FujiFilm ESP RIP Solution
TOP: The ESP system is now available for the Epson 7900, a 24" printer with the new high dynamic range ink set as reported in the last issue of Professional Imagemaker.
The acronym stands for Easy Studio Print, so let's get the easy bit out of the way first. Providing you present this printing system with simple files with no frills (typified by TIFF or JPEG) you can follow the five-stage process in a couple of minutes and be printing anything from large single files to complex mixtures of files in multitudes of sizes on the same sheet or even vast mixtures of nested files optimised for minimum media wastage. The Photo Pack Editor even allows you to design your own layouts and reuse them.
With such a simple workflow the system is attractive to a busy studio with a lot of printing to get out with a minimum of fuss, onto a number of media types, but limited to those of the FujiFilm range. This last caveat is important as things get more complicated as soon as you start to try and implement profiles for third-party media. However, for a busy studio the FujiFilm range is more than adequate.
The steps to ESP are as follows:
Step 1 Image Location
Here you navigate to the folder containing your 'job' (eg a wedding) and wait while the software caches the thumbnails. A set of 445 JPEG images, each nominally 3.2MB, took 4m15s to cache. While this seemed like an age it is only 0.6 seconds per file which is quite quick. Revisiting the cached file delivers the complete view in a couple of seconds. You may navigate to other file locations when building your output.
Step 2 Layout
A choice is made from about 20 single sizes of page or another 30, or so, complex pages, made up of multiple images, which may be the same or differing sizes.
Step 3 Image
Edit Here the composed page may be adjusted for placement, rotation, image flipping, etc.
Step 4 Media Profile
At this stage you select the media (which is probably already loaded into the printer), the resolution and whether you want colour or monochrome output. This dialogue box may be 'user simplified' to show only your favourite media. You may choose, for example, to have just satin paper in either colour or monochrome, that is, two options only.
Step 5 Print Options
From here you select print quantity, crop marking, job labels, cutting and, if required, nesting. Nesting arranges prints in an order optimised for easy cutting and minimum wastage.
Step 6 Print
Bang the big print button and wait for your print. It really is that simple. Spooling to the printer took a matter of seconds indicating a reasonable processing engine.
The Wrinkles
This may not bother many users but you should be aware of the limitations. The system does not recognise RAW files at all, even as thumbnails. Although claims are made for sophisticated colour management, CMYK and Lab files are depicted massively off colour when pages are assembled.
Layered Photoshop files are very slow to open and cache. For example, a typical D-SLR file with a couple of layer masks took between 4 and 5 minutes to cache in ESP compared with just 1.6 seconds to open the same file in Photoshop.
The in-built profiles are made in CMYK mode with 1,520 patches and the output we tried was visually acceptable. In the absence of any FujiFilm paper to try out we used Epson Publication Proofing Paper and ran it with FujiFilm Satin as the profile set up. The resulting print was a little heavy in density but otherwise quite a clean print. The error in the colour was low, the Granger Chart was smooth and clean. Later a glitch in the ftp site had been sorted and we were able to download profiles for Epson papers. Although this was a slow process, the results were worth the wait and a very accurate print was made onto Epson Proofing Paper White SemiMatte. (There is no longer a paper called Proofing Paper Semimatte as far as we know). The average error was 4.7LabΔE/3.23ΔE 2000 which matches what we generally find on profiled Epson printers. The highlight data were the landscape tones which were particularly accurate. Overall the print was about 3% too dark which contributed the bulk of the average error.
BELOW: This is the 'page assembly' interface. Images from the file folder, shown as thumbnails at the base, are simply dragged into the relevant 'box' in the template in the main window. It is very quick and easy to use.
Conclusion
The system is capable of producing really nice looking prints from a very simple interface. Although the spectrophotometers offered by the interface include the Eye 1 and the X-Rite DTP41 and all the right linearisation tables are present in the Profile Edit menu, no hits were returned when we searched the manual, we were obviously trespassing into banned territory! The evidence suggests that FujiFIlm are using the Shiraz RIP, but that it is a cutdown version with no facilities for changing tables, inking levels, etc. This is probably a good thing for the intended users!
An obvious question is whether the ESP offers anything that is not provided by the much less expensive Qimage. The answer is little or nothing and, if anything, Qimage is easier to use and, the required RGB profiles for third-party media are available from most manufacturers' websites. However, if you want an installed and supported system to remove all worries, then perhaps the FujiFilm ESP will enable you to rest easier at night while the printer finishes your day's work for you.
Incidentally the FujiFilm HQ has the latest Epson 7900 printer available for giving demonstrations in Bedford should you wish to avail yourself of the facility before you buy (but phone first there may be a limit on the time this is available for). The ESP system will also be demonstrated at the Convention 2009.
Above: Despite claims to the contrary the colour management does not show CMYK files with any realism. The bottom RGB file is shown correctly. In general the ESP system works best when presented with simple files on FujiFilm media. It does not recognise pdf files or print directly from Photoshop or InDesign.
Above; The underlying Shiraz RIP has all the usual suspects in terms of profile editing but the manual is silent on the matter and it is apparently prohibited territory for ordinary mortals!
ABOVE: We were able to make good looking prints which audited quite well using the FujiFilm profiles from their website.
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