Re: work flow software for HP Indigo

Sorry it took me so long to follow up. Thanks for the responses.

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 02:15:53 GMT, Allen Wessels wrote:
Hard to tell, but it sounds like they don't have dedicated imposition
software. Preps is the most common, but Dynastrip is another good one.

OK, that's my impression. I'll ask what they are using.

One thing I didn't explain fully is that the print shop is part of the same
company, not an outside contractor. Also, the particular jobs are high
volume (for the custom digital print situation and the time frame) and are
pushing the press capacity for the deadline. So it has to be a cooperative
effort, not an arms-length kind of thing. The print shop does a lot of
outside work to utilize the equipment for the rest of the week, but they
don't have the variety of jobs that a regular commercial print shop would.
There are a lot of challenges dealing with capacity and timing, and the
print shop people are working hard to deal with them.

I guess the first thing I'd want to know is why you think your files are
good, and why you think they should be easy to process.

Note that I said they are "DSC-compliant at least with respect to paging",
not "good". DSC compliance for paging makes imposition possible -- I won't
say easy because I know there are still things that can go wrong, but in
theory imposition is straightforward if the PS is DSC-compliant for
pageing.

But we are generating the PS directly, not through any driver, so I know
about everything that's in the PS files. The PS is very straightforward --
the volume is high and every copy is customized, but at this point there
are no bitmapped images and I think we might be up to ten colors, including
black and all variants of gray grid lines, plus three gradients generated
by the RIP (not bitmapped).

GSview gives no errors or warnings about the DSC. The print shop hasn't
said there's anything wrong with the PS, just "we have to convert it to PDF
to impose it". That doesn't prove the PS is "good", just says that no one
has said there's any problem. A meeting has been scheduled ...

I can tell you from experience that it is VERY rare for shops to take
postscript files anymore. PDF or native.

Hmm. Interesting.

Do you see any indication that imposition software will phase out support
for PS?

We could generate PDF (with extra work -- it's not something we can just
turn on) but have some reasons for using PS. One is that we can create one
PS file which adjusts to the environment. Though I mentioned the HP Indigo,
which is the preferred printer, some files end up on an Oce Variostream
press due to capacity and reliability issues. Of course the printers don't
produce the same colors from the same CMYK values, so we are planning to
profile the printers and adjust the colors dynamically in the PS.

Archival PDFs are another target, but those omit information which is
trimmed off from the dead-tree versions after binding -- information which
we added at the print shop's request to aid their work flow.

If we created PDF files, then we'd have to create one for each press
(currently HP Indigo and Oce Variostream, but who knows what lies in the
future), and the deadlines are such that generating multiple copies of the
files would make it a lot more difficult to meet the deadlines. The print
shop shifts files from one press to the other during the print run based on
problems encountered (they have not yet been able to count on the Indigo
meeting expected availability during a specific time frame), and we don't
have time to regenerate files on the fly, so to use PDF we'd have to create
both versions in advance. Plus another for the archive. And the print shop
wants the freedom to move between printers and doesn't want the
complication of keeping track of multiple copies of each file.

And when I say our deadlines are tight, I'm talking negative available time
;-) ... losing 15 minutes here and there means we don't get on the train.

Thanks again,

Edward
--
Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

.

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