Creeping (Shingling) Saddle Stitch w/ Crossovers

[buckeye]

slehning,

I think I'm getting the same results as you.

Joe and DCurry,

Was hoping you could take a look-see and or comment on my settings that I've attached. I have a 48 page saddle stitched book that is loaded with crossovers and all of the folios are currently .125" from the face of the magazine. It's printing on #80 text and my pushout/creep is going to be at least .0625". The lefthand page seems to be shingling towards the spine and NOT scaled and the righthand page looks to be doing neither - although there is a shingle mark showing that would make you think that it is shingling. I've attached a test using a ruler scale to show what I'm coming up with. The black ruler is not shingled and the magenta ruler is scaled/shingled.

OSX 10.4.1
Preps 5.3.3
Rampage 11.3

Thanks,

-Erik

 

[DCurry]

I wonder if it has something to do with how Preps and Rampage work together. I've never used Rampage, but it is my understanding that it gives you FPOs which get placed in the Preps run list, then you print something back to Rampage which will marry the hi-res back together in the correct position. Perhaps this is where the breakdown occurs.

Maybe try feeding Rampage an imposed flat rather than whatever you are giving it now? In other words, add your hi-res PDF to the run list, then print to PDF from Preps and feed that to Rampage. You'll be able to tell before you even feed it to Rampage if it worked as expected or not.

I just did a test file using this method and it worked as expected. I'm on Preps 5.3.3.

 

[buckeye]

DCurry,

Funny you mentioned the FPO thing. When I got home from work last night, it hit me like a ton a bricks that maybe it's my workflow that's causing the roadblock. I was going to try adding the high rez pdf straight to Preps and see what happens. My thinking was that maybe Ramage can't scale something after it's already been ripped. Will do a test to see.

Thanks,

-Erik

 

[buckeye]

DCurry,

I've about given up, which is a rarity for me. We've been running the same workflow set-up (OPI based/Mixed Files - > Postscript) for close to 15 years and it took me a while to figure out just how to print to a pdf from Preps. It's hard to get out of the OPI frame of mind that I've been used to. Anyways, the first pdf I created from Preps errored out in Rampage because I used my "CD102" Device setting to print to and it created a file that was larger than 40"x30". I'm guessing that maybe I have to create a new device setting in Preps that is to the sheet size and not the maximum size of the plate setter? I will "play" with this later when I have more time as the work is starting to pile up from me trying to figure this out.

Also, I think I'm still doing something wrong because the pdf that I DID create from Preps, still appears to be shingling and not scaling the lefthand page and doing nothing to the righthand page.

Thanks,

-Erik

 

[DCurry]

Somewhere in Preps is a setting called Press Sheet Size. If you use that, the PDF will be exactly the press sheet size. You'd probably need to adjust its position in Rampage somehow.

What I would do during this testing phase is to use a large creep amount so there is no mistaking if it is doing the right thing or not. It can be tough to see incremental changes when the biggest move you're making is only 1/16". Make it something like 1/4" or even 1/2" and it's easier to see what's going on.

Also, are you basing things on the crop marks? If I recall correctly, the default behavior is for Preps to move its crop marks when shingling but you can turn that off so that the crops stay in place while the page content moves/scales. I seem to remember you have to change this in the "default.cfg" text file.

Might also be a version thing - I'm on 5.3.3 and you're on a slightly older version so perhaps there was a bug.

*edit* - Forget that last comment - I see from your sig that you're running 5.3.3. Don't know why I thought you weren't.

 

[Al Ferrari]

Preps output pdf should correspond to the size of the particular plate to be imaged, not the max size of the imaging device. Other important details are the punch location in both the Preps template and the plate size ppd setting.

I use preps 5.3.3 to output such plate size pdfs which are then manually downloaded to the rip. I don't know anything about Rampage.

Al

 

[buckeye]

DCurry,

I did use a large creep amount so as to see if it was doing the right thing. No matter what I've done so far, the lefthand page is moving/shingling and NOT scaling and the righthand page is doing nothing. What IS odd is that the righthand page that is doing nothing, Preps is still putting it's shingle trim mark, as I call it, next to the original trim mark. The ruler scale that I did a test of confirmed, to me, that there is no scaling going on and that only the lefthand page is being moved a 1/16 of an inch towards the spine. Just to speed up the whole testing process, I added all blank pages to my Run List except for the two pages that were for the center spread because that's where the creep will be the greatest.

I will make a new Sheet Size setting in Preps to print to and go from there. The fact that I DID get a pdf out of Preps and it did the same thing that I was already getting before makes me think that it doesn't matter that it errored out in Rampage because I'm guessing that Preps will/should be doing the scaling/shingling and not Rampage?

And the reason you thought I was running an older version of Preps is because I JUST updated my signature to 5.3.3 from 5.1.5.

