I just finished work on my overview of the main 2014 prepress and printing news. From that page you can jump back  one year at a time, all the way to 1984. Enjoy the trip down memory lane, a fun thing to do if things are a bit slow at work!

Minor rant: I noticed that it gets harder and harder to actually collect this information at the end of each year. It are not just the graphic arts trade magazines that are disappearing, I even have the impression that the number of related web sites is decreasing. If I forgot some major news, please add a comment.

I have all the outgoing emails from an application also being sent to an internal email address in BCC. Now I am looking for some kind of a mail client that can automatically process those BCC emails and sent digest messages to various people. Some examples:
- If we sent out an order confirmation email to customer X, sent an email notification to sales person Y about this.
- If someone rejects an order (which also triggers an email), inform person Z that this happened.
- If we sent out account creation confirmations, send a daily or weekly digest to an admin on how many new users were added - with the email addresses of the new users in the body

I guess any email client with support for rules can do the easy stuff - like automatic forwarding. I am not aware of a mail client that has rules that can do some kind of digests. Since the mail client would only have to process mail based on rules, I can also imagine that there are systems that are better at managing a large set of rules or have more sophisticated rule sets. Anyone out there doing email processing like this? What tool do you use for it?

I added a page about 2012 to the 'history of prepress & printing' section of my site. Besides a lot of take-overs and mergers, nothing much seems to have happened - especially not on the software front. Did I miss something?

Best wishes for 2012!

I just finished a page about the prepress, printing and publishing news of 2011. I cannot recall any major software releases in the past year but there was lots of other news. Steve Jobs may have dominated the headlines but I think manroland filing for bankruptcy is THE biggest event for our industry. Any thoughts on the major events of 2011 or are there maybe things I overlooked?

I've set up a poll on my Prepressure site asking visitors which prepress workflow they use. So far Prinergy seems to be the most popular, closely followed by Apogee and Prinect. If you haven't voted yet, please do so - then head back here to discuss your vote and somehow relate it to some obscure 70's TV show (or so)  :grin:

Even though the rate of change seems to have slowed down in our industry, it can still be a challenge to keep up-to-date. I've made a poll about this at prepressure.com and hope you will cast your vote.

Personally I am relying more and more on the web to keep up to date - a few web sites for the news and a personal subscription to Lynda.com for web-based training. There are a few prepress/printing related magazines floating around at work but most don't seem capable of offering more than the news that can be also found on the web. I go to the occasional seminar or trade show and still find that very useful - often nothing beats a one-to-one discussion when you want to learn more about a particular topic. I've noticed that I spend less time on work-related forums such as this one - likely because so much time is already spent looking at other sources of news, like various blogs and Twitter.

Compared to years ago, I think my learning has moved from in-depth types of training (classroom training, manuals, books,..) to me continuously picking up small details left and right. Is that me showing my age or is that just the way things are nowadays?

I recently ran into a former colleague who became production manager at a publisher of fine art books. One of his main tasks was doing press checks for such publications. He told me the company had been acquired some time ago and that the new owners didn't think press checks were that important. I guess that is a trend as I've heard this from others as well. Out of curiosity I've put a poll about this on prepressure.com. Any thoughts on this? Is there a decline? Is it justified?

We were having a discussion at work about InDesign plug-ins and their behavior. Someone mentioned the QuarkXPress Pasteboard xtension - that xtension that added some data to each file, forcing a user who wanted to open a document to either have that xtension installed or use another xtension to remove those Pasteboard specific data. Still makes me cringe when I think about it....

Anyway - we were wondering if the same also exists in InDesign - plug-ins that force a user on another computer to have the plug-in installed as well because otherwise you cannot open the file or print it or use some other general InDesign function?

Suppose you get PDF files supplied for a magazine with separate files for each page. If the cover has a foldout, how would you want to get that file? With the cover page as a single larger page that includes the foldout? With the foldout as a separate page, set to the trim size? With the foldout as a separate page, with the same dimensions as all the other pages - so you can trim in imposition? Is there a particular naming convention you would prefer for a separate foldout page?

I have in the past seen all of the above variations and had Apogee cope with them. Now I am working on the creation side of things and wonder what would suit printers the best. Any preference and any reason for that preference?

Every time I go to one of Adobe's road shows, they demonstrate how InDesign can be used for more than just print publications. Since I am quite fond of Indy (and admittedly hate MS Word and PowerPoint), I also use it for creating on-screen presentations and manuals. I do wonder however how many people regularly export InDesign content to Dreamweaver. Adobe's attempts to convince us that InDesign is a great authoring tool for Flash content also leave me scratching my head. It all looks fine with the well-prepared sample files used during those seminars but how many people actually work this way?

Since I am curious about this, I've put up a poll at Prepressure.com. Votes are appreciated as are your thoughts about using InDesign for multi-channel publishing.

