Newbie & Imposing

[PrintingInLincs]

Hi,

Newbie here, looking for more information about what's the best way to go about imposing.
Starting up, we will only be printing a5 & a6 flyers, business cards if this makes a difference to what people think would be the best option for us.

Questions:

1. From what i gather we've can either impose in fiery by buying Fiery impose, use indesign to do it somehow or use add on software like quite imposing, am i correct?

2. Is Fiery impose the "standard" to have in the industry for digital print?

3. What are peoples thoughts on other options like Quite imposing, absolutely imposing, imposition wizard, imposition studio, montax imposer?

4. As a newbie starting up are there any tricks which you can get away with in order to get by, like using free online imposition software?

Thanks folks.

 

[wonderings]

There was a good plugin for Indesign called "croptima". It was free after they shut down, if you are using Indesign CC2015 or lower it is probably the simplest imposition I have used. I currently use Imposition Studio Pro. I like stand alone as you can use it for anything, whereas using the Fiery Impose you are limited to only that device it is on. Imposition Studio had a bit of a learning curve to it, but once I got the hang of it I love it.

If you want croptima send me a message here with your email and I will send you a dropbox link. It really is a simple imposition with a visual so you see what you are doing as you do it.

 

[easiprint]

Fiery impose will do what you need, but it can be limited and I think most printers will use a stand-alone imposition software.

I use CutePDF Pro and cannot recommend it highly enough. Simple to get to grips with and does everything you will need. It's quite cheap and they offer a free trial which in unlimited. If I remember correctly, the only thing the free trial does is adds a website address in one corner, which if you are imposing on SRA paper, gets cut off anyway. http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/Pro.asp

 

[Sherbert]

We run 99% of jobs through Quite Imposing. Works well for us.

 

[namelessentity]

+1 for Quite Imposing. It's stupid easy for basic imposition, and has a good guide for more advanced features.

 

[ID13]

We looked at quite imposing and imposition studio. We ended up going with imposition studio because it was a bit cheaper and did everything we needed it to do. I've been happy with it so far. Now that I have a lot of templates set up that I use regularly, most jobs I can select the template, import the pdf, and create the imposition within a couple minutes.

 

[PrintingInLincs]

Thanks for your help on this folks, we're using demo fiery impose right now. Glad to see alternatives to fiery impose are actually viable & being used by real printers.

 

[wonderings]

We have fiery impose. I rarely use it. I have a few hot folders setup for some manuals we do, but other then that I do all my imposing with Imposition Studio. Fiery Impose seems a little confusing and complicated at times. Probably because I have not used it a whole lot, but what I think should be simple on it does not seem to be.

 

[gregbatch]

We use Quite Imposing. It can do far more than imposition. But the imposition and other functions are one-click after you create your profiles. It can also do scaling, anamorphic scaling, numbering, split readers spreads, add or trim one or more edges, shift the pages, add bleeds, merge 2 docs odd/even, stick on text or masking tape and more. They offer a 30 day fully working demo. It paid for itself our first week.

 

[Craig]

Montax imposition is my favorite.

 

[dgman]

Is it possible for those posting their recommendations to also state if it is PC only; Mac only or available for both? It would save a lot of research time. FWIW I now use Quite Imposing (PC and Mac) and various InDesign plugins over the years such as alap's Imposer Pro etc.

 

[Keith]

For a long time I used Fusion Pro's impositioning feature (on a MAC but it's available for PC as well). Then I switched to CutePDF. Super cheap and easy. Only problem with it is the lack of template organization.Then I got a new Fiery in January and it came with impositioning. Love it. Does everything I need it to except for one thing and maybe I'm using it wrong but if you use it to impose a job, you cannot use Freeform for variable data. As much as costs, you'd think you can use both features on one job. But that's why I still have CutePDF. I will impose with that and then use Fiery's Freeform.

 

[Shawnd]

As long as the document is setup correctly fiery impose is wicked fast, I have templates setup for most of the jobs, especially booklets.

 

[Manafaith]

I think it depends on your needs.... are you only needing imposition for your digital or are you doing offset work also? Fiery impose pretty much does everything you need in the digital realm and functions quite well once you get the hang of it and get a nice template catalog built. I would agree that it can be cumbersome at times but it is fast and has a pretty decent amount of control. I also run Preps for the offset side of things and truthfully that piece of software makes my eyes bleed and want to go postal. Simple impo can also be done quite quickly using InDesign for simple page layout stuff.

 

[bill kahny]

Fiery impose here (windows) and I save to a flattened PDF when I need to use it for freeform. I also can't do freeform and impose but you can save out the imposed pdf to bring back into the firery or print from acrobat. I have lots of temples saved for repeat and common size work. I also use quiet impose still mainly to make a black back page for 2 sided VDP jobs. I can't get my fiery to map 1 sided to a 2 sided freeform. (see other discussion on this board). I was a long time quiet impose user before fiery impose.

 

[jwheeler]

1. Yes, Impose inside of Fiery is probably the easiest and most visual to use. It builds the document as you put in the requirements so you can see if there are any issues (WYSIWYG). I'd recommend getting the combo impose/compose package because it's only a few $100 more and offers so many more features for building documents, combining documents, etc. If you need to do lots unique numbering or tabs, I'd recommend the Impose/JobMaster combo package.

2. Yes, about 90% of our customers use Impose. If they don't have a Fiery, they use Quite Imposing, or do it manually up-stream in InDesign, Illustrator, or Corel Draw. Quite Imposing is great too, but it takes a few trial-and-error's to figure it out because you don't see the results until the end.

3. Of this list, I have personally only used Impose or Quite Imposing.

4. There used to be a great $50 InDesign plug-in called Croptima InPlate. Unfortunately they stopped making newer versions. However, this person seems to have tweaked the code to make it work on the newer Adobe CC: https://www.pixelboy.com.au/croptima-inplate-install-indesign-cc-2017/

 

[RobC]

One benefit to impose is the Fiery Hot Folders option, you can drop your PDF's into hotfolder and have them automatically imposed w/o spending time clicking around in Impose. All your Fiery job properties can be assigned to the hot folder as well for common jobs.
We have dozens of common jobs per day that prepress doesn't even touch - customers submit PDF (their own creation or through templates we setup) at the website and we have the website sending it into an internal FTP server that is watched and when a file arrives in a specific folder its moved to a specific fiery hot folder. My point is in looking at imposition software look at how it can save you times/clicks and reduce errors created by wrong clicks. Fiery also has Fiery Job Flow which they seem to be rapidly improving and adding features to for handling files automatically. granted many many files will need to be inspected by prepress and adjusted but we've found automating steps gives us more time to deal with the bad files and makes less stress.

 

[wonderings]

4. There used to be a great $50 InDesign plug-in called Croptima InPlate. Unfortunately they stopped making newer versions. However, this person seems to have tweaked the code to make it work on the newer Adobe CC: https://www.pixelboy.com.au/croptima-inplate-install-indesign-cc-2017/

Croptima was the easiest thing to use. I used it for years till they closed shop. I liked the integration in Indesign, made things really speedy for imposing. A shame they shut done, I would still be using today if they continued to update.