FlightCheck Pro

[pspdfppdfxhd]

I hesitate to reason out some of the things we do here because it sounds like the old days when the stripper (that was me) would go into almost scientific detail on how he did things.

We all know those days are over so the responsibility is now on the digital prepress person.

Proboblly soon, I'll sound like the old stippper (me) going on with almost scientific detail on how I prep and check files. So either I keep one level up on the next wave or become the dinosaur again.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense or not about all this detail but RIGHT NOW it works for us because our customers have relied on our level of expertise in getting things done right. Somehow, I don't believe that some newbie in this whole trade would ever have the deeper picture about how things work down the line. We've developed a "trust" with many of our clients that's based on something more that what a software can currently provide. But how long that'll be true is anybody's guess... just hope I'm not too old to get a leg up and keep with the flow.




It really bothers me when I hear people ranting about there's automation for this and automation for that....I mean where is the "craft" left in this business when you can solve all your problems with some piece of software?

[jimking]

Because it's all becoming "Monkey Business"

[pspdfppdfxhd]

that's all right man, I can do monkey too!! (as long as they pay me the same!)

[tlotzer]

I have Gluons QC program to check Final resolution and RGB color in Quark 6.5. Everything else I do by manually.

One thing I hate is when the client builds, lets say, a pocket folder. The put the Outside and Inside art in the same Illustrator doc. Nothing is centered on the artboard, or the artboard is 2 x 2 inches. I have to split into 2 files. The Illustrator Document raster setting is always at 72 dpi - UGH....

I set up an Illustrator action connected to the F1 key that instantly deletes unused swatches, graphic styles, brushes, etc and it sets the Doc resolution to 300 dpi. That way shadows are hires, the unused swatches are deleted, leaving only the colors that are actually used which exposes the spot colors right away.

What's really annoying is when they don't use layers for changing out the names on business cards and not using the same art on  a master layer. The art is not in the same place on each card.

[tapdn]

Mostly an "experience" thing here. I did spend a day creating new set of profiles for Pitstop Server which makes the size of the report at least manageable and helps point me in the right direction on new jobs, it still comes down to trainning and experience and knowing the customer. Some regular job files I hardly even look at.

[rrobinson]

I set up an Illustrator action connected to the F1 key that instantly deletes unused swatches, graphic styles, brushes, etc and it sets the Doc resolution to 300 dpi. That way shadows are hires, the unused swatches are deleted, leaving only the colors that are actually used which exposes the spot colors right away.

Nice tip!