Onyx through tinkering, but I work FOR someone that cant afford to have someone learn on the clock. Its been great for me, but a slow process.

I have been learning on tough media as well, Magic DMVB-15, which has made things slightly more frustrating.

I think I will install onyx 7.2 on another machine before I trust the shop to it.

Its funny that you mention the fix to transparency. I experienced that problem when I was printing some personal stuff (we only print flat tiffs in production) and couldnt figure out what was going on. I thought the bugs were my fault. Thanks for the reprieve!

[eye4clr]

does 7.2 produce a consistent relinearization? 7.1 does not.

it's kind of a deal killer for me. I'm now having to reprint 300 2'x3' banners as a result of this incredibly frustrating 'feature'. We've run back to 6.5 for the hp9000 and jv3 as fast as we can.

I wonder if there is another RIP besides Onyx and the bundled colorspan RIP that can drive my HP45500. Anyone know of any?

[RobbThurmond]

eye,

Thanks for addressing my next question. Ive seen RipQ and XRip produce inconsistent color. The same image was printed through both engines, the result was a color shift. It was very minor, but the image was to be panneled and we had to reprint the job.

Thats my next headache, and I am posting it as a different thread.

[ScottyDoo]

Originally Posted by RobbThurmond

I think its a GREAT idea, but with less than spectacular follow through. I hope its released soon.

I am in the same boat, having learned Onyx through tinkering, but I work FOR someone that cant afford to have someone learn on the clock.

I know what you mean, I also work FOR someone, but software and this kind of stuff just comes naturally to me...though not the color profiling, still not very good at that.

As far as the wiki, I've seen the beta and it's got good info, though it's not really a true wiki really. At the moment it's just exported static pages from their internal wiki. Not sure if they are planning on opening the real thing up or just offering the exported pages, which is still good info, though the navigation is weak.

I'll have to find out, haven't really asked them many questions about their direction yet.