Preps 5 to 6 inevitable - tips?

[DCurry]

Since Preps 5 only runs on Macs with an OS no later than 10.6.8, I can see that sooner or later I'm going to need to upgrade to 6. Keeping in mind that I most likely have no budget for actual training, what's my best course of action to make this as smooth as possible?

Because we are a book printer, we have thousands of templates that we use on a regular basis, and many contain specialized bleed and bottling settings so I hope that I can still use these templates moving forward in 6?

We output from Preps to JDF, which then gets fed to our Nexus rip.

p.s. - If anyone knows where I can find a tutorial (other than youTube) I'd like to try one.

[David]

do you want a user guide?

[Farabomb]

Do you want some astroglide?

Actually in all seriousness I will have to do this eventually as well. I'm just avoiding it like the plague.

[DCurry]

Sure, David, a User Guide might be helpful.

Farabomb, I too have been putting it off as long as possible! I'd like to tinker with it before I really need to make the leap.

[Joe]

You can still use your templates in 6. You just have to learn to do it a little differently. For example in Preps 5 we had templates where a single template held many different impositions and while you can still do that in Preps 6 it really isn't practical. If you have a template with more than one imposition and you need to make a change to one of them and then you do a "Save Template As..." it will overwrite the original template file with the new one that will only contain the impositions you have open in the current Preps job so if you only have the one open that you are wanting to modify your new template will only have that one imposition in it. The only way to "Save Template As..." with multiple impositions would be to open them all in a Preps 6 job, make your change to one needed, then "Save Template As.." and like I said that isn't really practical. Kodak gave t-pat a script that would extract all of the impositions from Preps 5 templates into individual template files and he passed it on to me. It was an Applescript for Macs and some other kind of script for Windows. I could never get the Applescript to work but the Windows script did work and that is how I converted all of my multi-impo Preps 5 templates to individual template files. If you want the script I will see if I still have it anywhere. Also Preps 6 has a script with it that will convert Preps 5 templates to the Preps 6 format. Once you convert them I don't think you can go back and edit them with Preps 5.

Kodak also has quite a few videos for Preps 6 over at their Partner Place. And Preps 7 is already out for Prinergy 6 users. Not sure if you would get Preps 6 or 7 when upgrading from Preps 5 at this time.

[Joe]

DCurry, here is a good place to start assuming you can log in at the Kodak Partner Place.

Preps6.x - Reference

[SpicyVindaloo]

I'm in the same boat after getting a new mac. Trying to figure out what software runs and doesn't run on the new mac has been a royal pain in the ass! It's been real fun explaining how spending $500 on a new mac to run newer Adobe software is gonna cost us thousands more to update Prinergy and all of our outdated software.

[DCurry]

Thanks, Joe. That sounds like it could be a nightmare for us. We tend to keep layouts as 1 template with several impositions inside, then just choose the one we need for a particular job (for instance, all of my 32-pagers for a particular press are in 1 template, and each sig within the template has either a different trim size or different gutters for various scenarios, some with bottling, some without, etc.) Sounds like we'd end up with more templates than we have now.

Regardless, I need to at least get familiar with the changes. Sounds like a 2014 resolution, assuming I survive tomorrow's round of layoffs.

[Joe]

Yes it was kind of a pain. The script helps a lot. We now have all of the individual templates named what each imposition inside the template was named and they are all in a folder named what the template used to be named. So they are kind of organized as they were before. Once we moved past OS X 10.6.x we really had no choice other than to do it this way.

[Joe]

I'm in the same boat after getting a new mac. Trying to figure out what software runs and doesn't run on the new mac has been a royal pain in the ass! It's been real fun explaining how spending $500 on a new mac to run newer Adobe software is gonna cost us thousands more to update Prinergy and all of our outdated software.

$500 for a new Mac. Where are you shopping? Out of the back of someones van? :laugh:

[Fontaholic]

Sounds like a 2014 resolution, assuming I survive tomorrow's round of layoffs.

And if that ends up being the case, then it becomes Someone Else's Problem.  So there is that...  :wink:

Cheers, John the Fontaholic

[SpicyVindaloo]

[/quote]
$500 for a new Mac. Where are you shopping? Out of the back of someones van? :laugh:
[/quote]

Close. Craigslist.  Around here getting something used is a feat unto itself.

