Enewsletters
Headline News
November 2008
 
 
Software Support
 
The latest version of QuarkXPress (version 8) is out and, as usual, there is a wide range of opinion about its cost/benefit ratio. If your publishing enterprise relies on QuarkXPress as your layout tool of choice, then you are likely trying to decide whether or not to upgrade.
 
Checking TAC (total area coverage) on images and final PDF files is a vital part of your final file preparation. InDesign users have long had an easy way to check TAC in their layout. Now Adobe has added new functionality to Acrobat Professional that makes it easier for QuarkXPress users to analyze problems with ink coverage in their PDF files.
 
The Adobe Acrobat Professional application is an invaluable resource that can help you streamline your workflow, avoid production delays, and cut your overhead in unexpected ways. To help our customers learn about and maximize the application’s many features, we will be providing explanations of specific features in each of the next few issues of this newsletter. Today, we focus on Output Preview.
 
Workflow Tips
 
InSite, our online soft-proofing and collaboration tool, automatically runs a preflight on all files submitted to Lane Press. This preflight process checks for potential problems, such as low-resolution images, RGB graphics, missing fonts, and ICC-based color graphics. Once the preflight is completed, InSite displays an on-screen report. Since the function and report are automatic, users often don’t expect the report and aren’t sure how to fix the indicated problems.
 
“Font management” is a phrase that strikes terror into the hearts of even the most experienced print designers. We all know that when a sticky font conflict arises, it can eat up valuable production time.
 
Resources
 
At Lane Press, we are currently installing two new wide-format Kodak platesetters. Large pieces of equipment that dominate our prepress area, platesetters do the work of transferring the raster images of your magazine pages onto the lithographic metal plates used on our offset presses.
 
Often customers will call us with a problem they've struggled with for hours, only to discover that we have run into this same problem before and have a solution ready for them to implement. If we don’t have a solution at our fingertips, we will research the problem until we can provide one.