As we have read here in the past, “On the Evolution of PDF; Adobe PDF/X-5g with OPI type prepress workflow“, there are seemingly enough PDF specifications out there. With that in mind, here is an interesting development:

Adobe to host ‘landmark’ PDF meeting

Simon Nias, printweek.com, 02 October 2009

“Adobe Systems will host a “landmark meeting” of the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) later this month that is expected to prove pivotal to the development of PDF automation specifications.

Members of the GWG attending the meeting, which will be held at Adobe’s San Jose headquarters from 29-30 October, will discuss specifications based on the latest PDF/X-4 release.

GWG chairman David Zwang said that the 2009 GWG specifications would result in “some of the most profound advancements in automated PDF compliance”….

“….Those present at the meeting will also discuss and extend ad ticket support for electronic ads and insertion orders, and solidify spectral colour considerations for spot colour identification.”
Source: PrintWeek.co.uk  Read more... (229 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

Pat Berger of Mercer Color corporation, winner of the recent AMERICAN PRINTER’s first annual Environmental Excellence Awards, stops at PRINT 09 in Chicago to share with us how he uses preflight software application, FlightCheck, Q2ID (QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign conversion plugin) and what he thought of the new PageZephyr (PageZepher) technology, to index, make searchable and extractable, Quark, InDesign and other proprietary file content at the Markzware booth-Pat Berger of Mercer Color on Markzware at PRINT 09:

Preflighting with FlightCheck Professional v6.5

Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group talks to us at PRINT 09 in this video on how he uses FlightCheck Professional AND Adobe Acrobat to preflight his incoming files for their print workflow. He uses both; but prefers FlightCheck (for everything first) due to it’s ease-of-use and support of more than 50 file formats such as InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, PDF and others. Much more effective to preflight before outputting to PDF:

In the last segment, you see Doug Rosen, Markzware project manager, going into some advanced details with Jon on font search paths for helping optimize your font preflighting in FlightCheck. FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is now shipping with CS4 and Quark8 support. See:
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_…

The reason it was so great to hear Jon’s comments, is that some out there in the graphic arts industry, or what is it called now, “print media“, like to think that it is best to funnel this multi-step process called preflight to the very end of the workflow and even some are trying to automate preflight checking. It is however, largely a human process which requires a simple checklist to work best and should be done at every step in the graphics workflow where the layout file switches hands or is due to be output (see preflight defined). As Dr. Demming said on quality assurance,

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility.”

When an InDesign.INDD file is really a Quark .QXP layout…….

Hi, David Dilling here from Markzware and here is yet another interesting one. A customer sent in a email with the dreaded “I have a bad InDesign file please help me!” This one was a little bit different in that he knew it was an old file and that there were defiantly issues with it and he couldn’t quiet figure it out. The subject of this movie is “When InDesign isn’t InDesign but QuarkXPress.” Yes follow me on this one. Come check it out on my screen here because it is quiet a common problem, in any event I’m hearing more and more about this and the type and creator being zapped in the file and other issues like this. It’s very important, the file extension use and how you use it on a Macintosh or even a Windows machine of course as well.

It is not as easy as just adding .INDD to a QuarkXPress file and woof magically it become a InDesign file. Visa versa you just can’t take a Jpeg add a .tiff and it becomes a tiff file, it just does not work that way. If it did life would be a lot simpler but that is just not so. Now come check it out on my screen and thank you for watching.

FTP, although as reported here, is almost as old as me, is still the preferred and main method of file transfer to the printer:

This was all in a very interesting and detailed production survey for publishers by FOLIO over at FolioMag.com, where we read:

FOLIO:’s 2009 Manufacturing and Production Trends Survey reports what tools—like ad portals, virtual proofing and XML workflows—continue to come into their own and save publishers valuable dollars, as well as those areas that manufacturing and production execs are avoiding. Facing so many challenges this year, it appears that decision makers are remaining status quo and investing only in upgrades that will save big in the long run.
Source: http://www.foliomag.com/2009/folio-s-2009-manufacturing-and-production-trends-survey

Let’s just check out a couple of the color graphics they had, but, much more when you click through and read the entire article…

So prepress is continuing it’s migrating in-house by publishers. No surprise there, as it helps streamline the preflight process (note: FlightCheck Pro v6.5 is shipping with Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, PDF CS4 support and Quark 8 checking – preflight and package with FlightCheck!) – And we see that XML and the conversion to a more readily readable file format is also on the move:  Read more... (202 words, 3 images, estimated 48 secs reading time)

ZUR SOFORTIGEN VERÖFFENTLICHUNG

Neue Preflight-Software zur lückenlosen Qualitätssicherung im Digitaldruck

Markzware FlightCheck® Professional jetzt mit Unterstützung für QuarkXPress 8 & Adobe Creative Suite 4

RIJSWIJK, Niederlande, 31. August 2009: Das Unternehmen Markzware, anerkannter Preflight-Experte und -Erfinder, veröffentlicht ein wichtiges Upgrade der beliebten Preflight-Software FlightCheck Professional für Macintosh. FlightCheck Professional 6.5 bietet vollständige Unterstützung für QuarkXPress 8 und Adobe Creative Suite 4 / CS4. Die leistungsstarke neue Version gestattet Druckereien, Grafikdesignern und Verlagen ein effizientes Preflight zur Vermeidung kostspieliger Produktionsfehler.

