Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

[UncleSam]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

Hi MSD,

No offense, but you really miss my point here. We have no choice what format we can choose to accept. Sometimes, you still need to accept Word documents or Publisher file even though you tell your customer not to. If I tell my customer your answer, I will be out of business sooner than you can think!

The print industry is going for PDF all the way now, Adobe is pushing it also too. So, no one will actually give us any native files anymore. So, are you depending on your customer to preps their file properly?! 8 out of 10 will not! Maybe dieline didn't overprint and using a spot color, maybe there is no bleeding, maybe ...... Many possibility that could and will go wrong. So, ask your customer to fix it? then your customer may ask they don't need to fix it on the other place they used! And all print out looks fine to them before! ba ba ba... They may not think this time they use different effects, different artworks....

Remember we are in a declining industry at least in the US, with the competition with China and India printer, they surely are the best deal right now in the world and growing very fast. So, quality and technology is the key for us to survive here. We need to be open minded and test all the available system and result before we can comment on it. I'm not the printer here, we works with couple hundreds of them in the states with many different RIPs!

I'm not talking about couple thousands sheets that you can reprint and not lose any money. I'm talking about million of sheets! We deal with Adobe a lot, we found and send a lot of bug reports to them, so, they know what their problem is. And they said they will fix it in CS4, maybe or maybe not, no one can promise!

 

[alvarorb]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

Mike,

You could always upgrade your Express RIP to Express Workflow.
We at Compose have released Express RIP 8.0 (Harlequin) and it handles transparencies quite well. Plus auto or interactive trapping, advanced screening options. Also, Express Workflow handles PDF files natively, plus it offers dot per dot soft proofing and dot per dot contract proofing. If you'd like more information, please visit our website, or give us a call (916) 920-3838.

Regards

Alvaro Rodriguez
VP Sales
Compose Systems, USA

 

[stargate]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

Don't even think about Kodak or you will be sorry (read your wallet will be sorry).

I am using Screen CTP, 3 presses, Fuji Final Proof, 5 inkjet proofers all driven with Rampage/GMG combo. It works great and doesn't make you poor.

 

[John Davis]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

RAMPAGE.
end of story.

 

[jbbbarr]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

I will put one in for Rampage also, but I do have to say I really like Neo for the editing, I did a demo and it was very nice. I know it could have fix a complex ID CS3 created pdf I had problems with yesterday, but instead I had to fix with Rampage Trap Editor.

Whomever posted that nonsense about how pdf is final format and should not be edited needs to put down the bong or at least share.

 

[pcmodem]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

In all rights, the PDF should be the final format and any editing should be done by the client. This would be the perfect world, where when a client sends in a PDF they are required to make it perfect. The only thing a printer would have to do is NORMalize and trap the PDF and the job is on it's merry way.

I have read several articles from people who send PDF's. They have said that if someone needs to modify the PDF they sent, let them know and they will fix the original file and provide a new PDF. This in the whole scheme of things is the best option. Now the client has the change on their file and the next time they do the job, the correction is in there.

For those people who want the printer to modify their PDF. They should send native files or learn how to make their files correctly. Most of the time what I see is the PDF is made correctly but the file is messed up. This just goes to show the people put forth the effort to build good files like the way they should. Such a shame!

 

[Helmet_of_Poe]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

I'm with Brian on this one, for the exact same reasons he describes.

Imagine making comprehensive technical changes to a PDF only to have the client send in a new PDF with additional revisions? Now you have to make the technical changes again. I'd bill for it, but it still slows down the job. I allow operators to make very minor changes in Pitstop, but drastic changes are changed in the native files in our shop, either by the customer or us. In my opinion, natives are the files that changes should be made in, whenever possible. Otherwise, why have InDesign and Quark? We could just encourage everyone to build their jobs in Neo or Pitstop.

The customers that we train to provide files correctly come back to us because we treat them well. We build relationships with them and we don't treat them like freaks because they don't have the experience we do. They become loyal to us and vice versa. Case in point, I spent about 20 minutes today on the phone with a "green" designer who was struggling to get us usable files for a job that must print tonight for delivery tomorrow. I walked her through building a file so that it trifolds correctly, and then helped her setup a preset for saving her high res PDFs from Illy. Everything went smoothly from that point on (okay, I did have to convert a couple of RGBs in Pitstop), and she was VERY grateful for the guidance. The help I provided trickled up to her immediate supervisor and then the owner of the agency, and we got a big "Thank you!" from both of them. This is a new customer for us, and I'm convinced we've already won their loyalty because we treated them like a friend we'd been working with for 10 years.

Hey, this thread is about workflow recommendations, so I got a bit off point. I'd recommend Heidelberg's Prinect Printready. It has tremendous, scalable power and automation in a package that can integrate into modules throughout the shop. We use Prepress Interface to send CIP3 data to the presses and save about 20 minutes per makeready. Chaaachiiiing!! And we send cutting data to the cutter with CompuCut and on complicated combo runs save about an hour in setup. It's one of those features that makes you wonder how you ever made a profit without it. A great overall package.

Vincent, if you have any questions, let me know.

 

[GordoMac]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

Very interesting thread.

I support just about every kind of RIP going and I cannot reccomend one.

The issue that almost ALL systems have is being current with full native PDF support for the latest PDF version from Adobe - toady it is the version in CS3 (Acrobat 8.x, PDF v1.7).

You want a RIP that you do not have to think about PDF version and whether it will print without having to use the print as image trick, run the PDF thru the PDF optimizer or print it to PS to re-distill as Press Quality Acrobat 5.x.

Find a RIP that fully supports the latest PDF version from Adobe and you're GOLD.

IF all RIPs supported the latest PDF version then I'd be out of a job.

Also, good luck.

 

[Colorblind]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

I share Brian and Helmet's point of view on the fact that in a perfect world, you shouldn't edit client supplied PDFs, just ask for new files of show them how to build them. Period.

 

[david]

Re: Recommendations for Prepress Workflow for Medium Sized Printing Company

Under $8000!

Have a look at this - http://www.trapping.org

The TaskForce workflow has all of these features:

A Professional Web site with unlimited client licenses where clients can upload jobs to you with fully customizable job ticketing and email notices.

Automating of jobs into production based on job numbering and job ticket contents.

Ripping - with spool folder, network printing, local selection and unlimited queue options

Trapping - automatic in-rip trapping of the very highest quality

Soft Proofing - proofs made from the actual ripped/trapped data is automatically uploaded back to the web site and email notice - with job thumbnail - is sent to your client. Clients can view their job in the browser with support for Acrobat annotations, notes, page and job approval with email notices back to the printer.

Production Ready PDF creation - PDFx1A files with trapping applied.

Imposition - wizard or light table imposition using Acrobat plugin

Hybrid Screening - achieve the very best quality printing with minimum dot size control

Dot Proofing - prepare files for your proofing printer based on the actual screened data

Archiving - saved your final screened jobs in an easy to use PDF form for fast future retrival


All this and more for under $8000

David Lewis
Lucid Dream Software

www.trapping.org