by
Nathan Galloway aka DDD | 26 June 2006
It is not very often I come across a "New" product that
totally changes my production pipeline and or makes me say
"WOW"!!!!. But I can honestly say that
PrintDevizor does it. This
product fills a unique void in the print design world. Funny
part about it, is it is a void that I have relatively ignored
because it became such a norm I never considered a solution.
Luckily the kind folks at Stonecube have. First let me start
by explaining the issues as I see it.
You have a client/project that requires some exotic
die-vuts, embossing and UV coating schemes (sounds funny and
odd but I have had such projects). Now you can whip up all
the graphical comps you can to be viewed on screen. Which is
great but the client wants to see how it will look on paper.
Great, you print out some comps on your favorite home
printer and even use glossy photo paper. Client is thrilled,
but wants to see something closer to the actual final
composition with the embossing and UV cutouts. Enter the
problem. To have comp sheets printed up by a professional
print shop could get expensive, especially once the changes
and go-backs start rolling in. Next thing you know your
local printer is sending you Christmas and Thank You cards off
printing comps alone. So, for the freelance outfit this could
be a costly expense after a while (believe me I know). Enter
"PrintDevizor" the solution.
PrintDevizor allows you to make
3d visualizations of your print collateral that very closely mimics all the aspects of the final piece. I am
talking gloss, UV, emboss, foil, die-cuts and how they
interact with light. For a quick example check out this
quick composition I made of my business cards
http://deepixel.com/biz_card.htm. Pretty cool
huh? I made that in 5 minutes. This product has really stepped
up my process and turn around time. Plus the clients really
like the idea that their ideas can be both visualized and
distributed to others easily.
The interface is really not that hard to learn, and the concept behind it is quite genius. You basically are
going to use grayscale/black and white images to control
where you want effects to take place. And you layer these
grayscale images on top of each other to form your stack of
effects. Then your changes are displayed "real-time" in the
OpenGL viewport. Simple. You can pick from just about every
coating, card stock, emboss and die-cut out there. Plus you
can customize each feature.
[ the screenshot of the PrintDevizor
interface ]
My favorite output is the Quicktime VR, which exports
directly from the program. I can't praise that feature enough. You
can also output stills, which is equally good. VR output is
extra cool because you can control the the magnitude of the
rotation:
[ the Movie Setup window highlighting
the Quicktime VR feature ]
So far I really haven't had any questions or problems to
report, but what I can tell you that when I did have
questions; they were responded to quickly and with the
utmost respect. And they seem to listen to the client.
At times I did run across performance issues with choppy
OpenGL and display glitches. But nothing of the "stop the
presses" type. I wish you had more control over the
environment the final render is displayed in. Hopefully
these issues will be resolved in future versions.
This product is unique, solid and useful. While I still see
it in its infancy, the application of PrintDevizor to
"here and now" projects is worth its weight in gold. And if
you do any considerable amount of custom print work,
PrintDevizor will pay for itself in a short time period. I
have recommended and showed this product to a few colleagues
and each one of them have picked up a license or 2 for
themselves and currently use them in their production
pipeline. I have yet to run into a limitation with the
program, but I could imagine if you did a gigantic image
things could come to a stand-still as far as your computer.
To be fair, I could achieve these same results in another 3d
package like LightWave, but again it would come down to time
management. In PrintDevizor it takes mere minutes to get a
comp out as long as the B/W images are ready. But to do it
in Lightwave, I'd have to setup a environment, light the
scene, position cameras, fix textures...blah, blah. By that
time an hour or so has gone by. So again PrintDevizor saves
the day. Most of my review was based on v1. But since then
they have released version 2 which boasts a bunch of
enhancements - one of which is having more than 1 model open
at a time.
All in all I give this product 2 thumbs up, 5 out 5 stars
and the recommended buy award!
Check out PrintDevizor at
StoneCube.
|
PrintDevizor Review
