Prepare newby

[lnivin]

I tried Prepare about 4-5 years ago and didn't have much luck. So, here I am again, with version 2.1 trying to make it work, hoping it will help our customers.

I downloaded the Mac Pitstop Action List. When I uncompress it, the actions have unix icons. I'm thinking that my problem may be related to that.

When I try to process a simple files (text only), it fails even using the supplied directives.

Am I doing it wrong, or is this common?

[tclifford]

My 2 cents on prepare.

A lot of cash to replace some good screen shots and a ppd. Plus once you install software for your customer, you own any issues and become the tech support arm for them. We get over a million 4 color pdf files each year and no prepare. I say skip it.

[lnivin]

Thank you. I'll quote you in our meeting.

What would Prepare offer over an Adobe PDF Preset in InDesign?

[tclifford]

Off the record, nothing but tech support hassles. A 2-3 page PDF document costs a lot less and the ROI is easy. I mean prepare adds automation and some feedback that the PDF files was built correctly, but seriously. Your customers can't call Kodak directly for support, they need to call you. Who wants that added load. No me. -tc

[allan.larson]

As someone who showed Prepare lotsa times, i am quite glad to see the latest Insite Preflight features, which does live feedback and zooming to problem areas of the file in Smart Review. Assuming you have Advanced Preflight in the refine, the Insite user can click on errors, warnings or info and it will zoom you to the specific area, along with the details like (image was 144x144dpi, threshold was 150dpi kinda thing.)

I just returned from Drupa and everyone who saw it liked it. Not sure when full production dates are, as Drupa is often stuff that is unreleased, but stay tuned.

Be Prepared.
AL

[Rob Robinson]

What Prepare did do was create this mystical appearance of a print-ready PDF tied into the printer's specifications. The customer used Prepare built with a custom profile supplied by the printer, implying the resulting PDF was only good for use with that printer.

Unfortunately Prepare relies heavily on a rock solid OS which few of our customers have. Also most customers picked up on the fact that Prepare uses Acrobat Distiller - therefore why complicate the PDF creation process in the first place?

I'm with Tom and his two cents.

[allan.larson]

The big advantage of putting Preflight into Insite is the feedback is right away and specific, and there's no need to have directives on the customer's non-rock solid Mac.

Almost every application can now export non-flattened PDF out without having to do the Distiller step. That's step one and the defaults are getting better and easier. Step 2 is discovering the bonehead move they might have done stretching out that screengrab to fill the background at the last minute or whatever and it's on the upload refine they see it. It 's also with pretty colors that designers seem to gravitate to. Red is bad, yellow not so much, and blue is chillin'.

The original spec for Prepare was very strict, locked down and forced the desktop settings to be perfectly setup with the right directive, Quark prefs, (remember them???), Distiller settings, and PitStop actions. (I always thought the last thing a racecar wants to do too long is be in PitStop and I digress. See our new Illustrator plug-in for edits...)

You could set up a prepress template that designers could bounce their files off without it hitting any other automation to see if it's all according to Hoyle as well.

With more and more apps moving online, and less off the cluttered desktops of the people, we are headed in the right direction, I think.
AL