Recent content by Dave Thornton

More than I wanted to know? Nope. Exactly the kind of input I was looking for, txcynna! I went through a demo session with a rep from PrinterPresence yesterday, and was pretty impressed. I doubt the variable document thing will ever be used by us, so that's a non-issue, but it's good to hear a...

Thanks, Bill & Wheels. I had looked briefly at Printer Presence (along with a dozen or so others) and it looked promising. Hearing from others using it helps! One question: Did you go with a package that includes Adobe PDF Ready? If so, has that worked well for you? Thanks again!

I'm on the hunt for a web portal solution for our customers to use, and have looked at a lot of different offerings and still am having a tough time finding a good fit. I'm the IT guy for a small label printing operation that specializes in expanded content labels, and we're getting requests...

Who here is using Esko's Web Center, and how is it working for you? I've been searching for a web portal solution for our customers to use, and have looked at Web Center... It actually does more than what we're looking for -- our internal users don't necessarily need or want the online...

... except file names will be limited to 32 characters.

Photoshop isn't the greatest tool for editing pdf files; the resolution setting is only one of its problems. If it's a fairly simple pdf file and the changes you need to make aren't too wild, you can use a trick in Illustrator to outline all the text in a pdf, then make your changes in...

I'm still a little confused on the product lineup and the genealogy of these products... Is there a feature comparison between Pit Stop Pro, Extreme and Neo? Do I have this correct? Enfocus developed Pit Stop and Neo, then Artwork Systems bought Enfocus. Artwork Systems 'merged' with Esko to...

That's a strange deal. We haven't seen that particular issue, but have our own headaches with Quark 6.5 and 10.5 (but only on Intel machines.) We create a PostScript file out of Quark to distill into a PDF, and on certain jobs with old Type 1 fonts Distiller will give a weird PostScript error...

We still use Quark as our primary layout app, mostly because it's what the users are most comfortable with; the version they usually default to is 6.5. I started working here four years ago and they were still in OS 9 and Quark 4; we moved to OS X & Quark 6.5, which has served us well for the...

Just wondering what other shops use to create and verify bar codes... We're a flexo label printer, and create a lot of the art for many of our customers, and that includes the bar codes they need. A lot of the customers also require that we verify the printed codes, and provide proof that the...

Re: 1-bit TIFF Inspection Wow! You all have been busy! Sorry for not replying at all, but we ended up with our 9 year old in the hospital last week; strep virus migrated to his heart, causing some inflammation (myocarditis) and a lot of panicky adults. He's out now, and doing very well; back in...

Re: 1-bit TIFF Inspection We have used that option in the past, but I forgot to mention it; thanks! Gimp might be an alternative, depending on whether I can finagle the purchase of another license for Photoshop. One concern with using an image editor is that we don't want any editing to happen...

We use an Esko Spark for imaging DuPont flexo plates for narrow web labels, with a Nexus RIP upstream producing 1-bit tiffs for imaging. When the system was installed last April, the Esko trainer suggested that when a plate is imaging, we should avoid using Grapholas on the Spark for inspecting...

Re: how to convert PDF text to vector outlines - and other elements Woohoo! Thanks for the tip Chris; flattening transparency is the trick! I used similar steps and got it to work right in Illustrator (CS3); 1. Place the pdf file in an empty Illustrator file 2. With the placed pdf selected...

Re: how to convert PDF text to vector outlines - and other elements Hrmm; didn't work for me. I got the pdf file into Illustrator, but the font information was still there, and without the fonts loaded, it was kinda messy. Two questions for clarity; 1. What versions of Illustrator & InDesign...