We just got our hands on a Canon ImagePress c6000 with the A1100 RIP. Very impressive prints on a wide variety of stocks. I was very cynical after jockeying a CLC5100 for 4 years, but Canon seemed to get their shit right on this one. F/B registration is dead-on. Color is a+. Command workstation 5 is much more flexible than 4 was.

The a1100 RIP is much more sensitive to transparencies. Im having to go back and flatten areas on some re-run jobs. They ran fine on the older CLC but now i get a few issues.

We are moving our entire business card production off of our toko presses and onto the Imagepress. I wasnt fond of the idea cause id like to keep our pressroom busy, but it will cost a lot less and allow almost instant turnarounds..

I should know how to do this, but its challenging me right now.

multi-page CMYK pdf, I need to remap a few (not all) of the pages to greyscale (K only).

Acrobat 9 pro/pitstop 7.2

thanks in advance...

for those of you wishing to dabble in web design

http://www.000webhost.com/

offers completely ad-free hosting, with some decent features.  worth a look!

anyone experience this recently?

WinXP/Acro 9 PRO..

suddenly get an error message trying to view PDFs in FF or IE:

"This Acrobat reader that is running cannot be used to view PDFs in a web browser. Please exit Acrobat and restart your web browser and start again."

Looks like the message is coming from Acrobat. Just thought it was a windows flub in that one box, until my laptop did the same thing 2 days later (running win7+FF). Going to try a "repair installation" and see what happens.

Looking for a windows explorer replacement that will show the size of folders without actually right-clicking on properties of the item.

So, for example, if im looking at a directory that contains numerous folders, i can see/sort them by directory size.

suggestions?

We have an HP 1055c we use for doing posters, mainly 24x30 and 24x36.. today i had a banner (2'x6') and toward the tail end of the job, the printer had "dropped" some characters.. The PDF is good, all vector, no wierdness that i can tell. Prints fine if i check the "print as image" box..

I dont fool much with these things, but im trying to figure out whats up.. what do you think? possible out of memory error? postscript issues?  Ive even outlined the type and it does the same. Only toward the end of the banner..

Whats the easiest way to strip ALL metedata from a PDF?

im sure theres a couple of ways to tackle this.

time to pick the collective brain:

Back at my last employer, we had an acrylic 'tabletop' scoring device, it was a sheet of acrylic with a groove and an adjustable stop to set the scoring position.  It was great for short run cards and crap that came off the digital copier..

im trying to find something similar, hopefully you guys can throw out some manufacturer names or something for companies who might make something like this.

Its worth a look.. some good links. Its either this or complain about my boss in the social.

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/04/07/12-excellent-and-useful-design-process-tutorials.html

Running InD CS2 on XP:

got a bunch of cs3 files that wont open. Im trying to walk the client through the file menu to see if there is a export or save as cs2 option, but there doesnt seem to be. Any way to convert this? or am i missing something?

Ok, this happened before, but went away after a restart of illustrator.

I cannot grab the nodes on a bounding box to resize. i can grab the box and move it, but no resizing allowed. the cursor doesnt change on a mouseover, i dont know WTF.. I can resize in the transform panel, but grabbing nodes and willy-nilly sizing isnt allowed anymore..

what am i missing?

Im looking for something (book, website, white papers, your knowledge) on our industry's standard practices..  Our "management analysts" are trying to compare how our workflow and practices compare to other printshops around the country.

We need to cover the whole spectrum, from job intake, to prepress, proof approval, job scheduling, production, finishing, and delivery.  We will also need to cover how we deal with maintenance, shop upkeep, cleanup, disposing of chemicals.  etc...

does anyone know of any publications or anything that may outline something like this? The people generating these reports are just finance graduates pushing pencils, they have no idea what we do. you think they would just pull up a chair for a few days and monitor (not that i welcome that) but are pressing me for something possibly in print to study.

I know the last place i worked at ran like a navy ship. but here things are different, its a seat-of-your-pants operation.

Any ideas?

**edit:

I am looking into the PIA/GATF website (gain.net) seems like they have what im looking for, still any help is appreciated.

Yesterday i was cleaning out some old file cabinets and came across a pack of "color maze" from AdMaze Technologies. 

You basically do a black laser print of what you want foiled, attach the provided foil sheet to the area (it comes in 20 foil colors), then run it through the laser device again, and you have foil! It only adheres to areas that have toner.

Its a bit corny, but gives you a real foil application on a 1-off run!

Nice! lets you upload images for free, no account creation required, auto deletes in a week.

http://www.picupine.com/

also: use a temporary email account for whatever. no account creation, purges after 7 days:

http://dodgit.com/

i got "volunteered" to produce a dvd photo slideshow with music for a memorial..  does anyone out there have any experience with this?
what im looking for is some **free** software that will do this, Ive got Picasa 3 (it does a good job, but id like a little more control over the text slides) is there something better i should be looking at?
even if it doesnt output to DVD, thats fine, i have ways around that..
thanks!

Ill try to make this short and to the point-

I work for my City's in-house print shop, and the City recently decided to reclassify its entire workforce- We are union-based and your job title classifies the work you do and your pay structure depending on you responsibilities.  Being how my department hasnt changed structurally since the '70s, our job descriptions havent applied in a long time.

Part of my task is to compare my job duties & compensation to those in the private sector. Im finding that this postition can hold many strange titles depending on where/who you work for.

Currently im classified as a "graphics technician" - its kind of a catch-all.. My duties consist of 25% prepress- prepping artwork for in-house and outsourced production, 25% deisign, and 50% production (short-run color, bindery, finsihing, etc.)

other gov't entities list this as pre-press, designer, production specialist... - ive been successful finding comparitive listings in other companies under these titles, but im wondering what else it can be classified as?

i really dont care what they call me, as long as those paychecks keep cashing, but im trying to compare what i do to other companies, as well as compare salaries..

if you dont mind, please state what your 'official' job tilte is, and a brief synopisis of your duties (no salaries needed)

thanks!

OK, windows XP, Adobe CS2..

I have always had issues with InDesign on my workstation PC- Occasionaly, when launching, (about 80% of the time) i get a memory error - "instruction at blah blah referenced memory at blah baah - memory could not be read" - the only way ive found to avoid it, is after a successful launch, saving a blank document, then continue working. I dont know why it works this way, it just does. Ive tried re-installing CS and windows, nothing seems to help.  Any InDesign jobs jsut get shuffled over to my lappy...

well now Acrobat is doing the same thing, only it happens when i pull up the print properties dialogue, or try to use a twain scanning source.

it only happens on this damn dell machine im working on, everything else runs smoothly. 

I already had my tech guys swap out the memory, but that didnt change anything. They are going to do a complete re-install AGAIN this weekend, but i dont think thats going to change anything, as weve done it 2 times before.

I know this is pretty vague info, but does anyone have any ideas??

some good techniques in here:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/08/adobe-illustrator-tutorials-best-of-part-2/

[img=http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/7761/ncfdlogo1qb9.jpg]
[img=http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/ncfdlogo1qb9.jpg/1/w528.png]

is anyone out there aware of a "digital synthetic paper"??

Im trying to source some durable, tear-proof, destruction-proof paper, that will run on a CLC5100 (color copier), if any exists.. (these are for detailed map books for the Fire Dept. - they get heavily abused)

Yupo has some certified for Indigo, but thats a whole different animal.  The local reps havent found anything useful, so im attempting to tap the knowledge of the collective..