Guess what I am doing right now... installing QuarkXpress 2018!

Lets see if we can make sense out of some of those job descriptions posted these days. Here is a beauty!

Principal Duties and Responsibilities :

Maintain the production of the labeling creation & production process of all private label items.
Co-ordinate the traffic of all art files with head office for all SKUs.
Set-up and maintain files on each new label product and customers.
Develop and maintain customer original files and vendor specific files with and for NY.
Execute and track daily progress of the file between each department at Taro as well as the progress to and from the customer and manufacturing site. (Especially with outsourced products).
Expedite the flow from various departments in a timely manner to ensure against unnecessary delays.
To build mechanical artwork for Canadian Rx and OTC, where required.
Ensure that all art copy changes to all product lines are executed.
Report to clients and Head office any problems with files to minimize delays.
Ensure that all work is prioritized on a daily basis so files are received and our deadlines are met.
Coordinate with the Packaging Technologist and Production Art Supervisor the dielines, templates artwork and Master Text needed for all SKUs.
Maintain and route paperwork relative to the production of SKUs for Supply Chain
Approve vendor supplied proofs.
Maintain client and Sales Contact regarding status of their SKU in progress.
Review both Canadian and US TARO label and private label art for technical production printability and resolve issues as required.
Participate in weekly meetings
Maintain schedules and priorities based on project timelines.
Co-ordinate the efforts of all departments and maintain control of all SKUs.
Organize and sort all paper work etc. prior to closing job.
Maintain proper files to ensure continuity and consistency.
Update file status spread sheets.
Inform all department head of upcoming jobs requiring special attention with regards to procedure and complexities.
May be assigned specific projects related to art process development.
Support NOE and NCI investigations with expert advise as required by investigation owners.
Complete all GMP Documentation correctly and in a timely manner
Complete all training assignments and maintain personal training records
Participate in and/or lead Non Conformance Investigations
Complete Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA's)
Initiate, and follow through with actions required to close Change Controls
Participate in Internal, Customer and Regulatory Audits.
Other duties as assigned.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

College/ University education – Creative Design, Graphic Design, or Print Production
5-7 years similar experience in an Ad Agency, Graphic Arts Studio or prepress production
Print experience with high level of understanding of offset, flexo and digital print strengths and limitations
Strong organizational skills.
Strong understanding of prepress proofing methods, procedures and press limitations.
Good problem solving skills.
Good computer spreadsheet skills.( Excel, Word, MS Project )
Excellent understanding of Macintosh operating system, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Acrobat, QuarkXPress, and related utility software.
Good communication skills.
Art/Press Production knowledge and experience.
Invoicing, billing experience and estimating.
Sales support experience.
Ability to manage multiple projects.
Effective interpersonal skills to develop business relationships to ensure time lines are met.
Ability to develop project time lines.
In conjunction with Packaging Engineer, Marketing, TARO Art Department and the vendors, work on creating time lines for new products and revisions.
Initiate revision to time lines where required to resolve any potential delays or risks to project completion.
Be aware of changing production technologies and their roles within the workflow.
Automate processes where possible.

Anyone have any recommendations for a decent inkjet printer for envelopes?

The one we have now is ancient and dying a slow death. The interface is horrible, we're restricted to using only one font, courier, and have to print DOS from the sorting software to the printer.

It would be great to have one that would print from PDFs so fonts are not an issue.

Here's a doozy,

Anyone ever had any experience in the realm of printing that silver stuff you see on scratch and win cards?

I've had a request to find out more information of all the details of uv drying etc. etc. etc.

The cards will be printed litho with variable numbers imprinted for numbers, passwords etc. and the owner wants to figure out if the whole thing can be done in house including the silver stuff on top.

Would anyone know if a "newish" (couple of years old) digital printer (Konica Minolta 1070) would process PDF/VT files?

We only have the basic controller named "Job Centro", not a full rip.

I am wondering if we're going to see any speed increases ripping the large 4 color variable jobs.

I am sure I should already know how to do this after being in prepress for about 500 years, but, I am asking how you embed fonts from the Indesign export? Mine always seem to be "Embedded subset" which is a problem when you want to edit in Pitstop and the character is not included in the document. I know it can be embedded with pitstop but that's a step I would like to remove.

I apologize for my ignorance, how have I survived in this racket for so long? Oh, yeah, I work cheap.

We've got a great Konica color machine, with one glaring omission: no command workstation. Too much $$$$$.

Rather than suffer the ridiculous rip times for pdfs going through the "other program" obviously creating huge spool files, is there a way to print direct as a "rip on the fly" kind of like streaming like netflix.

Sorry if I asked this question before, it just keeps coming up again and again and again.

This has probably come up before, maybe even by me!

However, we're looking to expand our capabilities with variable printing, the Indesign data merge just isn't enough for some of the work we might be getting.

We need all that conditional variable stuff like IF, AND, etc.

Looking at Fusion Pro or Xmpie, big price difference, looks like Xmpiie might be 4x more, and wondering if FP would be all we need.

Hopeful for some feedback.

