22% KORTING!

Markzware biedt een verbazingwekkende tweeëntwintig (22)% korting van het gehele scala van preflight, conversie en zoek of extractie software producten voor de tweede maand van 2010. Deze aanbieding is alleen beschikbaar via het kanaal (reseller of distributeurs) en geldig tot 28 februari 2010. Handel vandaag, of neem contact op met een reseller, zoals X-Alt in Zuid-Holland of een ander in uw buurt of e-mail terug en ik kan de bestelling voor u regelen via ons dealernetwerk. Klik hier voor een volledig overzicht van Markzware software producten, hieronder zijn enkele van onze meest populaire productiviteit tools voor grafische ontwerpers, DTP’ers, uitgeverijen, prepress en drukkerijen evengoed! Allemaal voor 22% minder in februari 2010:

Q2ID – QuarkXPress naar Adobe InDesign € 199,- Euro  Macintosh / Windows

SPECIALE PRIJS in februari 2010 slechts € 156,- per softwarepakket!
5 en 10-bundel of variabele licenties mogelijk met  korting.

Een geweldige plug-in voor elke Adobe InDesign gebruiker.
Met een klik opent u uw QuarkXPress documenten rechtstreeks in Adobe InDesign;
de complete lay-out, klaar om te bewerken en te gebruiken
Bekijk de Q2ID Video Demonstratie hier …
Upgrade van v2 of v3 normaal € 99,- nu slechts € 78,- in februari 2010!  Read more... (543 words, 11 images, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

We have seen the ROI and value preflighting adds to the design-to-print workflow in chart form, now let’s hear from a real user. In this case, it is from Randy Jamerson, Prepress systems administrator for EBSCO Media.

Located in Birmingham, Alabama EBSCO Media is one of the largest full-service sheetfed printers in the country. More info on their operation at the end, now onto how they use FlightCheck:

“FlightCheck has evolved into a very robust and customizable product.  For example, if your workflow automatically converts RGB to CMYK and honors tagged profiles, you can customize FlightCheck so that it does not flag these as error conditions.“

Randy Jamerson, EBSCO Media

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From: Randy Jamerson
Date: February 19, 2010 4:57:23 PM GMT+01:00
To: Mary Gay <pr A_T markzware.com>
Subject: Re: Markzware/Congratulations/Questions for blog

Here are some thoughts that maybe you can use in your blog.

I was hired at EBSCO Media to be the first “Preflight” person in 1994. We
didn’t have FlightCheck and desktop publishing programs ( Quark and
Pagemaker) at that time had non-existent or very rudimentary tools for
preflight.  Every image and graphic file associated with a job had to be
individually scrutinized. When FlightCheck arrived, it was one of those
“greater than sliced bread” events.  Read more... (589 words, 8 images, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

Close to fifteen years on the same question arises, time and time again, with regards to quality control in the design to print process:

Where is the best place to preflight the art-work or print layout?

Stop a preflight problem in an element at the design stage, it may only set you back $10€; that same problem on the press will cost you potentially $thousands€. This chart answers that age-old question pretty clearly and shows how simple preflight controls can greatly improve your ROI. Preflighting is not a process just ‘done by someone else’ in the manufacturing of your designs you want to take flight in the form or a printed piece. It should be done throughout in the workflow, time and time again. Just ask Toyota and their recent huge recall of Prius automobilies due to faulty brake software.

Naturally each workflow varies, often greatly, but as a rule of thumb, you should preflight with tools like FlightCheck Professional v6.5 just before you are about to:

A) Send off to another party to work further on the layout or design
B) Before using received  artwork from other sources
C) Whenever something is unsure or elements “act-up” in the layout
D) (before) Output or Export to PDF or Print
E) Postflight the resulting/received print PDF file
 Read more... (344 words, 8 images, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

“QUALITY IS NOT STATIC”

“Kwaliteit is niet statisch” in Vlaams by
Luc De Schrijver, GLS Belgium Distribution

Neither is the Markzware multi-award winning document preflight application for graphic designers, layout artists and prepress professionals alike – FlightCheck Professional v6.5.

FlightCheck Professional v6.5x picture preview window.
Preflight your way to quality with FlightCheck Professional v6.5

There is a great discussion going on in the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals over on Linkedin, started by Cindy (Bailey) Wingo, where in short she asked:

“What are the industry standards for producing clean, RIPpable files?” … “What is the industry standard for excellence in pre-flighting files?“

Source: Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

Great replies, but it is the last post, which I will start with; which is the summary as far as quality-minded design and publishing users are concerned with, in the overall workflow process to printed output:

“Preflighting should happen even before the PDF is even created. Bad files make bad PDFs. That’s why programs such as FlightCheck are so invaluable.“

Source: David Creamer via the Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals

This was in response to the usual postflighting options mentioned for later stage PDF’s and the likes. This is fine and true, as a step right before the RIP, but not the entire truth; actually far from it. You need to Preflight FIRST before even making a PDF print-file. What was encouraging was the facts brought forth by industry expert (I.D.E.A.S Training) and certified Adobe and Quark trainer, David Creamer and our own Mary Gay (Pettit) Marchese, for this is the way to make a publishing and print workflow truly flow.  Read more... (504 words, 9 images, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Developing for proprietary file formats is much like breaking codes or being a Cryptologist. Cryptography is a very interesting study, dating back to the Greeks usage of transposition ciphers, but surely was used long before that by Mesopotamians and Egyptians. Thus it was with interest that we read this WSJ article titled, “Two Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code” about this man who broke a 200 year old coded message sent in 1801 by Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to then-president Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who has patents and inventions which included the portable copy press, also dabbled in secret code (The Wheel Cipher):

