(Creo Trendsetter II 800 Spectrum)

I'm wondering if there is a more elegant way to remove a plate from the drum when the unload process fails.

Every now and then, the unload process fails and the plate doesn't come out in its own after imaging. To get the plate off, we open the lower panel, slide the magnetic clamps off of the plate, then forcefully yank the plate out of the stationary clamps. This kinks the plate and renders it unusable.

In the past, I've used a Creo Lotem 400 which is a very different machine, but when an unload failed I could do a "force plate on drum" which told the Lotem that there was a plate on the drum and I could then manually unload it via the software, as opposed to physically removing the pate with my hands.

Does anyone know if there is a similar function on the Trendsetter that might work in my scenario? I'd love to be able to use the plate since it is already imaged.

Okay, this one is scary. I've had 2 jobs in the last couple weeks go bad by exhibiting this behavior, but I can't recreate it on purpose. One job was a customer-supplied PDF, other was an InDesign file from which I exported the PDF using my usual settings. Applications in play are Acrobat Pro 10.1.4, Neo 10.0.2, and Photoshop CS5.1 running on Mac OS 10.6.8.

What's happening is there are some superscript characters that are dropping down to the baseline, and 2 occurrences of a space being put between an opening quote and first character ("Wouldn't.." shows up like " Wouldn't..."). This doesn't happen to all the superscripts in the file, nor all the quote marks.

My workflow on both jobs is to open in Acrobat, do a Save As to rename, run my usual preflight routine, remove the crop marks, then save and close. Open in Neo and use it to open the images in Photoshop to correct, then close and save document.

Since I can't recreate the problem on purpose, I don't know if it is occurring before or after I edit the images. I've worked here for over a year and these jobs are routine for us (one is even a monthly publication), and the problem has never happened before. None of these programs, nor the system, has been updated recently. The only change on my machine is that I did install CC last week, but didn't use it on these jobs. I think the one job happened before the CC install, but I can't be positive.

Screenshots show the superscript as supplied, and after me working on it. Got the boss breathing down my neck to explain this.

I've done enough Google research to know that this is possible, but haven't found anything that specifically does what I want it to do, and I'm not savvy enough to modify the existing scripts that I'm finding. If there are any AppleScript and/or Automator folks here that can help, here's what I want to accomplish:

I want to easily archive my 1-bit TIFFs into new folders, where the new folder is named the job number, which happens to be the first 5 characters of the 1-bit file names. So, if I have 20 files that are named like this:

32300_EdR_Sig_1A_K.tif
32300_EdR_Sig_1B_K.tif
32300_EdR_Sig_2A_K.tif
32300_EdR_Sig_2B_K.tif
and so on...

I want a folder to be created named "32300" and all the files that start with "32300" to be moved into that folder.

Any takers? I'm currently doing this manually and it sucks.

Anyone seen an issue like this - my Epson 9800 prints a "double" image every now and then. The second "ghost" image is ever-so-slightly lighter in color and is offset from the original by about 1/32".

It goes away temporarily by doing a standard cleaning cycle, but then it happens again later. It is intermittent - can't pin it down to any particular environmental state like humidity or temperature, or to any particular time like first thing in the morning or after it sat for awhile.

I've got an older MacPro that uses ATAPI connection for the SuperDrive and the drive died. Anyone know where I can find a replacement? I'm having difficulty finding one that isn't SATA.

Ordered SATA by mistake from OWC - they said I can buy an adapter kit to make it work. Anyone have experience with this? It's probably the path of least resistance, and as long as it works I don't care.

In previous versions, if you changed the page size on a non-facing page document, ID would add (or subtract, depending) equal amounts to both left and right sides of the page. For facing pages, it would act like Quark and always add or subtract from the right side.

These days, in CS6, I see no real rhyme or reason to how ID determines where to add/subtract from the page size. I just had a 1-page, non-facing document and I resized the width and it added to the left side. Other times it adds to both sides equally. Same with facing pages - sometimes it does one or the other.

Is there a trick I'm missing to control this?

Anyone know where to change the default bleed amount on independent pages in Preps 5.3.3? Mine are defaulting to 3/8", but I want 1/8". This only occurs with independent pages. I looked for a setting in the .cfg file, but don't see anything there, unless I'm missing it.

Finally getting around to setting Preps up properly here, and this is one of the nagging annoyances.

This is a new one - I had a long document (240-some pages) and the designer used a swatch called Auto (presumably it was carried in from Word). I selected the swatch in the Swatches palette and deleted it, and chose Black when prompted for a replacement color. As soon as I did this, the text reflowed in the entire job (didn't bother to find out where it started.)

Anyone seen this behavior before? The last time I've seen anything like it was back in PageMaker.

This one's for you, abc!

Customer supplies a file that has black tabs on the side of every page (224-pager). It has a fill bleed in the file, but for bindery reasons I need to extend it. What looks like a black box i really made up of a black box with another stroked box sitting on top. Don't know why the designer did that, but he/she did.

I run the trusty "Extend Bleed" Global Change (Pitstop 10) and it extends the filled box as desired, but it leaves the stroked box alone, resulting in a hiccup where the stroke stops bleeding.

I've attached a screenshot showing the hiccup, as well as the original PDF and my version after running the Extend Bleeds global.