-Erik

 

[DCurry]

DCurry,

The fact that I DID get a pdf out of Preps and it did the same thing that I was already getting before makes me think that it doesn't matter that it errored out in Rampage because I'm guessing that Preps will/should be doing the scaling/shingling and not Rampage?

In this case, yes, Preps should be applying all moves because you've eliminated the FPO workflow aspect.

Now you've got me thinking I should re-run my own experiment to be sure I am having success. I'll report back.

 

[DCurry]

OK, experiment complete with successful results. See 2 PDFs attached.

Here's what I did - I made a 16-page document with a stroke at the edge of each page. I made the right-hand pages magenta and the left-hand pages cyan so we can easily tell what is occurring at the spine.

I entered a value of 1/2" creep and set it to scale. In the resulting imposed PDF, you can see that each page is scaled properly. 1 & 16 don't change size at all, while 8 & 9 are scaled by the full creep value of 1/2" (you can verify this with Pitstop).

As a control, I also tried one without clicking Scale so it will just move pages. That imposed PDF confirms that the pages simply moved because the rules in the spine disappear.

 

[buckeye]

Seems simple enough to me. Glad yours is working. Wish mine would. I wonder if Slehning, the last one to reply to this thread before I revived it, ever got it to work because it sounded like he was getting the same results as myself.

Too be continued.

And thanks for testing on your end DCurry.

-Erik

 

[DCurry]

Stupid question, but you are using a saddle-stitch template, right?

 

[buckeye]

Stupid question, but you are using a saddle-stitch template, right?

Yes, I'm using saddle-stitch and it's not a stupid question in my book. I'll take any and all suggestions as it could be something very simple on my end that I'm not doing correctly.

-Erik

 

[jstotz]

I don't know much about Rampage, but if it is a CT/LW based system, your idea about Rampage not being able to scale ripped pages is probably the problem. It's likely that it can't scale CT/LW pages. That would agree with your results showing the left pages moving and the right pages not moving. Here is what I think is happening:

When you scale pages for creep, you need to end up with the gutter edges of the pages still at the gutter. Normally, scaling happens from the lower right corner. Therefore, righthand pages just get scaled. The right edge stays put and the left edge moves to the right. Lefthand pages are different. Since they also scale from the lower right corner, the right edge stays put and the left edge moves, just like righthand pages. But they also need to be moved to the right by the creep amount to get the right edge back to the gutter.

So, if the Rampage is ignoring the scaling, and just doing the moving, that would account for the results you are seeing.

 

[buckeye]

Preps is where the shingling and scaling is taking place erroneously because when I created my imposed pdf flat from Preps it was already screwed up just as if I imposed my FPO's with Rampage. I'm certain I'm doing or missing something on my end. I just can't seem to put a finger on it and it's getting frustrating because I've shingled jobs before, and correctly so, but that was with Preps 5.1.5.

-Erik

 

[jstotz]

Ok, I misunderstood that part. What do you see in the built in Preps preview? Have you tried reinstalling Preps?

 

[Al Ferrari]

I have found the Preps preview to be not as accurate as doing the pdf output and viewing it in a version of Acrobat pro. Although shingling was not the issue on those occasions.

Al

 

[DCurry]

Erik, how about posting your template and test Preps job and I'll run it on my end and see what happens.

 

[buckeye]

Uhh, hey Dan. Do templates made in Preps 5.1.5 not work in Preps 5.3.3? While rounding up my files to send to you, and thanks by the way for the offer, I saved out a new template from Preps 5.3.3 and ran another test and it's working now. I couldn't help but notice that the templates now end with the tpl extension when created in 5.3.3. Is that a preference setting or are they now specific to 5.3.3?

Come to think of it, the template that wasn't working was probably created in Preps 4.1 but eventually re-saved with 5.1.5. You think that maybe it was just a corrupted template or can I not use older templates with 5.3.3?

Thanks,

-Erik

 

[DCurry]

I would be surprised to learn that templates have anything to do with it since the shingling is applied in the Preps job, not the template. I never had any issue with old templates not working in newer versions along the upgrade path.

Maybe run a few more tests on old templates and if it doesn't work, update them and try again. Seems odd to me, though!

 

[buckeye]

I don't think it's a compatibility issue either. I think that certain template is just buggy somewhere. I deleted all of the signatures in the suspect template except the one that I needed and re-saved it in 5.1.5, re-imposed it in 5.3.3 and now it works....with the PDF to PDF workflow that is. It still won't work with Rampage's OPI/FPO set-up though. What IS odd is when I re-ripped it with the Rampage FPO workflow, the lefthand page shingled but didn't scale and the righthand page scaled/shingled perfectly. I'm so spun around from flipping back and forth between the PDF to PDF workflow to the Mixed Files -> PostScript workflow that I need to take a step back and clear my head.

I will say that I'm not all that sold on the PDF to PDF set-up because I don't like the idea of having to rip 8 pages at a time instead of 1 at a time as far as trying to troubleshoot on a page by page basis. I suppose that the more I used it I would learn and adapt.

-Erik