“Jefferson even wrote about his own ingenious code, a model of which is at his home, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va. Called the wheel cipher, the device consisted of cylindrical pieces, threaded onto an iron spindle, with letters inscribed on the edge of each wheel in a random order. Users could scramble and unscramble words simply by turning the wheels.”
SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124648494429082661.html

What more creative way to kick off your Monday morning graphic designers, publishers and print professionals than with this little invention history from one of the founding fathers of the United States!  Read more... (256 words, 9 images, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

DTP software ripens at 25!
anno 1985…

There is a little discussion going on over at the Linkedin Group called, “Group of Prepress, Print & Color Management Professionals“. Had to do with this post we did, “Quark caters Quickly to gap in service to printers left by Adobe“. Basically, those users that commented are fine with Adobe and it’s service level, even though many others, such as Frank Romano, who are a bit peeved at Adobe neglecting the market that formed DTP really. Then there was this neat little comment on that Linked in Group, which got me thinking about the interesting history of page layout applications and desktop publishing in general:

“Quark is the modern day Aldus!”
Quote by: Willie Soto Freelance Graphic Designer

If that is so, then the circle of Desktop Publishing (DTP) is near completion! Especially when you look at the history of this all important field…  Read more... (771 words, 11 images, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)

History of Desktop Publishing or DTP software -
Aldus, Adobe, Macromedia and Quark – 25 years in the making…
—

• 1985 – Aldus Corp releases PageMaker for the Macintosh in July 1985, and relied on Adobe’s PostScript page description language.

Let’s just get right to the educational feature film and then below some all important postflight, pardon the pun, commentary. Here is the nicely prepared tutorial titled, “Analyzing and Preflighting Adobe Acrobat PDF Files For Print“:

Great job by http://www.envisionprinting.com/ in highlighting these technical prepress issues and how to tackle finding them in Adobe Acrobat. OK, but did you notice that most of the items he was checking for, are best checked and corrected well before the PDF stage? The main issues were:

* Non embedded Fonts (missing fonts in native file)
* RGB images instead of CMYK
* Low Resolution Images

These common issues and more would have to be fixed by the graphic designer, back within their native files*. Yes, it is utterly important to check the Acrobat PDF you have created, however, by first preflighting and then creating a PDF, you will be ahead of the game. Not only that, but tools like FlightCheck Professional will not only check Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, etc, but also the resulting PDF through one VERY easy to use drag-and-drop interface. Furthermore, you can also package all fonts and images together for archiving or compressing and sending to someone else the full job; it will even preflight Adobe Acrobat, check a PDF and collect non-embedded fonts used but not placed within a PDF!  Read more... (242 words, 7 images, estimated 58 secs reading time)

I love analogies and here is one that was a perfect fit for FlightCheck Professional or preflighting in the generic:

RT @OphieLuStudios @aj_mitchell: Oops…New highway ramp too steep. To be torn down and rebuilt at Design firm’s expense. http://bit.ly/8kstZd

Construction or laying out roads is no different than designing a new newspaper or yearbook layout in Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress or Microsoft Publisher. Yes, perhaps the costs and processes are different, but I would guess the percentage in terms of money is similar. Re-working costs time and money. First preflight than PDF. The original article says:

“The brand-new never-opened Fairfax Road offramp of westbound Highway 178 must be demolished and rebuilt because of a design flaw, the Bakersfield public works department confirmed Monday.”
Source: http://www.kget.com/news/local/story/New-Hwy-178-ramp-is-huge-safety-issue-1-million/

“Design flaw.” Graphic designers have had it pretty good with printers really. Did you notice in the article that the “design firm” had to pay the nearly 1 million dollar fee to re-do it all? A good prepress department is worth it’s weight in gold really. (And gold is expensive these days!)

What is your favorite preflight analogy?  Read more... (212 words, 9 images, estimated 51 secs reading time)

Printers face threats not only from a bad economy
but also misguided political policy.

Last week I wrote about how jobs are flying out the door to China and other far-east print-shops, for print-work which will be used locally in North America or Europe. This was posted in a piece titled, “Print is not dead. Neither is outsourcing. China.” Now I want to expand on that (But reading some of the comments on the Linkedin link within that post are well worth the clicking.), especially with regards to this whole “green movement” which is going on.

First, let me make it clear, I love God’s creation and especially nature. We certainly have responsibilities not to pollute and cause intentional harm to our ecosystems. Thus, perhaps it is fair pushing the green thing on printers, to have them use less dangerous chemicals and inks in their commercial print shops. But why the double-standard when it comes to outsourcing and the environment or the green movement?

The host government aside in these outsourcing nations, how does our US government (Any “western” gov.’t really.) allow print outsourcing to go on at all; especially in light of these environmental effects? On that note, we read:  Read more... (515 words, 7 images, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)