We have a list from a client with no punctuation in the names of people.

For instance the names are like: "John A Smith", or "J A Smith" that may need to print like "John A. Smith", or "J. A. Smith".

We don't have any variable software except the InDesign basic so I think we'll have to manipulate the excel file somehow.

So I am thinking that there would have to be some kind of formula to add a period after a 1 character item or perhaps if it is <2 characters? I'm pretty limited to this kind of thing but thought someone might know.

I am not sure even if they would want this done but have learned in the past to anticipate the next move before it happens.

Googled it a bit but gotta admit it was hard to grasp.

https://www.bestbuy.ca/Catalog/UsCustomerReviews.aspx?Sku=10453008

I am wondering if this will replace my 2TB Lacie drive, 12 years old and failing.

If not then does anyone have a better idea? Remember, everyone wants CHEAP and this one certainly fits the bill.

Some people in the reviews seemed to think it was not great with Macs.

Boss says he's fed up with our proofer and is getting a new EPSON.

Salesman says, you have fiery XF, most shops set these up themselves.

Boss says "Can you setup this proofer by yourself?". I say no. We don't have the measurement tools, knowledge etc. to do this. Makes me feel dumb.

Am I missing something here? I doubt it

This may be a dumb question, but...

If you are migrating an old computer from a time machine backup to a new one, will the pitstop or other plugins still work? What i mean is won't there be 2 running at the same time if the old machine is still running? I should know the answer in about an hour but it's really bugging me.

Long story short.....

Hard drive failure on Mac A, had to reinstall Fiery server and client on Mac B, everything went okay but on initialization of the server software, an error came up that a particular "port" was already in use and it wont launch. Never seen any mention of a port on a Mac before. Maybe we have to reinstall the server back to Mac B, now that it has a new drive.

Anyone had any similar problems?

I recently grabbed a couple of images off pxhere.com which claims it's "Free of copyrights under CC0. Do whatever you want. ".

I can't find anything on the web that says this is not true. They have some pretty good photos on there high res.

Has anyone else ever used one of these sites without being very suspicious?

 

Does anyone have a decent yearly (1 page) 2018 calendar in portrait layout? 3 months across, 4 months down.

Can't seem to find a decent one on the web. Even for a cost.

Thanks.

never really thought about this before...but,

Is there any way to view layers in Acrobat? We got a file today for a product label, from a big agency who have particuar ways of doing things. They put a "transparent" varnish layer in the file from Illustrator in there which wacked out the color.

I was asked to make a color printout so had to bring the file into indd, go into object layer options, turn off the varnish layer and export.

?

We have 2 Macs, one main workstation and another that is basically a 2nd machine/backup

Yesterday, I was informed that on the 2nd Mac, Acrobat became dreadfully slow, spinning ball... etc.

I decided to uninstall all the CC programs and do a new install. Had a lot of trouble getting the creative cloud desktop app to hook up to our account. On the main Mac it hooks up in seconds, on the 2nd Mac it takes minutes. So I opened up the reinstalled Acrobat and it's the same thing. Takes about 5 minutes to open, the ball keeps spinning painfully slow in everything you do. I've done all the checks on the computer, it's running fine unless you try and use CC in any way.

Don't know where to start.... contact Adobe? Is there a way to delete the Acrobat or CC desktop app preferences files?

Any help appreciated.

 

We have a Harlequin rip, V.10 that we recently added calibration curves for 3 different presses.

I'm at a loss to figure out how to define screen angles for spot colors. Well not totally, you can define a curve for: "other colors in job" and specify the screen angle, one screen angle for example 75 degrees which is okay for 2 color jobs, ie. black and a pms, but some jobs we run have say, 3 spots that need 3 different angles. They all come out at the same angle.

What I have been doing is using the ink manager in InDesign to map the spots to process. Like spot 1 (magenta), spot 2 (cyan) spot 3 (yellow). It works but I gotta figure there's an easier way to configure the rip.

We don't have the optional "edit spot colors" module at the rip and I am wondering if this is the missing component.

Any help appreciated.

Has anyone ever used thermochromic ink (printed offset) in any jobs? Like can it be run as a 5th color.

This is ink that prints black but when you touch it, it disappears to reveal what's printed underneath. (I am not kidding, never heard about it until today).

If it can't be printed offset, I wonder who you can send it to to finish the job. One of our client requires it on their print job.

Well, the management finally decided to calibrate our plates to the presses.

Our Komori 5 colour was measured and calibration curves were input to the rip for each of CMYK.

Our Komori 4 color pressman was away on holidays and his press did not get calibrated, he's been running linear plates for years with no big complaints. Boss says give him the same curves for the plates as the 5 colour but he is having a hell of a time making his work look good now. We have had to bump up his calibration curves a lot for him to get good colour. We're still trying..... next trial is a dot gain in the 50 percent area of about 8 percent. The other press is about 18 percent which seems about normal. Both guys are running the same Agfa Azura plates. They are running up the proper ink densities on the color bars....up to spec.

Question is.... could 2 presses be so far apart in the calibration curves they require?