Speeding Up Image Composition w/ XMPie

[Jason Frankiewicz-Palchak]

The Problem

I have a job that's run weekly from InDesign using the uPrint function in XMPie.

This job has 1000-5000 records and utilized .dpkgs to perform image composition. The ordering of composing a record is:

 1. Pull FIRST NAME from data and check if file exists in X:\Art_Directory\Image_1

 2. If it does, use that file and move onto the next record

 - If not create image using Photoshop action, save to X:\Art_Directory\Image_1

Now the Issue is this job has been running for 6 years now and I've been at my company for about 9 months and there's ~65k total images for  7+ of these image actions.

I'm looking for a way to optimize the searching of the images in the main Art_Directory. Would some form of indexing be needed?

So far I'm at 2.5 hours for a 1587 record job and it's still going. This job also only has 2 of the images that require name composition the other are just static images.

Things I've Tried

 - Lumping each Image "Type" into it's own folder

 - Simplifying the actions used to create images that don't have a name already.

Important Notes

- The language for XMPie is called qLingo which is their wonky version of "Javascript" with it's own quirks.

- I'm not a programmer and I have limited knowledge of optimization techniques.

- Simply rebuilding how the file deals with .dpkgs and composing isn't an option due to the complexity and time requirements.

- The images are being composed locally on my PC but the .dpkgs and images are on our server

[ROBERT HOPFNER]

Hi Jason,

I ran a similar job and I ran a modified uPlan to JUST create the images. Average month was 30-35K images so it took awhile (6-24hrs), but the output on the server was quick because all the images existed. 

My proof set was about 1500 records and I just ran that locally. Even generating images for that took less that 2.5hrs. The production run was about 325K records and took about 3-4hrs to run on the server (16 cores), maybe less.

Are the images local to the uProduce server? On a file server and not just on your machine, that would slow it down. They don't have to be ON the uProduce server, although that does help a bit. I don't load them into uProduce, just have a images resource URL.

I've never used an XMPie dpkg for uImage directly, they tend to be huge. I always resize everything appropriately for the art. That will save you a ton of time. Even if you have to resize them afterward will help with the production times even if image creation is dragging.

I always make sure the actions flatten the output file. I usually ran .psd vs. jpg. 

Sorting the images won't help, the more folders it has to look through the longer it takes. 

I am no programmer either but am pretty good with Qlingo. 

You might pick up some speed if your data source is in SQL...

That's all I can think of, not sure what kind of hardware you are on of course and version of XMPie. 

I can look at files with you if you think it might help.

cheers,

Bob

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[couch]

You mention that your order of processing includes checking for an existing image. - uImage has its own optimization and will not generate an image if one already exists for a particular recipient. Perhaps removing the duplicate checking of the file system will improve some time.

The #1 issue with uImage performance is not having the photoshop image optimized:

* resize the image so that there is no scaling required in the print production

* down sample the image resolution so there is no more resolution than required for print production

* flatten the image so the photoshop does not have lots of unnecessary layers

* check any photoshop actions for performance - in many cases some time consuming filters can be replaced with faster options to achieve the same result.

* if the variable part of the image is 50% or less of the entire image, consider using optimization techniques to only create the personalized section as an overlay.

You mention that your production is across a network. Consider doing the production locally - the searching for existing images, and opening and saving of new images will be faster and save time.

There are video tutorials for uImage optimization in http://campus.xmpie.com