Centered Color Bars

[pablo]

Is there a way of having Preps recognize marks from the center outward rather than strictly from the left so that if dropped in the Dupmarks folder and placed in your impo you can shorten or lengthen it depending on your sheet size?.
We are in the process of switching (still debating) to DIPCO_2.1 Color Bars in which case these are required to be centered on the press sheet with paper white appearing on both edges in order to be recognized by the sheet reader on our new press console, we currently use GATF Bars as Dupmarks so this has never been an issue.
Any help/workaround is greatly appreciated.

[digital@sig-1.com]

In Illustrator, make your bar - usually a minimum of 3/16" square - so that a densitometer can read it. I make mine 3/16" square exactly, and place 4 in sequence, CMYK, so that I have a single bar, 4 elements, 3/16" tall by 3/4" long/wide. I save the bar in the "dupmarks" folder something like 4cbar.eps in Illustrator .eps format.

In Preps, go to Ctrl-R to place the mark. Select 4cbar.eps from the list. Check the box that says "Center on Point" and enter the X and Y coordinates for the center point on your form. Set the dimensions for the height and width, although the default height of .188' should be sufficient. Whatever width you make it, the dupmark ability in Preps will resize your bar to the defined dimensions. I usually leave 1/8" white space on the left and the right, i.e. on a 25" x 19" form, I make my bar 24.75" wide.

Once you do this and figure out how it works, making custom bars for different issues is easy.
________
Honda SCV100 (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/Honda_SCV100)

[Binks]

Is there a way of having Preps recognize marks from the center outward rather than strictly from the left so that if dropped in the Dupmarks folder and placed in your impo you can shorten or lengthen it depending on your sheet size?.
We are in the process of switching (still debating) to DIPCO_2.1 Color Bars in which case these are required to be centered on the press sheet with paper white appearing on both edges in order to be recognized by the sheet reader on our new press console, we currently use GATF Bars as Dupmarks so this has never been an issue.
Any help/workaround is greatly appreciated.

We use smartmarks with dipco 2.1 colours bars and using Preps place from the centre so they are always centred. We crop the outside of the colourbar depending on the sheet width. This works fine with our press sheet reader - a CP 2000.

[pablo]

Smart Marks work perfect.
Thx a mill.

[nhloewen]

WHere is everyone doing the cropping of their color bars? Currently our guy does it in a page layout program, can this be done in Preps? Is there a better way? We run a number of different sheet sizes and would end up with a number of different bars.

[Trxie]

Smart Marks sets work great for us. We have offset presses from GTO to 81"with all sheet sizes in-between.

[nhloewen]

Smart Marks sets work great for us. We have offset presses from GTO to 81"with all sheet sizes in-between.


So you have a set for each press sheet size you run then? We were hoping for a way to easily crop or mask the ends of the color bar in order not to have to save out a color bar for each sheet size.

[Trxie]

We have two brands of presses, KBA's and our Heidi's. I have one set of smart marks for each brand (because they require different colorbars) I have the smart marks set up to adjust to any substrate size, so the operator will just choose the set for the press required. I can send you a set if you like?? So you can see how I have them set up. (i think I can)

[digital@sig-1.com]

I'm telling you, the way I described works. Give it a chance. It becomes 2nd nature. What I am curious about is how you manage take-off bars for jobs with heavy coverage in one area and no coverage in another. Is there a smart-mark that accounts for position of the art, or is it all a math problem and manual adds of take-offs to compensate?
________
lamborghini tech (http://www.lamborghini-tech.com/)

[nhloewen]

We have two brands of presses, KBA's and our Heidi's. I have one set of smart marks for each brand (because they require different colorbars) I have the smart marks set up to adjust to any substrate size, so the operator will just choose the set for the press required. I can send you a set if you like?? So you can see how I have them set up. (i think I can)

If you could, I would love to see them, if you need to, email them direct:
nhloewen@originalsmith.com

[mike1]

I'm telling you, the way I described works. Give it a chance. It becomes 2nd nature. What I am curious about is how you manage take-off bars for jobs with heavy coverage in one area and no coverage in another. Is there a smart-mark that accounts for position of the art, or is it all a math problem and manual adds of take-offs to compensate?

Scitex used to have a product called Ghost Free for this purpose

Never did hear what happened to it.

[pablo]

Creating your own generic marks and using them as dupmarks is fine until you need to use specific Dipco/GATF marks which require a certain placement on the sheet for press purposes.
I find that smart marks is the way to go since these adapt to your sheet, impo, or page size; positioning is automatic and impo setup is quicker overall.

[dab3]

Where, exactly, does Preps allow cropping a smart mark?

[nhloewen]

Where, exactly, does Preps allow cropping a smart mark?


That is where we hit a snag, we have to make marks for each different size sheet or the color bar will run right off the sides of the plate.