What's the difference between NeoPack/Plus and NeoPack/Professional?

Both applications allow you to do package printing. The main difference between them is in the way data associated with the image is handled.

In NeoPack/Plus, data is entered (or imported) for each image. This is straightforward and simple which is why it is an ideal entry-level application for low volume production.

NeoPack/Professional makes use of a subject database - a database of people or things you are photographing. Data is imported (or manually entered) into this database. Images are then matched to subjects. Subjects can be arranged into groups. This offers many advantages. You can arrange subjects into groups which allows functions such as printing a certificate for all graduating students for example.

The other "professional" Neo applications, NeoComposite and NeoGroup, also make use of a subject database. A file created in one application can be used by any of the others.

I want to use one of the Neo applications. How do I print to my printer?

That depends on your printer. If your printer is provided with a Windows printer driver then you would use that. Timestone Software has developed printer drivers and plug-ins for various photographic printers. Always check our website for a current list.

If instead your printer employs a hot folder approach (as is the case for many digital minilabs such as the Fuji Frontier) the Neo applications can render each page to a bitmap file in the required format (JPEG, TIFF etc.) and resolution (DPI). The application deposits the bitmaps into the hot folder which are then picked up and printed by the printer.

You do not need an extra render component.

My operators are waiting a long time when printing. How can I speed things up?

Yes, printing does take a long time. Before printing, pages have to be rendered, and rendering is a time-intensive and unfortunately, unavoidable step.

Normally, each of the Neo production applications does its own printing. The operator selects File>Print and waits while the pages are rendered and sent to the printer.

You can, however, use our rendering utilities, PrintTime and optionally, RIPTime.

By using PrintTime, the rendering process is offloaded from the Neo production applications. In this process, when the operator selects File>Print, information required to form the pages is put into an intermediate file, a Timestone Print Job File. This happens relatively quickly allowing the operator to continue on with the next job. It is PrintTime that opens Timestone Print Job files, renders the pages and prints them.

Since now a single PrintTime is doing all the rendering, you may find that it is not rendering fast enough and the printer is idle for a lot of the time. In this case to increase the throughput to the printer you can use RIPTime.

RIPTime works in conjunction with PrintTime to render pages. The rendered pages are sent to PrintTime which it in turn passes very quickly to the printer. By having a bank of RIPTimes the rendering workload is shared, PrintTime has ready rendered pages to send and therefore the printer is kept busy.

The number of RIPTimes required is difficult to estimate as it depends on a lot of factors (such as printer, image sizes, network traffic, computer speed and memory etc.) but you can start off with a small number and add more as you need them.

Each PrintTime and each RIPTime should be running on its own computer. It should be relatively fast with lots of memory. Memory is cheap so put lots in, at least 1GB.

I want to capture images with my digital camera. What do I need?

You need our CapturePost application. This is generally how it works:

Person walks up to be photographed holding an identification or order card. Information is scanned in using a barcode scanner and the subject is identified or entered into the database. The person walks over gets their photo taken. The image is automatically matched to the entry in the database.

You can optionally also scan in order information at this stage.

When the job file is subsequently opened by one of the Neo production applications after photography day, the images and data are ready to use.

Note that in order to create the job file that CapturePost uses, you need either the DataPost utility or one of the Neo applications.

Can I enter in people's orders?

Yes, you can scan in the order information at time of photography using CapturePost or afterwards using DataPost.

The order information flows through to the Neo applications and allows them to automatically prepare the necessary pages ready for printing.

The prints look great on screen but have terrible color when printed. Any suggestions?

If you're not using color management, you should be. Trying to fix the color on the prints by adjusting look up tables (LUT's) and matching your monitor to the prints is so hit and miss and a thing of the past. We cannot stress this enough - use a color management system. It is so easy to implement, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't and you'll love the results.

Implementing color management means that all your components are calibrated - what you see on the monitor is what you see on another monitor and is what comes out of the printer. Components such as printers are calibrated and a color profile is generated for them. There are various systems that you can use to calibrate and then generate color profiles. One such system is from Monaco Systems (www.monacosys.com).

To use color management from within an application, that application must provide support for it. Timestone Software applications support color management under Windows 2000 and XP.

I want to try your software before I buy it. Is that possible?

Yes, demo versions of all our software are available from the demo download pages. Demos are fully functional except they put lines over any output. Feel free to download and let us know if you have any questions.