PDF proofs for emailing

Started by scottrsimons, March 13, 2018, 10:13:33 AM

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Diddler

#30
Quote from: frailer on March 21, 2018, 04:27:17 PMBut yep, for larger places I'd imagine online viewing, (no downloads), is the future. Smaller places too, for that matter.

Trying this and getting the clients to do this is another story. I'm currently trying to get our clients all on XMF Remote for uploads and approvals.
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scottrsimons

Back when we first got InSite, I could see the potential, but there was going to be a LOT of work getting customers to be knowledgeable enough to use it. It wasn't just point and click. If we were just dealing with experienced graphic professionals, then no problems, but we weren't. So in the end NO GO, InSite had TO GO.

I have been to the latest GUA and had a little hands on with the latest InSite, and it sure does look and operate a LOT better than in the past. But for us, it was a little too late for our investment that had not panned out. It was time to stop... :deadhorse:
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!" - Homer J. Simpson

Joe

When we got Insite we disabled all customer accounts on our FTP server and told them they had create a job and upload through Insite. And told them we weren't printing their job until they approve their pages within Insite. No exceptions. Except there are exceptions every now and then because salesmen (Safari corrected salesmen to salmon :D ) were born without spines. In the most part it has worked out well. Customers are like children. They will get away with everything you let them get away with. Put the hammer down and they fall in line. (Unless it is at creating proper PDF's. Nothing I have found fixes that.)
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JohnO

We have about 1300 InSite users. We used to do a webex demo to a new customer group. But now, the online Help is so good we seldom need to do this. We have an InSite 101 PDF that we can send out if need be as well.  It actually is fairly intuitive. Log-in. Create a job. Upload your file. Preview it. They can have e-mail notifications going out at whatever the step of the process to the CSR, approver, etc.   Non-Kodak workflows like Canon and HP that we have in the plant, can still use it as a portal into the plant and the files can then be used on these other, non-Kodak workflows.

Joe

Our prepress manager always emails our own 'Insite 101' PDF to every new customer/user. I've yet to see one look at it. >:( In fact just this past week we had a new customer and she emailed him along with the 'Insite 101' PDF. Later he emailed asking if we had any instructions for using Insite and she emailed him the same PDF again. Later he emailed me asking if we had any instructions for using Insite so I emailed him the same PDF. And later that day for fourth time he emailed her again asking if we had any instructions for how to use Insite!

:blowup:
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Farabomb

I'm just amazed you have customers that listen. Most of mine are either "I have no clue what I'm doing" or "we've been doing it this way for 30 years" kinda people. The former don't give a shit because they know sales will make an exception for their snowflake ass and the latter just want to prove they know what they're doing creating EPSs out of quark 3 on their quadra.
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Quote from: Ear on April 06, 2016, 11:54:16 AM
Quote from: Farabomb on April 06, 2016, 11:39:41 AMIt's more like grip, grip, grip, noise, then spin and 2 feet in and feel shame.
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scottrsimons

Quote from: Farabomb on March 23, 2018, 05:56:14 AMI'm just amazed you have customers that listen. Most of mine are either "I have no clue what I'm doing" or "we've been doing it this way for 30 years" kinda people. The former don't give a shit because they know sales will make an exception for their snowflake ass and the latter just want to prove they know what they're doing creating EPSs out of quark 3 on their quadra.

At least you get an EPS out of a (an ancient) page layout program, we get them our of M$ Word, Publisher and even Excel, Apple Pages, and on occasion still Ragemaker, oh and some Corel Draw.  :banghead:  Now I know I'm showing my bias to Adobe products.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!" - Homer J. Simpson

pspdfppdfxhd

I have only seen files from CUBA come in Corel Draw. Think they still do their work in that program. Haven't had any work from them in a few years but some might be coming in the future.

One client still uses Quark but haven't seen another Quark file in at least 5 years.

With the exception of the Microsoft stuff, I have'nt seen any of those other programs in at least 10 years.

Joe

Quote from: Farabomb on March 23, 2018, 05:56:14 AMI'm just amazed you have customers that listen. Most of mine are either "I have no clue what I'm doing" or "we've been doing it this way for 30 years" kinda people. The former don't give a shit because they know sales will make an exception for their snowflake ass and the latter just want to prove they know what they're doing creating EPSs out of quark 3 on their quadra.

Who me? I have no customers that actually listen. ZERO!
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

AaronH

I actually didn't know about the Pitstop Minimize File Size action. That works much better than the custom settings I had setup in Acrobat for Optimizing the file.

Thanks!
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris

DigiCorn

We do get an above average amount of MS Word, Excel and Power Point files... When I started here, the shop was actually doing production work from Publisher, but I converted all of those files over to InDesign so I don't have to deal with that shit anymore.
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Slappy

Quote from: AaronH on March 23, 2018, 04:38:21 PMI actually didn't know about the Pitstop Minimize File Size action. That works much better than the custom settings I had setup in Acrobat for Optimizing the file.

Thanks!
Me either, somehow got past me but man, it does an amazing job! Going to try adding to our XMF workflow for generating Client PDFs instead of the default method now. Should be easy since XMF integrates Pitstop Actions pretty readily.
A little diddie 'bout black 'n cyan...two reflective colors doin' the best they can.

AaronH

Quote from: Slappy on March 24, 2018, 09:17:08 PMMe either, somehow got past me but man, it does an amazing job! Going to try adding to our XMF workflow for generating Client PDFs instead of the default method now. Should be easy since XMF integrates Pitstop Actions pretty readily.

Let me know how that goes. I haven't added a Pitstop action to XMF yet either, but that would be a great way to automate that one.
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris

Tracy

When you do a save as of a XMF pdf it lowers the size pretty dramatically

The XMF pdfs do come out large tho!

johnny_jay

Quote from: Joe on March 22, 2018, 11:39:17 AMOur prepress manager always emails our own 'Insite 101' PDF to every new customer/user. I've yet to see one look at it. >:( In fact just this past week we had a new customer and she emailed him along with the 'Insite 101' PDF. Later he emailed asking if we had any instructions for using Insite and she emailed him the same PDF again. Later he emailed me asking if we had any instructions for using Insite so I emailed him the same PDF. And later that day for fourth time he emailed her again asking if we had any instructions for how to use Insite!

:blowup:

We do InSite demos via go to meeting with all new customers, at least 90% of them. Demo takes about 20-30 minutes and cuts down on problems and confused customers. I am the one that does most of them. To be honest, they are pretty fun. I cover upload, ways to review proofs and preflight concerns.

We create all jobs and do not allow the customer to create them.

We have had InSite and this workflow since 2009. Started the demos in about 2010.  It was painful at first but once we got them used to the system, most love it.
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