A recent poll here about using Illustrator to edit PDF files inspired me to put up a poll about everyone's favorite PDF editing tools. Even though nobody recommends it, editing PDFs seems to happen quite a lot. My page on how to edit PDF files is the second most popular page on the site with around 1000 daily page views!

The poll will probably be a home run for Adobe Acrobat. I am curious though how many also vote for other tools - or indeed use Adobe Illustrator. Please cast your vote(s) and use this thread to share your PDF-editing wisdom and/or nightmare stories.

There is an interesting question about late binding going on in the PrintPlanet forums. It seemed like a good idea to also check out what the B4Print crew had to say about the subject but oddly enough a search on 'late binding' doesn't bring up one single thread.

I know that RGB versus CMYK has been discussed in a number of threads so let me ask about another aspect of late-binding: does anyone still rip individual pages which then at the last moment get merged into a flat, so that you can do last minute changes in press sheet size or press? That is 'DQS' in Agfa-speak but other vendors offer similar solutions.

I have always been pretty happy with Acrobat 7 Professional. After upgrading to version 8, I quickly found out that this release was less stable and would crash frequently. Initially Acrobat 9 looked promising but meanwhile I have the impression that it is also less reliable than version 7. I don't know if I am the only one who suffers from Acrobat crashes so I've set up a poll on Prepressure.com about this. Please cast your vote and use this thread to discuss your experiences with Acrobat (Professional). Any tips to improve its reliability are appreciated! Fortunately Acrobat is mainly used to look at files, so I cannot complain about documents getting corrupted by a crash.

XPS, in case you forgot, is the Microsoft alternative to PDF. Recently I have noticed a sharp increase in the popularity of my web page on the XPS file format. Maybe Google happens to like that page but it might also have to do with the success of Windows 7. In prepress, I have yet to encounter my first XPS file or meet someone who actually uses XPS instead of (or next to) PDF. There is now a poll on prepressure.com to ask visitors if they use XPS. Is there anyone here who actually gets XPS files? Any war stories to share?

I am trying to finish work on a page about 2009 - part of my history of prepress pages.

Am I correct in thinking that there were no really interesting or breakthrough software or hardware prepress products launched during the past year? Really?
Maybe I am too much stuck into the workflow/ctp/offset stuff to see what is really going on. Tell me what I am missing out on...

Some blog post drew my attention to QR codes - those 2D barcodes that allow you to add a web link on a printed page. I searched around a little and created a QR code information page on Prepressure.com. Apart from noticing these codes a few times in magazines, I have no experience with them.

Can anyone recommend software to create these kinds of barcodes?
I am also curious about using color in these or other barcodes: are there any guidelines for this?

The new poll on Prepressure.com asks everyone's opinion about on-screen proofing. It has become popular in recent years, at least for certain types of jobs. The diminishing use of paper proofs is however not necessarily driven by vast improvements in monitor and softproofing technology. The speed advantage of transferring electronic bits versus actual paper as well as the unwillingness of customers to actually pay for any kind of proofing are important factors as well. If you ignore these considerations and simply look at the quality of both types of proofing, what is you opinion on the use of on-screen proofing? Please cast your vote and use this thread to discuss the topic. What is your experience with on-screen proofing?

In a blog post I read about 'precycling', a word I had never heard of before. Apparently it is a term that refers to 'a change in customer thinking toward the reduction in waste and a predisposition toward recyclable packaging and packaging or manufacturing components that make products easier to recycle'.

Being a bit of a cynic, I am wondering if this is just marketing bullshit or an actual trend. Has anyone actually noticed that customers care more about recycling in their choice of design or materials? Is anyone actually winning or loosing sales because of their company's environmental policy? Just curious...

Now that I've finally added a prepress section to my site, I want to include a separate page about must-have free prepress tools. I actually don't have that many freebies installed and think the forum is a great place to tap into everyone's know-how.

• Linotype FontExplorer X is a free font management tool for OS X systems. There is a paying 'Pro' version but the free version runs fine on Leopard systems.
• I run Adobe Reader on a few systems where I cannot afford to install the full Acrobat Professional.
• EPSQuickLookPlugIn is donationware and adds the ability to QuickLook EPS-files on OS X 10.5 systems. Thanks Joe for pointing out this one!
• 4xPDF has an interesting article on free tools to create PDF files. I never use such stuff myself but people without a budget for Acrobat Pro (or Apogee Prepress :cool:) might find this useful.

It has been a while since I last saw a Syquest cartridge or ZIP drive. They have been replaced by FTP and e-mail attachments. Most people still prefer to send me DVDs as soon as the amount of data exceeds half a gigabyte. I guess that FTP file space is not the issue but rather doubts about being able to upload or download that amount of data without any glitches.

Please cast your vote at Prepressure.com on your favorite ways of transferring data. This thread is for comments (and for telling me which the ultimate free service for transferring data is).