[t-pat]

For what little impo I do lately I'm really missing preps 6. New gig uses Metrix. Not bad but not Preps.
It also uses JDF folding patterns though. They took a bit of getting used to in preps but were ultimately awesome. No guessing, pick your fold pattern, plug in your bleeds, hi/lo pickups, and go. It will even automatically calculate creep if you plug in your correct stock.

[Syphon]

HEY! I'm back!

Sorry that I been gone for long time. Nothing new other than the boss on our backs to get a lot more done with just the two prepress people we have at a time when 50% of printing is being done in prepress dept. Oh what fun!

So moving on, we are just starting the move to Preps 6 and management just had Prinergy updated to Prinergy 5.1.2.3. As of now, we have both Preps 5 and Preps 6 which we have not even touched yet. Our two main Macs running 10.6.8, one old Mac running 10.5 and a PC running Windows 7. We just bought a iMac running OSX 10.8 with plans to update our newest (2009) iMac to 10.8 and future plans to upgrade our Windows 2003 server next year if budget allows. So I am left with questions:

1. Can we still use Preps 5.3.3.3 on Mac OSX 10.8 if we upgrade the Macs? We were told we can't since we are now Prinergy 5.1.2.3. Eventually we plan to start learning Preps 6 once management give us time to start watching videos on it.

2. By what I seen briefly, very briefly, Preps 6 seems like a whole new program. So anyone who had any use of Preps can pass any tips to someone who about to head into the darkness of Preps? In other words, any heads up on what problems to expect would be nice.

I am sure that I and my fellow prepress buddy will have more questions once we open it.

Thanks.

[Joe]

HEY! I'm back!

Sorry that I been gone for long time. Nothing new other than the boss on our backs to get a lot more done with just the two prepress people we have at a time when 50% of printing is being done in prepress dept. Oh what fun!

So moving on, we are just starting the move to Preps 6 and management just had Prinergy updated to Prinergy 5.1.2.3. As of now, we have both Preps 5 and Preps 6 which we have not even touched yet. Our two main Macs running 10.6.8, one old Mac running 10.5 and a PC running Windows 7. We just bought a iMac running OSX 10.8 with plans to update our newest (2009) iMac to 10.8 and future plans to upgrade our Windows 2003 server next year if budget allows. So I am left with questions:

1. Can we still use Preps 5.3.3.3 on Mac OSX 10.8 if we upgrade the Macs? We were told we can't since we are now Prinergy 5.1.2.3. Eventually we plan to start learning Preps 6 once management give us time to start watching videos on it.

2. By what I seen briefly, very briefly, Preps 6 seems like a whole new program. So anyone who had any use of Preps can pass any tips to someone who about to head into the darkness of Preps? In other words, any heads up on what problems to expect would be nice.

I am sure that I and my fellow prepress buddy will have more questions once we open it.

Thanks.

Welcome back Syphon.

Preps 5.3.3 cannot run on Mac OS X 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9. You can still run Preps 5.3.3. with Prinergy 5.1.2.3 as long as your Macs are running OS X 10.6.8. If you move your Macs beyond that you will not be able to run Preps 5.3.3. However Prinergy 5.1.2.3 will overwrite your Preps 5 install with Preps 6 in your AraxiPreps folder so before you install Workshop you need to make a copy of the AraxiPreps folder and name it something like Preps5. Once you install Workshop you can then still use Preps 5 as long as your Macs are still on OS X 10.6.8. (Or you are running Workshop on Windows 7 or

Just a note about your Windows 2003 Server. Microsoft will discontinue Windows 2003 Server in July 2015 the same way they discontinued Windows XP this past April. So it's best to plan in advance to replace it.

Preps 6 is completely different than 5. You pretty much have to completely re-learn the whole program. Fortunately you can convert your templates to Preps 6 format however if you are like we were and stored bunches of impositions in a single .tpl file you will run into problems. The best way to handle a template system like that is to convert them so each .tpl file only contains one imposition. At one time I had a convertor to do that but not sure if I still have it or not. If you might need it let me know and I'll try to track it down. We're actually running Preps 7.0.2 here now and it is pretty much the same as Preps 6 so if you have any specific questions just post it here on the forum and I'm sure someone can answer them for you.