Die mittlerweile üblichen kleineren Auflagen und kürzeren Abwicklungszeiten erfordern eine bessere Qualitätskontrolle bei digitalen Druckdateien. Adobe PDF-, InDesign-, QuarkXPress- und andere Dateien enthalten mehrere Elementkategorien wie Schriftarten, Farben, Bilder, Dokumenteinstellungen usw., die alle potenzielle Fehlerquellen bei der Druckausgabe sind. FlightCheck ist deshalb so beliebt, weil es flexibel zur Überprüfung sämtlicher Dokumentelemente in Dateien verschiedenster Formate eingesetzt werden kann. Viele halten es für das beste Tool zur Qualitätskontrolle.

Angesichts der derzeitigen wirtschaftlichen Lage müssen Dokumente in Druckereien und Verlagen genau geprüft werden, um Neudrucke zu vermeiden und wettbewerbsfähig zu bleiben. Drucker, Verleger und Grafikdesigner können sich hier voll auf http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_professional/ FlightCheck 6.5 verlassen und von seinen Funktionen profitieren.  Read more... (534 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Email Tuesdays. Here was a good question, which we often get for our Quark to InDesign Adobe Plugin, Q2ID:

On Aug 31, 2009, at 7:00 PM, Xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxco.uk wrote:

=======================================================

Question::
Hello, I am currently considering buying Q2ID but I need to know if it will convert Multiple Language Quark Documents. I look forward to your reply.
Thanks James.

— — —         — — —         — — —

Hello James,

Yes indeed, Q2ID will convert multiple language files (good question though, we get asked that often.). We only have some issue with 2-byte character languages (Chinese, Arabic, etc), but even then, the layout converts fine. So yes, Q2ID will open any western language document and convert the entire design layout for you with one click! (As will Publisher to InDesign- PUB2ID and ID2Q or InDesign to Quark, the  other way around, btw.)
See:
http://www.markzware.com/q2id

Cc’ed is our partner in the UK whom can assist with your order or any other questions, XChnage International.

Friendly Regards,
David Dilling
Markzware Europe

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FlightCheck v6.5 with CS4 and QuarkXPress 8 support – NOW SHIPPING!
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_professional  Read more... (268 words, estimated 1:04 mins reading time)

“It’s features like that in all their programs that make Markzware one of my favorite go-to companies for problem solving programs, Xtensions and Plug-ins.”
Here was a very nice product testimonial we got submitted through the web site last night. It was such a great Markzware customer review, that I felt obligated to share it in full…

August 27, 2009 3:17:33 AM GMT+02:00
Name: Roy Behymer
Company: IPC Graphics
Country: USA
Website: www.ipcstl.com

Testimonial:
I have used many Markzware products over the years: Flightcheck Designer; Pub2ID; Q2ID; Markztools; Pict Attributes XT; PM2Q. There’s a reason I keep coming back and why I’ve purchased and recommended so many of their products, they simply work, which helps to make my work more simple. Even as we’ve progressed from one design program to another, dropping some along the way, Markzware’s products have always helped us, no matter which professional design program we use. Even their discontinued products are still useful for us. PM2Q still allows us to extract embedded files at full resolution from legacy PageMaker files when InDesign’s built-in conversion of PageMaker results in low resolution embedded files. It’s features like that in all their programs that make Markzware one of my favorite go-to companies for problem solving programs, Xtensions and Plug-ins.  Read more... (397 words, estimated 1:35 mins reading time)

Color management is like colour management only spelled differently. That about sums up color for many in print media; it is the same color on that screen as on my printed brochure, only it looks different, cries the corporate customer, to the prepress operators dismay. In this tutorial video we get into the deep details on how FlightCheck Professional (Out any day now with CS4 and Quark 8 support) can help you in preflighting color …

… and for that matter preflighting colour (ok, enough jokes with words, but some do call it color preflighting) in a detailed fashion -

a full transcript is below: In this movie I would like to address some problems you might encounter when you work with InDesign layouts QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator (YES, FlightCheck does preflight Illustrator files and package all fonts and images too! Video: How to preflight Adobe Illustrator files…) or any other layout application in which you are able to use colors. Let’s dive in…

 Read more... (980 words, estimated 3:55 mins reading time)

Free data conversion services look good on the shiny web-page surface, but I recommend you try these out before jumping up and down. For instance, check this out. Some of my colleagues forwarded me this and asked me to post our findings. They tried http://www.pdftoword.com/ and both got back a message similar to this:

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
From: “PDF to Word” <no-reply@mail.pdftoword.com>
Subject: [PDF to Word] Failed to convert Xxxxxxxxxxxx.pdf
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Now, this could be just a fluke, but the point is you don’t get nothing for free. As the Dutch often say about making purchases (loosely translated), “A cheap purchase is a bad purchase.” (Well, anyway, rhymes in Dutch, really!)

And on that investment note, this one was rather interesting:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2162894  Read more... (360 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)