AS a workaround, I had to select that stroked box on every page and turn the stroke off. Only took 15 minutes, but it was a pain! I'm sure there might have been a way to automate that, but it would have taken me longer to figure that out than to just do it manually.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33794637/orig.pdf

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33794637/extend.pdf

Let me start this by saying I know next-to-nothing about tape drives other than how to use one.

I have a library of archives on Sony AIT-1 (35GB native/91GB compressed) tapes. I access the tapes from a Mac via Retrospect 6 and an external FireWire Sony StorStation drive (model ATDEA2A). The drive appears to have died today, so I need to replace it.

Can anyone educate me about these drives? If I get one that writes higher-capacity tapes, will it still read my old tapes? I'm probably not going to make any more tape archives since external HDs are so cheap these days, but I still need access to my old tape library.

I often receive PDFs with the Standard 14 fonts not embedded (Times and Helvetica, usually.) When this occurs, it is almost always a PC Word file that created the PDF. So, I open the PDF on my PC in Acrobat X and use Pitstop 10 to embed the fonts.

Until recently, it worked fine, but lately it changes the appearance of the font (specifically Times). The font reads as embedded, but you can tell by looking at it that it ain't Times.

Admittedly, I have recently activated some font sets using ATM, but I have since turned off those sets and I definitely have Times loaded, so I can't figure out why the appearance is changing? If I refry the PDF by printing to Adobe PDF it embeds the font and looks perfectly fine, so obviously the font is available.

Even tried remapping to the desired font and no dice. What am I doing wrong? I'd rather not do the print-to-PDF refry dance as it just seems too dangerous to me.

Currently I'm using Nexus and Preps - I send a JDF from Preps to Nexus. We're pretty well locked in to Preps and our millions of templates. The PITA is when we do softproofs, I have no way of taking that imposed JDF and splitting all the pages out as singles, while maintaining any positioning offsets applied in the Preps Run List (we frequently have to reposition pages.) Instead, I have to switch out the signatures in Preps for single page signatures, then send a different JDF to Nexus to generate my soft proof.

So, does anyone who uses Rampage know if this is possible in Rampage? We're probably going to start looking at it later in the year and I just want some early info from users.

I'm running Preps Pro 5.3.3 and I'm having a brain fart - for the life of me I can't find where to set to Press Sheet Size when printing from Preps.

Can anyone identify this font, or something similar? I uploaded it to WhatTheFont and it couldn't come up with anything close.

It's only for a barcode, but the one I scanned this from is really old and I need to redo it. It's a job for the government so I need to match as close as humanly possible.

We have an old machine running OS 9.2 - the only reason we use it is to run BarCode Pro. Whenever I turn on this machine, it tries to connect to a server that no longer exists. I try to cancel the connection, but it keeps popping back up and after hitting "Cancel" a bunch of times it eventually goes away.

I want to disable this, and the only place I can remember setting up automatic server connections was to put an alias into System Folder>Startup Items but this folder is empty.

Anyone remember where else I can look? It's been so long since I've even looked at OS 9.

I can't find Guides in Pitstop 10. I've been using Pitstop 7.51, but I want to use the later version because of improvements.

If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it. I use them constantly and I can't use Acrobat's guides because they are page-specific whereas Pitstop's guides will show up on all pages when you're using them.

There's gotta be a better way to generate softproofs than what we're doing. Our workflow involves adding PDFs to Preps, then printing to JDF. We feed the JDF to Nexus.

When a customer wants a softproof (PDF), we go back to the Preps job and replace the signatures with single-page signatures that are the trim size. Then we print a new JDF, submit the JDF to Nexus and grab the PDF result and send it off. Big pain in the butt, but we have to do it this way because many times we are offsetting the position of pages in the run list, and often there is more than 1 PDF in the run list.

Based on this setup, is there a better option? Is it possible for Nexus to take the original imposed JDF and somehow spit out a PDF of the individual pages with all the positioning adjustments applied?

I'm open to suggestions.

I'm posting this in General because the solution could lie anywhere along the way - InDesign, Acrobat, or Nexus.

I have a job that prints black + 871 metallic. I want to force the trapper (Nexus) to spread the black into the gold, so I went into InDesign's Ink Manager and modified 871's neutral density so it is higher than that of black (black is 1.7, I changed 871 to 2.0).

The problem is when I export to PDF, the neutral density for 871 is back to the factory default value of .503. I even tried changing it to Opaque but that didn't hold, either.

So, how can I get this neutral density value to hold so the trapper will handle it correctly? Or, is there a way in Nexus to change it?

Does anyone know of a way in Nexus to merge the CMY plates into the K plate?

My scenario involves a PDF with some CMY gray matter that really needs to print on the K plate, and for some reason nothing I do in Pitstop will change this stuff, even converting the entire page to gray. Very weird.

My workflow involves sending JDF from Preps. I was hopeful I could alias the inks printing from Preps, but apparently you can't do that with process inks into other process inks.

Well, it sounds like I might be able to get a new monitor at the new job. Good thing, too, cuz not only is my current one tiny, but it ghosts something fierce and makes my eyes hurt by the end of the day.

So, what's good (and affordable) these days? I've always liked the Apple displays, but I don't think they'll spring for that unless it's an older used one (that's okay, too.) Here's the clincher - my boss is still in love with her CRT and she wants to make sure the new screen is trustworthy to make color correction decisions (usually just grayscale images.) She said it needs to be "calibratible," but I told her that you can't really "calibrate" today's screens like you could on the CRTs.