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Does Preps 6 handle pdfs better than Preps 5?

D

Dead

Member
The capabilities that I am aware of in Preps 6 are not useful to me in our workflow. We are a small shop.

However, lately I have been having a lot of problems with pdfs created from ID cs5.5 and ID cs6 that get imposed in Preps 5.2. What is happening is elements either drop out entirely, or image in white, instead of their original color. I don't think it is the pdfs themselves, bc when I do my own imposition, placing the pdfs into an ID layout, everything comes out ok.

The problem is sometimes visible immediately, in the imposed pdf, and othertimes looks ok until it is submitted to our fiery RIP, where elements disappear on printing.

Does anyone know if an upgrade to Preps 6 would assist with this issue?

Many thanks ...
 
gebalazs,

1. Did you try Preps 5.3.3 before moving on to 6?

2. Did you notice any connection between those problem Preps 5.3.x and the source of the input pdfs? That is, could it be that the problem cases always involve input pdfs from very recent versions of layout applications? If so, which ones?

Al
 
1. Yes we used that.
2. Actually I didn't go down to the root causes but we noticed that if a file was according to PDF/X-1a then Preps 5.3 had no problem at all. But in some cases if the file was not according to the standard I mentioned it generated a PDF with big black artifacts. It also happened that some pages were empty on the imposed PDF generated by Preps. When we upgraded to 6 we tested the very same files and they were perfect from Preps 6. I think that the underlying engine has been updated so it works better.
 
I want to start my job in a printing company, and they use preps 6. I didn't have any experince by this imposition software. Could you help me to find or have its manual?
 
Preps may not be for you. Do you mean that you are going to pay a printing company to produce your job? What other software have you used to create your printing projects?

Preps is expensive software meant for print service providers to place pages in press sheet layouts for creating printing plates. it is not for creating pages. Does this clarify anything for you?

Al
 
It sounds like difficulty handling transparent elements. A slight change in your workflow to flatten the pages before they are used in Preps would probably fix the issues at no cost.

Doing a little quick reading, Preps has an "internal converter" that it uses by default (version 5.3), but you can force it to use the Acrobat PDF library.
 
@ Al - as far as I understand, he'll work in that company, and he'll need to use Preps.

@goya - You can get a demo version and play at home with some files.
 
zombie said:
@ Al - as far as I understand, he'll work in that company, and he'll need to use Preps.

@goya - You can get a demo version and play at home with some files.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I did. When Preps 4 first came out, I asked for a demo, and learned it inside out at home. Then once we broke down and bought Preps, I was using it to impose live jobs, from day one.

-Sev
 
Thank you for the info: I am currently looking for that download (not so easy to locate since Kodak's troubles). Appreciate it.
 
Yes, the problems most often occur w CS 5.5 and 6, or Quark in general. That is why I was wondering if they had introduced something in Preps 6 to accommodate pdfs generated from the newer software.
 
Very interesting, as this is the exact problem we are experiencing. Our standard pdf settings are based on pdf/x-1a but have been slightly altered over the years (we don't use compression, we don't include any color conversion, and our pdfs are generated to be compatible w acrobat 9). These deviations from the pdf/x-1a evolved to resolve other issues we were experiencing, so we don't want to go back to the original settings. But more and more frequently, a good-looking high res pdf goes through Preps and the resulting file is missing images entirely, or they have been imaged as black squares.

Anyone have a discount coupon for Preps 6, LOL?
 
Sounds like an interesting idea ... I'll try it. I checked, and the current setting is the internal converter, rather than Acrobat. Thanks!
 
Dead said:
Sounds like an interesting idea ... I'll try it. I checked, and the current setting is the internal converter, rather than Acrobat. Thanks!
Click to expand...

The converter is only used when using a mixed PS/PDF workflow. If PDF>PDF, no converter is invoked because there is no conversion. Mixed workflow converts PDF to PostScript behind the scenes.
 
Seeing this, I'm hopeful that our incoming Xitron Sierra (with built-in imposition module) will mean we won't need Preps 6. According to Xitron, we won't. But just in case, can anyone recommend a good resource on Preps 6, or someplace where one can get training? We're comfortable with 5.3.3, but we do have to re-write some of the PDFs we get due to more advanced software.
 
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