Quote from: G_Town on March 08, 2011, 12:51:35 PM

Quote from: gnubler on March 04, 2011, 07:39:25 PMA woman doing box jobs? DCS has met his match! 

impossible, the center of the brain that can process box jobs is clogged with weight issues and thoughts of comfort food in women.

We've had customers in every day this week. First day we got pizza. Second was Dickey's. Wednesday the Cookie Lady came by (our paper supplier) and today there is On the Border. Maybe this is why they keep us so well supplied? It's a trap...

Yes, it's box jobs for me as well with all manner of varnishes, whites and special inks, most of which the customer has no clue how to build. We went corporate a little while ago and we're using Hybrid to push PDFs between plants, but when we get raw files we usually turn to Illustrator to create seps they are lacking. We've got Neo, but it's just clunky for building white plates from scratch. As far as new stuff, we rolled out G7 this week, we're doing Nexus next week plus Lean Manufacturing and part two of Hybrid. And one of our sales team tells me her main client may switch to InDesign. I think my brain's about to start leaking.

Mordy Golding, who wrote the Real World Illustrator book if you've seen it, has a nifty little deal going. It's a free live tutorial/show on Illustrator where you can watch what he's doing and ask questions, every Friday.


http://fridays.mordy.com/

Quote from: Joe on March 03, 2011, 10:41:21 AMSounds like you may be working with The Warlord now. :laugh:

I'd love to invite The Warlord over to my shop. I've a pair of CSRs I'd be thrilled to introduce him to.  :evil:

The guy that was shocked, he was fired last year for breaking into some of the sales offices after hours. (he was subbing on thirds for a week) He said he was using them to write a personal letter. Other people said he was sleeping. Either way, he got canned. He turned around and got hired as the prepress manager for another shop we're loosely tied to, all within 4 days.

There's womenz over there too!

Well after reading the last page, I'm hungry.

That said, the places I've worked were diverse. But, when I was hired to the most recent one of the operators was... shocked? that I was applying. He said he'd never worked with a female in prepress. And repeated it rather often.

Hey!
/waves from Dallas

Sorry to hear the internship did not work out. As far as Houston goes, someone posted this awhile back. It showed a few leads in that direction. http://www.indeed.com/

Just to share something from your old neck of the woods. We had a dvd cover last week. The whole thing is in invisible ink that shows up with a blacklight. It was rush from a sister shop. It had no bleeds. When my boss called to point this out the reply was "It doesn't need bleed, it's invisible ink. No one will ever see it!" His reply was "Then why are we printing it, it's invisible!"
 :cheesy:

Good luck to your search in Houston and many stories such as this one to share!

We run Staccato. Other than adjusting the plate curves once, I can't say we've had any issues with it.
The issues we have with it are purely client driven. It seems like when someone tries to sell it to a client, they think it's some new, experimental thing and immediately dig in their heels against it. So, we rarely use it for 4-color. Mainly, we use it for PMS colors and whites. All of my 3-D work (not lenticular) runs with Staccato under the lens because your normal angle patterns do funny things to it.
 
But again, I've not had the hassle of someone waving a 150 round/square surface bright-white proof at me and insisting it color match under a blueish plastic lens. And no client I know wants it up front.

We when first tried it, they were trying to reproduce a peice that was going the opposite way across the drum. The only way they could get it was to cut the plate down so they could turn it when it was on press. This cut the blankets to hell on the press. Good times.

Quote from: david on June 12, 2009, 11:24:30 AMmore than glad to be of some help.

hey Sally, do you guys not do a pitchtest?

That is what my boss has decided sucks and has created his own excel spreadsheet formula that requires manually measuring the lens instead... And granted, it ballparks it nicely. But, there is a lot of ghosting so most likely I can take what he's done and use it to narrow down the pitch test to start. We have a nice scope. I'll have to try that out.

I'll have to be careful posting here. David knows, I AM local. I can make good on that drink  :tongue:

Unfortunately since they want the image to change as people walk past the poster, they want it vertical. I had found some literature showing that was a bad idea, but no avail. We were trying it on a 75 lpi lens and we're going to try it on a 60 later for a bit better viewing angle.

