We are the Kings of "Fly by the seat of your pants". Just don't panic. It's just printing.

Might as well go for a soda...Nobody drowns and nobody dies

soda ain't gonna cut it!!!!!!!!!

apparently this rip does not have the beloved pilots we had on apogee... where we could open up previews on 5 different computers, mac or pc.

So's the guy tells me that we can use a "remote desktop" on the pc upstairs to access the preview or the one downstairs that's attached to the ctp. It'd be great to work on both but something tells me you can't do this simultaneously.

Plates are coming out (bout 30 so far), trapping is good pressmen like the Azura's rip seems stable Navigator 8, though kind of bare bones.

Epson 7600 setup should be done today but it's going through "color-burst" software not the Harlequin. Tech guy says they haven't had any issues with this setup (not a one rip system anymore) but we may have to switch gears at a later time. BUT THE PRESSES ARE RUNNING WHICH IS KIND OF AMAZING TO ME.

Boss wants me to look into Preps 6 on the Mac to tie together the front end. Downloaded the demo and it looks scary. Told him it may involve a lot of training. We have been using preps 5.x on the pc 9 (when it was installed someone said it sucked on the Mac). I'm sure it's good once you get the hang of it and I really like the fact that you can export pdfs. (rather then printing postscript and distilling on the pc).

Anyway, too much information running around in this pea-brain with no time to lose!

Definitely go for the Preps 6 training.

Hammil Road Software has a network viewer for the Harlequin page buffers. Andy Cave was one of the original Harlequin RIP developers. I know there are several versions available from them and it should be very easy to drop in.

you can use preps with Harlequin?
my boss is looking into this along with others
it's been rough gettin him to upgrade

Yes, you send down an imposed flat.

Thanks! I thought you couldn't

Absolutely. It's just an imposition program. You don't even need a RIP to use it. You can impose in Preps and print from Preps to a Doc 240 if you wanted. You could even just export imposed documents without a RIP.

Integration of Preps with Prinergy, TrueFlow, Apogee, etc. is one thing where you want to send down a .pjtf or some other file to tell the RIP to impose according to a particular imposition template. But Preps can be used completely stand alone. We used to send out trapped and imposed flats to another service provider to image when our recorder was down.

you think the online training is good enough?

Not sure...I haven't tried it yet. But no training sucks. I know that from experience.

Online is good, as long as you get a chance to try it soon after watching. Otherwise, you tend to forget. If you can "watch" and "do" at the same time, even better.

Perhaps video recording the online session would be a good refresher later.

well we're "whacking out" the plates pretty good now, got about 40 under our belt... the color proofer is slowing being tweaked into shape so overall it's going very well. I'm not used to such a "bare bones" rip but it's trapping well, and the bosses want to spend the money to make things easier. Preps 6? In rip inposition? Not sure yet but like y'all said many times..... this CTP thing is kinda amazing once you get through all the pain.

This thing was purchased due to a bankruptcy from another company. I Guess we are a bit like vultures picking up the road kill. But that's the way she goes as they say. I think the whole setup came in around 50 grand (with construction, wiring, etc) and if we had set this up even 2 years ago, I'm sure it'd be a lot, lot, more.

The feedback from the pressmen has been positive on the Azura TS plates. Hell, they even painted the new CTP room on friday (were'nt too busy) so we's one big happy family here! Wonder how long this will last!!