Preserved Topic: Publishing Software

Hey all, i'm looking in to purchasing some design software for publishing. I currently do things like posters, brochures, business cards, magazine ads, and even product catalogues (some up to 100 pages). I was wondering what software you would reccomend for the PC. I have used pagemaker a bit, and used photoshop for design work, and i saw a package that had illustrator, pagemaker, photoshop and acrobat for a decent price. Reading another post i think stuart said that pagemaker is at the end of its life? If so what is coming in its place. I think there is a variation of the package with InDesign instead of Pagemaker.

I've never used indesign, from memory its fairly new? Is it used for the same sort of stuff as pagemaker? Anyhow let me know what you thing, any input would be great.

Thanks all.

Indesign is one of the newer page layout programs available from Adobe. Pagemaker is also a pagelayout program from Adobe.

There are several page layout programs available for the PC: Indesign, FrameMaker, PageMaker, and Quark Xpress.

If you are looking to do professional layout, I would recommend FrameMaker or Quark Xpress.

There are other programs available for the PC, but they are either much more expensive or don't provide the capabilities you will need to do the kinds of products you describe.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

personally i'd recommend indesign over quark. i've used pagemaker as well, and you're correct in that it is towards the end of its lifetime (i'm curious why its still around actually). i find quark very awkward, imo its only succeeded due to its huge existing marketshare. indesign will be a pretty natural transition for you since you already know pagemaker and other adobe products, and it will also integrate well with the other adobe packages you're using. you might check with the people you're printing with and see what they prefer tho, most print shops now take indesign files but if you're in a smaller market they may still want quark.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

I would recommend the Adobe Design Collection. In includeds everything you would need to begin producting professional quality publications. Thou you may wish to get some addtional fonts. It even includes Acrobat professional which would be very useful. While InDesign can produce PDF directly it is safer to print to a Postscript file and distill pages to PDF using Acrobat Distiller. That way you can avoid some of the problem the headache that can occur Tranparceny and PSD layers in InDesign. Acrobat professional will also allow you to examine PDF-X file compliance and Prostscript level compatibility. Useful for printer that support PDF-X compliance.

QuarkXPress is a great package, but it's seams overpriced and is lacking many of the nice features incuded in InDesign. Version 6 does include has some useful tools but it it's too little, too late. I have seen no reason to upgrade past version 4. The new lience skeem realy suchs aswell.

I have never used Framemaker and Adobe hasn't realy updated it in while it's geared more towards XML, template, and text intesive documents. Publications such as text book and techical documentation in an enterpise enviroment.

The deciding factor should depend on how you supply files to the printer or output service. Do you plan on sending the printer native appliction files or simply supply PDF's. Currenly all my work as (Ver 1.4 ) PDF files. Preflighted and prepared for press with all fonts embeded. That way I don't have to worry about printer accidently modifing my files prior to output. It either works or it gets kick it back at the printers prep stage for corrections.


J. Stuart J.

Ok thanks guys, sounds like indesign may be the go, ill just check with my publisher make sure he supports it. Actually one thing i was wondering kind of in relation to this is how do these programs work with vector graphics. Say i do a publication in photoshop, i have some text there, well i can vectorize it so it can be scaled without loosing quality.

Now if i go instead do the text in say pagemaker or indesign, do i need to vectorize text still etc? I'm a little confused as to how that works. Also when i include images, at the moment i have been linking my photoshop .psd files. Again here im not sure if its better to embed them instead, and also wether i'm better off using a flattened file instead of a psd with layers.

Thanks for any info you can offer =)

Perhap an example job will help clear up some workflow issues.
http://www.texturehunter.com/img/temp/outdr.jpg

Here is a catalog cover, I worked on a few years back. It went direct to plate, printed offset at 150lpi, 4-color process +1 spot ink + varnish (addtional protection for mailing)

The picture of the dog a 4x5 transparency was drum scanned at 300dpi in CYMK sized to fit. It was retouched and color corrected in photoshop and saved in TIFF format. If the original came from a digital studio I would have seperated it to CYMK in Photoshop according to the SWOP standard for offset presses and scaled it to size and adding some USM (sharping)as needed.

The "Outdoor Spirit" logo and "Fingerhut" logos were created in CYMK in Illustrator and saved as an EPS.

Everything else was built and assembled in QuarkXPpress.

a. An orange box picture box was placed in the background and set as a spot color Pantone 021.

B. A picture box was then placed on top of the orange box and the image of the dog was placed in it. It would be considered a linked image as you can only link Images in QuarkXpress.

C. A small Text Box was place to create the Orange Pop over that say's In this Issue, backgroud set to Pantone 021 and Text was set to 100% Black overprint.