They initially tried an epson 2800 but rejected it for some reason or another. They got a kodak polar proof system (prediction). My boss has decided the program to register the machine sucks and instead is using his own formula in excel that involves hand-measuring the lens. So the pitch most likely is off a bit. I'll wait 'til he leaves then see if I can't fine-tune it a bit.

For the mounting, they had initially hired a guy to do Lenticular. He had a method by which he sprayed the proofs with a mixture of water/ivory soap. It let him register them to the lens so he could move them around a bit. Then he'd squeegee the water out. But, no one knows how he did it. He did not get along with management so they abruptly canned him a couple weeks ago and decided I could reverse-engineer his files while working my regular shift with no training, no literature and a hodge-podge of programs.

I could make a nice rant post but I'm trying to behave. Sip tea. Think happy thoughts.

Thanks as well David
I'm also going to add that a nice direct to lens proofer sure would be a nice thing. Are you guys hand mounting comps to your lens? I am. It's tedious.

They looked at Human Eyes here but decided against it by virtue of it not doing 3-D. (cough price) Instead we are using something called Superflip. 750$ and the guy that was supposed to pick this up got to go to Las Vegas to train. And something called Morphman that I haven't delved into yet. I got some small comps out and I'm trying for poster size now. Just flips. The ghosting is horrible on the poster so I'm playing with some build in settings to try to alleviate it. Makes the file too big to rip in most cases though.

And, I'll take that tea! Have a nice glass of iced sitting next to me right now.  :tongue:

Quote from: hotmetal on June 04, 2009, 05:27:05 PMNot. Easy. Stuff. This probably won't help you, Sally, other than to warn you that what you describe is a terrible way to go about this.

Trust me, I know. But like you and the guy on first, not a whole lot of choice in the matter. If nothing else, I'm *diversifying my work experience*. What with how prepress and production is jobwise, it can't hurt me to have some different skills on the resume.

Quote from: DigitalCrapShoveler on June 04, 2009, 09:39:03 AMI haven't got that far yet. Like I said "initial" set up. Ghosting and mounting... sounds like a hoot. I wish I could be more help to you, but you probably know WAYYYYYY more than anyone here at this point. I'll start looking into it now that I have someone to bounce ideas off of. You mind?

Bounce away! If nothing else I can be good moral support.
I can echo what they said about being extremely exact on press. You move by a .0000001 millimeter and it blows things up. But, we've successfully printed the new Star Trek movie digi cases. So, printing doesn't worry me so much. Creating the files and proofs will be my side of things. The program I'm starting with, it was cheap and the guy checking it out go to go to Las Vegas to train. Yes, it does interlace.

I've been checking out this site as a possible trainer. If anything, it looks very professional but I've no experience or quotes with it. http://www.lenticularimage.com/training/training.htm

G-Town, I'd love his info. I'd love to tap his shoulder and get some quotes on training. If I can get something early in the process, I'm more likely to get something period.

Good question. Looks like I'm starting with something called Superflip 3D. I literally have never looked at producing Lenticular before Monday and I have a proof due out for Fed Ex today, apparently. Our big hurdle for today is mounting the thing to the lens. We have a couple simple flips output. My big concern, beyond getting it stuck to the lens correctly, is ghosting. At least, the guy that was here would fiddle to reduce it. It seems like every *training* site is hawking their own version of software. I've found very sparse info on ghosting and few, if any, tricks on dealing with it.

So, over the past year or so I've been working on some 3-D printing stuff our company bought from Japan. Haven't sold any of it due to the economy tightening everyone's purse strings, but everyone loves it. Fast-forward, the company decided it wanted to break into Lenticular. They first sent my boss and one of the prepress guys to various places, brought people in, then hired a guy to put things together. They set up a computer for him, bought tons of applications and he worked on them for about a year. Then they decided he wasn't working out and let him go. And, since yours truly did such a nice job figuring out the japanese manuals for the other stuff they want me to pick up Lenticular and run with it. But, no training, no manuals... I think there are 12-15 different apps on this machine. Apparently my blonde act has failed miserably and then some.

 

Anyone out there with some Lenticular experience I can bug with newbish questions? I've been browsing around. What is on the web is pretty thin.

As-is, I know David has the drinks and I'm coming to get them. I need them!