Epilog Users .....

[Craig Matheny]

Hey I just did a driver upgrade and had a weird thing happen I use Black (0,0,0) for a lot of my cut lines and to find out you no longer can control this in the control panel for color mapping it defaults to what ever the general setting for vector cutting is. I had to go into all my drawing and change to (0,0,1) the reason Epilog gave was Black (0,0,0) is not a true shade of color. So if after you have upgraded to the latest drivers you notice things that are black are not cutting like they should look at your general settings.

[Scott Shepherd]

the reason Epilog gave was Black (0,0,0) is not a true shade of color.

If that's their explanation, it's not a very good one. RGB 0,0,0 has been used for decades, and with lasers for a long time.

[Craig Matheny]

Epilog says in coding they deal with shades and black is not a shade it is all colors combined. Here is the error message you get from the color mapping screen color-black.jpg so go into color mapping find black (RGB 0,0,0) and try to use it

[Scott Shepherd]

Yeah, that's about 100% not true. RGB is an additive color system, meaning 0,0,0 is no color so it can't be made up of all colors combined. What they say would be true in CMYK which a subtractive color system, but not in RGB.

i understand what they are doing, I just think their explanation isn't accurate.

[Glen Monaghan]

RGB is indeed additive but, depending on your semantics, that doesn't mean that black is no color. It really means that black (in that representation) is the color consisting of no red, no green, and no blue, which is still a color (the color with all three constituents being zero intensity). The explanation from "Epilog" was probably an off-the-cuff brain f@rt from one of the tech support people who simply misspoke or, at worst, didn't really understand the shading code he was talking about. However, the screen shot is perfectly clear and accurate: the color black is reserved, so you have to choose a different color. Why? Because the coders decided to reserve 0,0,0 for their own purposes. Flies in the face of historical precedence and not a very good idea in my NSHO, but that's what they've done...

[Scott Shepherd]

That's what I think too Glen. I understand what they are doing, I just think they aren't explaining it well. A better explanation would have been what the error message states, that they reserve that color for their own purposes. The only part I took issue with was the explanation.

[Craig Matheny]

BUt why now was the question I had it has been usable from day one on all my machines. So did any one else notice this change

[Tim Bateson]

A conversion tool from Epilog would be nice.

[Craig Matheny]

yeah would be but nope got to do it all by hand one file at a time. I wonder if all the other laser manufactures do this?

[Scott Shepherd]

yeah would be but nope got to do it all by hand one file at a time. I wonder if all the other laser manufactures do this?

No, they don't. That's one worth screaming about. If they just made all of your legacy art work not work, they need to fix that.

[Craig Matheny]

The sad thing about all of this is the customer service from Epilog is outstanding this is a big "black eye" to them

[Bruce Clumpner]

Makes me not want to upgrade...anything Pretty soon I'll be 5 versions behind in CDR and 3 on the print driver... feel like an old man at this point.

[Scott Shepherd]

Craig, I'd start going up the food chain and explain to them that you have 1000's of files that will all need to be modified, modified at a substantial cost to your business, which is simply unacceptable. I wouldn't stop until it was resolved. That's just unacceptable to mess with something as critical as that, without any method of resolving legacy files.

[Craig Matheny]

So far the response has been black is a general color and is controlled via the general tab on the front panel and not in the color mapping. That is fine unless you need black to cut at a specific time in the job run. The frustrating thing is depending on the response I get will ultimately decide on if they keep my buisiness in the next 2 years we are planning on adding 2 more lasers to the shop. oh well time will tell.