D. All other type was set via Quark Express. Yellow type to the right with drop shadow, was simply created by copying the text setting it to black, sending it behind the yellow with a slightly offset.

E. All color were edited to process CYMK in Quark except for the Bright Orange which was defined as a "Spot Color" or special ink (Pantone Orange 021.)

The Gold foil Sticker, as positoned in bindery. It's postion was indicated by 30% gray tick marks, they do print but are covered by the sticker but are used by the lableing equipment. The Lable was assembled as a seperate document in QuarkXpress. All type was set in QuarkXpress, the "Field and Stream" logo was supplied by the vendor as an EPS, which I assume it was generate with Illustrator or some other vector application.

The Catalog page was RIPed to a Postscript file, proofed to a Koday Approval and then sent to distiller to generate a PDF. Which was supplied to the printer.

( Actually we supplied seperate files one for CYMK and the other for any Spot ink. This was due to some limitations of the version 1.3 pdf files and/or our RIP. The printer then combined these seperate files in their impostion software and performed the trapping before making plates. I would consult with your printer before supplying any jobs, expecially spot color jobs using PDF to see how they can handle them. They may perfer the QuarkXPress or InDesign document or a Postscript file.

I then copied the document and deleted all the pictures and logos. Set all the element I wanted to be varnished to Black and all non-varnished areas to white and sent it to the RIP and Distiller. Lableing at the varnish PDF file.

The Lable: Was done using a flexographic process, which a different printer supplied. Not being a specialist in Flexography I andthe printer perfered to do the prep work. So I simply supplied the Quark Document, all fonts, and the EPS of the logo.

Once the catalog, cover, and lable were printed. All were shipped to the bindery facility where the two items were, trimed, combined, and saddle sticed (stapled) to the rest of the catalog and finally laser addressed.

Now days things would have been much easyer with better versions of Acrobat and Layers in Quark and InDesign could have made making varnishes and spot colors plates a much simpler task.

Hope this helps

J. Stuart J.

PS> I didn't design it or write the tacky copy. I was simply the Production Artist and Prepress Coordinator.


[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 08-28-2003).]

Ahh cool, thanks stuart that does clear some things up, a good read there. I'm still learning about spot colours and all that, i think ill do a short 13 week course i found to hopefully clear my path some more too! By the sounds of it, if i buy the package with illustrator, indesign, photoshope and acrobat i should be set to do all i need.

Im not sure how long ago it was you did this, but is that drum scanning the dog picture still a standard thing they do? I guess with digital camera's these days you can just get a high resolution photo like that to use.

"if the original came from a digital studio I would have seperated it to CYMK in Photoshop according to the SWOP standard for offset presses and scaled it"

this is one thing i was going to ask you about. Is this seperation just a matter of opening the digital file, then saving it as a CYMK file in photoshop? I've seen in the options there you can choose wether to use SWOP etc under preferences so im assuming thats the case.

Thanks again for your help.

Actually thinking about it, i guess thats why they require you to supply font files if its not something standard. Are font files themselves vector type files?

nope, they're a sort of their own file type. you can, at least in illustrator, convert your fonts to outlines (i.e. vectorize them) so there's no worry about fonts. if its a non-type heavy piece that is, because if you vectorize your type then need to edit something you're screwed

chris


KAIROSinteractive

Yeh interesting, i noticed in photoshop you can vectorize a font also, but i had one font i wanted to vectorize but for some reason it wouldnt let me. So not sure why u can do some not others.

Well only about 20% of the shots at our studio were conventional photography and drum scanned. Mostly model action shots jewerly, or shots scaled to extreamly size. I no longer work with Fingerhut, but I assume they went all digital. As they layed off the entire prepress department and sold of the equipment. My guess is they are using Omega studios in Texas, they were supply mostly digital.

Yep, basiclly Separation to cymk is simply setting your color settings correctly then either opening the image and converting when prompted or converting from RGB using Image-->Mode--CYMK. I perform basic corrections for contrast, sharpness, and fix or improve any out of gammet colors. Saving the image as a TIFF or an EPS if clipping paths are needed. The printers and our workflow didn't use CYMK profiles so I unchecked the profile when saving the image. Not that it would matter all the much as it would be ignored by our RIPs anyhoo. But better safe the sorry.

J. Stuart J.


[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 08-28-2003).]

Ahh ok cool, i was hoping it was as simple as that, i might have to post a simple thing im doing and let you know how i did it too see if im approaching it the correct way, you sound like you have alot of experience in the area.

Im doing some small jobs at the moment like a letter head and business cards so ill put them up this weekend.

Thanks for the info =)