Sytist On-site Drylab Integration With Insituafx

So, who among us was the person that contacted InsituaFX in the UK to enquire about lab integration? Were you successful and willing to talk about it?

https://www.insituafx.com/2021/11/16/sytist-insights-lab-integration-and-automation/

Mike Weeks, was it you?

I have been knee deep myself in turning .csv order exports into prints to automate our back end. Always interested in finding out about other solutions.

(Title amended)

Edited Wed Feb 09, 22 6:39 AM by Trailboy

I'd be curious to know about who contacted them (or if maybe they are just doing the work and hoping people will buy it) but this isn't quite "lab integration" from my read of it. This looks more like "connecting Sytist to a lab printer" which isn't something most photographers are looking for - at least for myself, I'm using a photo lab to print my images and they want me to enter my orders through their software so it flows through their existing system along with everyone else's orders.

If these folks can get photos from Sytist into a lab's ROES - including the download and upload of the photos from my storage to the lab's servers - that would be of interest. I imagine it would be pretty complex...

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You're right, it's more sytist to a local drylab integration via .csv order outputs than a remote commercial lab integration via ROES.

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As long as your export data stays the same, a excel macro will automate just about anything you'd want. We have a couple set up that automate out order data into .csv files for import into our ordering software.

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Really interested in hearing more about your print automation solution Joey.

We use windows .bat batch file scripting to automate sorting purchased image files into different folders, all organised by print size and pack and further processed and correctly sized (if necessary) via our order export .csv columns from Sytist. All that's left is to ftp them to the lab and they arrive next day. Using batch files works really well for us as we can command line process images using imagemagick scripting from within the same .bat files.

Took some head scratching to work out, but I can process an entire schools orders in under a minute and with perfect accuracy.

Edited Wed Feb 09, 22 9:10 AM by Trailboy

I have spoken with InsituaFX a few times about Sytist. I do a lot of printing in house and when I do not have the man power or time I ship it off to be printed. InsituaFX was looking into QR codes and a few other questions for me. I am still up in the air on Sytist ordering system. I LOVE how G..P.... does theirs it is so easy to add new clients with the QR and to be password protected.

Edited Wed Feb 09, 22 5:18 PM by Todd Frazior

Trailboy,
Shoot me an email and lets chat about it. Jfreeman1412@yahoo.com

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The workflow is the same, whether self fulfillment or sending it to a lab. Native sytist data export may not quite useful if you want a ZERO touch of csv file such as excel data manipulation and such. We've built a ton of queries which are automatically triggered (run) everytime an order hits our cart and than files are rendered and print ready in a matter of seconds but thats just us and anyone else can do the same. Any lab that uses Kodak's DP2 software can accept XML order files which means you can do a one time manual export of XML using and DB GUI management tool such as MySQL WorkBench. If you dont have the time or dont want to learn, you may ask Tim or someone who knows MySQL to build those for you.

Edited Fri Feb 11, 22 6:22 PM by BERTI SKENDERASI

Interesting Berti. My SQL knowledge is severely lacking but very well done for getting it working. Your solution sounds perfect.

Print rendering is perhaps something that I think Tim might hopefully look at at some point in the future.

Tim - pity we don't have a closed forum where perhaps we may all be more open to sharing our knowledge on automation but only with fellow authorised Sytist users?

Edited Sat Feb 12, 22 4:36 AM by Trailboy

I looked into insituafx. In our situation it would take the csv file. look for the high res filenames in a local machine, queue them up to the different printers we have for different products. It was a good solution. We held off as we often adjust the position of the 300 purchased images slightly while picking them for print, rather than adjust every image until its picture perfect. It was agood solution and i haven't ruled it out totally yet. Very helpul bloke. Still researching.

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