anyone used the esko packedge plug ins with the illy CC2014 software? any issues?

have got to look into this - the studio "manager" hasnt got a fcucking clue about this stuff and the newer software is now being used in the desighn team, and the inevitable "created by a newer version" warning is heading my way, i just know it

kinda pisses me off that our "manager" is so detached from prepress/repro and its always me with any kind of future improvement suggestions etc - even the more experienced operator here really only knows whats in front of him - there seems to be little research by anyone which considering the size of this company now is staggering

 

our jobs are listed first by customer folder, and then inside this in seperate folders the individual jobs/ranges

connectivity is smb

TWO folders are posessed

they disappear right in front of you - then a few seconds later come back. the I.T. fellaz are reluctant to touch anything "mac" - so it pissed them off when I pointed out the folders were on their servers and not our macs

its a bit more stable if you go file>open and navigate there, but it still disappears. when i say disappears - i mean just that. it vanishes from the customer list

so - any ideas?

well we never got the memo that esko wont be supporting mavericks until january

so here's a warning to anyone who uses the pack edge products

do not - lemme do that again - DO NOT install mavericks (unless you have a time machine back up because you will need it!!!)

I was told to install mavericks last week. big big BIG mistake.

the studio "manager" (yeahhh right) didnt tell repro or forward us the email telling us not to go to mavericks. my direct line manager told me it was fine and to do it - so sceptically i did

i wish i didnt. i really really wish i didnt 

no time machine back up (they dont use it which is nuts)

plug ins wouldn't load and then the living hell began

had to wipe hard drive and clean install snow leopard, and do the long upgrades back to mountain lion, install Adobe CC and install loads of other stuff

and to cap it all off esko struggled on another machine to re-install the plug ins via licence manager etc - and left ME to do my own

oh - and a co worked who's been there a while just moaned and whined so i ended up doing his workstaton too

 

 

get this - some small cartons that started life as around 50meg max have bloated a little. last count 2.5GIG!

complex masking in them but there's no "sane" reason for this.

now we have a working theory it's to do with colour books but its very long winded and i dont have time

point me to a couple of reasons (one will do - desperate) as to how illustrator has managed to fcuk these relatively simple-ish files so badly

i know i know ya never got this in freehand.......

hi all

kinda new to plato - but here's a strange thing we deal with - any ideas? oh - its packaging layouts too

after brining in the multi up layout mfg and assigning stations, checking masks, doing all the usual, finally we get to print sequence

for the KBA press we need the darkest colour/black as colour number one - but to get it to colour number ONE we have to put it as number 4 in the ink sequence pallette. it needs to be number one for the kba plate readers to read

any ideas how to make it be number one colour just by moving it to top of ink sequences? I suspect it has something to do with screen angles somewhere but not experienced enough with it yet to say really

thanks folkies

use in-design

Sometimes spot colour matching is a PITA - even with a system linearized, profiled, calibrated and verified to whatever standards you choose.

And worse of all is if they want a "visual" match and not really an accurate one.

Well - I just tried a superb utility called Catzper that helps massively. Sure, we have the other one posted on here a while back (CMYKSurround) which is great, and Catzper is just another tool in the box

You do need a spectro though.

You read in a "colour" from a sample to get the L•A•B• values, punch those in to Catzper and it returns a pdf with the original target colour reading in the centre, and a shed load of damm close colours all round it (very similar to cmyksurround). It saves you chasing cmyk mixes etc

But the advantage is the original spectro reading gets you really close first time. You then treat the pdf as a normal project in you work-flow, print it as usual and select the most visually pleasing result/the one the customer really wants as opposed to what they supplied.

Then you do gotta go change the artwork to the values of the segment selected.

catzper also gives you a "drift" tolerance chart which you can share with your client and agree colour drift tolerances. Of course you can't in reality as there's never enough time for such niceties, however it's nice to have that feature should the need arise

tried it - liked it - and it's relatively cheap if you have lots to do - in wide format i've found there's quite a bit to do! it's also handy to get nearer matching colours across different medias

Roughly 300US dollaz a year or summat like £350 uk quids

http://www.nazdarconsulting.com/CATZper.asp

oh - and there's a FREE trial!

I am not on commission :shocked:

hi gang

recently someone put up a handy .ps file that you can edit in text edit and it'll print all sorts of colours around a certain specified colour - can anyone point me to the thread so i can re-read the tute please, coz i wanna try it on me hpz6200's to colour match one particular picky clients

thanks in advance everpops

fellow trench fighters - unite and discuss


i got a gig ioverseeing the installation of ctp at a local packaging company. they've already done research and have a system narrowed down, and their prepresser has decided to leave - hence me getting the call. 2 x komori 6 colour UV presses - B1.


they've almost decided on an agfa system which i think uses the energy elite plates - i don't know what the ctp unit is though.


so - in box number one:


is that plate any good? any issues - anything at all?


box 2:


what alternatives do i have to that plate as it uses dev etc and isn't too "green". it must be a UV compatible plate. i'd prefer a chem free set up - greener, lower maintenance, easier maintenance etc - what's my options? will consider other vendors plates


box 3:


2 presses - best to profile the presses and proof to that or get presses to match proofs - i think they have some kind of kodak proof system


info is sketchy i know - i only got the call last week and i'm due to head back in sometime this week to get more information and spend some time there. anthing i've missed? having been out of prepress in packaging for a year if i've missed anything lemme know!

