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Three Years,

It is ok, but there have been a number of bad issues where I would recommend to my worst enemies (if I had any).

So I had come on board at a stable family run business that had really old systems, including RIP (Prinergy 5.3), Macs (2011 was the newest!), and a Magnus 400 with a windows 2000 machine in it. For backup they had local drives and a system known as Drobro. On top of these potential nightmares was a Konica Minolta C6100 AcurioPress that would not register or even back up.

So 5 weeks in, I am pretty much in digital trying to sort it out and it's a nightmare. Konica sends in techs from the big town (Boston) and tells us, nope it's within spec. YOU RUN THE WRONG SIZE SHEETS. Welp, I am at a loss 20 plus years of digital experience, I'm on a tightrope. New bosses saying to me, are you sure you know how to run this stuff?

Week 5 the backup system dies and there is no way of getting years of jobs back. Nightmare. NIGHTMARE. The owner (who is actually ok, but quite uptight) is flipping out (how could this happen?!) No one was willing to take responsibility for it, I certainly wasn't. They stopped making DVDs backups years ago.

On regular jobs everything was in Prinergy server which was beyond ancient and I tell them casually, like every thirty five seconds, that RIP is gonna die soon, are you prepared for that? Week six we have a fire alarm go off and lose power and  Prinergy won't restart "What do you mean it won't restart, I paid for it!!" Also during this time as Prinergy was having issues with transparencies and I was making some newbie mistakes the owner is saying the job is press, fix it fix it while the 2007 imac in AD 2019 is having the beach ball and I have my arms folded. What are you doing? Waiting for the computer. Why? It's old you need new computers (I am always happy to be your blunt force trauma of prepress, with a smile) these are too old, oh and your RIP will die with the few remaining jobs you have in there will be gone too, .

So they get Elecroc, but I warned them it's from China they could hold you hostage and you should get Xitron Sierra. Cost won out and it has been a proverbial show of shows, lack of solid training (none from the company only our platesetter maintenance company with a new guy), my lack of experience with the imposition portion of the job make for a fun time! Ink saving module ended up screwing up a job lotsa gnashing of teeth, Imposition tools were not like preps, I was nervous as can be. Color was not matching epsons, just a rocky road on top of all the stuff above. How much head trim, how much face trim, lol I'm trying to figure it out. Damn software has a lock on things that no one explained to me and it took months for me to figure it out. Yes I'm a box of rox, but the system makes me look like Albert Einstein.

Co worker at the time (gone and missed but not for the work portion of the job) kept on using Prinergy for the envelope business that is in the same building literally no walls separating them and us we are their plate provider.

Then a thing happened, you may remember it, I wish not to, but a pandemic actually was foisted upon us and work in the tristate area dropped. I figured I would be gone, but instead the chose me. I quickly told them we needed some new stuff to keep files better. They were hesitant. Then Elecroc dropped dead and the files were being held on the Prinergy server which ended up dying at the same time, can't make it up!


I tell them get me a PC, no mac needed. and we need a backup system, and a couple of HDs, which they actually got. On top of being busy with a new job and new system, I have to get jobs that were stored in a number of locations (the logic might work for others, but I'm a straight up one server one backup and archiving kinda guy) and I started a journey that has lasted just under three years of backing up, making DVDs for offiste and  onsite. Did I mention that they reuse the same job numbers for jobs, which is a challenge at times, especially on older jobs with no start dates?

Well now we have a system and since I will actually be caught up in the next week, I need to codify and write the system out. I started to a while ago and it was a disaster, too much info on a sheet, was like reading a book by Leon Trotsky (try it some time!) so I decided to go the small page route with one item per page, how do you.


Elecroc is OK, I am sure I could go to a printshop and get them started with it, but I don't recommend it as it has crashed a number of times and the support is less than coke zero. I hate the fact that PANTONE Colors can't really be changed at the RIP to a CMYK color of my choosing, It's frustration. Graduated tints are not good either, but it's less Elecroc than the curves that were made for the press, they make no sense to my eyes and don't match either our epson or digital  (which is close generally speaking to the epson for most CMYK jobs).

There were tons of little problems that my psyche has forgotten we fixed and or adjusted, the learning curve has been steep and continues.


I think in terms of total cost, they would have been better to get better.

So, maybe I need some help.

I will work on a PDF file and then go to crop it to size plus bleed if needed, and what the frig should happen before cropping the whole page rasterizes. Welp, I got burnt too many times a livid font lover if you will.

So I can crop in Acrobat 7 pro, never a problem. Qoopa PDF Studio same. Why does Acrobat rasterize when going to crop?

Thanks a bunch.


Rodi

So I have V1 and it's a very good program, does a lot of nice things quickly for me. I make plates for offset and jet envelope presses. Removing crops and flipping I  use each day. Also a great thing to force to just k for one color items is great. Embedding similar fonts is a snap for the Arial/Times/Helv... Has gotten me out of many jams! Splitting reader spreads is nice. It actually has quite sophisticated impo, but time crushes me.


Honestly, I am sure I could use more of it if I had the time to learn it.


LOL, the verification did not like that I put PDFToolbox in as a PDF Editor hahaha