News

Origami 2.7

12 Jun 2018

The main feature of this update is foil effect that you can control directly from Illustrator. Sounds promising? Read on then!

Foil Effect

The feature is quite experimental and although it works well in our tests, we will probably adjust it here or there to better match your needs. At the moment we would really appreciate your constructive feedback on how it can be improved.

So far you can define a spot color of a specific name (“Foil” by default, configured in Settings) and use it in your artwork. Origami makes a reflection mask using this color and uses the color itself to tint the foil. The idea is quite simple and follows our approach of defining everything directly in Illustrator. You can read more about it here.

Foil can be rendered with the built-in renderer and Owlet, exported to Boxshot or Koru using Collada or Boxshot Model formats. Note, that foil is not exported to 3D PDF format, as Acrobat does not support it.

Overprint Support

This one is so-called “accidental feature”: adding foil effect requires us to separate the artwork to process and spot colors, like you do in “Separation Preview” panel in Illustrator. Origami separates the artwork, takes the foil separation out and composes the image back. The only way this can be done in Illustrator is in overprint mode, so here is the new feature. At least you asked for it, which is good.

Personally, I believe this is the right thing, but if you don’t think the same - contact us, so we can try to sort it out.

Using Whole Artboard for Artwork

Starting from this version, Origami uses artboard boundaries for artwork. It doesn’t try to find a smaller area that fits the dieline and export just it. This simplifies the process if you need to export artwork manually, without Origami.

There is still a switch that enables the old behavior in Settings window, but we’re going to completely remove it in one of the next updates. Let us know if this affects you, so we can discuss the options.

Dieline Generator Improvements

As you may noticed, we started adding new dielines to our generator which you can also use from Origami. The new dielines (like FEFCO 0427) already support paper thickness and when created from Origami, they use the currently selected paper for your convenience.

We’re going to add thickness to all the dielines there and also add some extra features like paper locks. Keep an eye on it, your built-in generator in Origami will also be updated with the online version.

Other Improvements

Here is the list of what else has been done:

  • Preview takes more care about gamma-correct color processing;
  • Paper type editor saves the last change if you click “Save” right after editing;
  • Selected paper type is saved better when the application quits;
  • When using dieline generator, the document is created in the selected units.

Let us know if you still have any issues with the software, so we have something for this list next time ;)

Note for the users of old systems

We’re going to drop the support of old versions of Windows and Mac OS X in the very near future. The minimum Windows supported will be Windows 7, the minimum Mac OS X will be 10.10.

We’re also going to focus on 64-bit Windows only. There will be no updates for 32-bit version of Origami in the very near future.

Our statistics shows that the number of users with such outdated systems is below 1% and if you are one of them, consider upgrading asap as otherwise you may end up without updates somewhere this year.

Cheers!