as you may or may not know i'm outta work in 5 weeks. a lot has been said at my place about lack of work in prepress etc, but in reality something different has happened.

due to a complete lack of constant investment it has become apparent that prepress has priced itself out of my company. with a lack of continual investment (a new mac here, software upgrade there etc etc) which could be applied on a slow and steady basis, they have funded nothing. as such everything is behind - old macs, postscirpt rips, out of date proofing, monitors old, software upgrades etc etc

when presented with the whole list, which grew steadily over the years of continual non investment, they decided time was right to give our work to a repro company instead of keeping the whole process under control in-house.

now i'm sure my place isnt the only one to have this lack of continual funding, so the questions are:

with the constant upgrades, the relentless hardware changes and the ever consuming latest must have software/workflow - is prepress becoming too expensive to justify?

and will this in turn bring us almost full circle and see printers ditch the investment needed in favour of repro companies and bring back the rise of the prepress bureau again?

Wanted:

CAD CAM folding carton/board packaging and envelope designer. Start: Immediate. Salary negotiable D.O.E. Modern equipment, good working environment.

Fully experienced in the trade especially with Artios CAD. Some training given but a good all round solid performer capable of handling the pressure.

Responsible to myself and the Production Commercial Director.

To produce bespoke designs and samples. To deal with suppliers and order dies for cut/crease department, ensure correct tooling is supplied, maintain standards, create samples from blanks and printed materials - plus more.

If you are genuinely interested and are experienced in the trade please P.M. me for more details.

Thankyou

hi geniuseses :smiley:

would there be issues or anything negative in say having apogee or xmf (or any workflow I guess) running an epson 9900 for contract quality proofing etc and impo proofs - as opposed to flipping a tiff etc at a proofing rip like oris, gmg or efi?

your opinions on good or bad idea or not, upsides, downsides, b-sides welcomed - hopefully before the thread goes to shit :laugh:

thanks folkies :smiley:

anyone about to backsave a indy cs4 to indy cs3 for me? mac - have no idea what state the file is in

kinda urgent

calling all you tecchies


dumm ass question coming up.....


company here has mostly turned to running a cloud virtualization system - citrix to be specific - which they tell me i cannot access via my g5ppc


is it feasable (i did say dumb ass question ok) that citrix would run on an intel max under vm fusion or parallels?


i cant see why not - but what the hell do i know - thats why i'm askin :undecided:


thanks in advance

hi all good folkies  :grin:

anyone know good free .dat file decrypter software as opposed to web based?

thankyou velly much :grin:

ello :grin:

lets say for example you have some objects and they are in a rough line down a page - you decide you want to align them with lets say - the middle one (or any of them - it doesnt matter which one) - marquee round all the objects you wish to align - then click once on the one you want all the others to align TO (it will stay selected) - then hit whichever align button you are using and blam - aligned in whatever way to the one you second clicked on

it's magic

hello peeps :grin:

have been asked to look into web based pdf approval systems - any ideas anyone?

we don't have funds for insite (kodak) and I think webdav and java based systems may cause issues with end users (in this case photographers)

jobs to be approved are foiling positionals. software needs to be simple, able to have comments/annotations, some form of "yes this is approved" or "wtf you screwed it up" button :laugh:

and any ideas on cost

it does NOT need to be complex at all - the simpler the better (very much like me actually)

thanks all :grin:

After flattening and saving, press Ctrl+Alt+Z (PC) or Cmd+Option+Z (Mac) and the layers will come streaming back. This won't work if you close the image after saving, but if you realise and it's still open, it's a lifesaver!

hello denizens of the prepress world :grin: (and desighners i guess :laugh:)

a most bizarre thing happened yesterday to a layout - i don't know if it was a rip thing, and indy thing or a format thing

osx10.4.11 mac g5, 3.5 giggles of rameroos, CS3, xitron navigator rip

carton design came in as a pdf - created by cs4 - we preflight - all is fine, proofed, approved and life is good.

so - drop pdf into indesign, drop one up cutter guide over the top, drop multi up cutter over that, step one up with cutter into position - simples

cutter guide is set to overprint. artwork is ok for using indesign's trapping, so we applied our usual 0.2 trap and assigned it - again easy. ripped and all was good - except it wasn't

parts of the cutter can be a dashed line (to show carton creases for example), and indesign has managed in some bizarre adobe way to make the overprinting <spot colour> cutter guide go mental

see if ya keep up - the guide is set to overprint ok - its a dashed line - a black box and a cream box butt up down the crease line - so overprint cutter = NO knockouts

what indy did was this - down the hard edge of the black/cream it honoured the overprint - so NO white k/o's - BUT it knocked back the black so the edge of the black had the dashes of the cutter "cut" out of them - so it honoured the overprint but somehow screwed the black up

it appeared in several places on the sheet. the pdf is perfect, the layout is perfect, the cutter is perfect - the job should fly

deleted cutter, re-ripped and life was good again

i think it was a case of a cs4 pdf being shoved thru a postscript rip - thats what i told the "bosses" - scared em senseless and now gotta get pricing for appe rip, macs, cs4, all manner of stuff

friends, romans, countrymen, ninjas, rodents, wookies, humans, aliens, reps and fellow beer swillers -

anyone got a pantone chart file - i need to print out all the pantone colours in small swatches on my UV inkjet machine, and to save me making like a zillion boxes on a flat B1 sheet and filling with each individual pantone, I'm hoping someone can help me out

thanks moocho in advance :cheesy: