Using outside printer

[Martin ©¿©¬]

Hi
I'm preparing an A5 double sided 80 (160) page recipe book to raise
funds for our church
I have contacted a couple of printers & they all use Macs, don't use
Publisher & the only way I can send them a sample is to is to convert
to PDF, which means they would be unable to edit corrections etc.

Is there another format which could be used that would be common to us
both? PDF was the only suggestion the printers gave

Suggestions please

 

[Mary Sauer]

If you both have Acrobat you should be able to edit the contents. I can't speak
of other converters.

--
Mary Sauer
http://msauer.mvps.org/

in message
news:[email protected]...

 

[Srikanth]

HI Martin,

To find that it would print properly or not,
Run design checker on your computer.



in message
news:[email protected]...

 

[Martin ©¿©¬]

HI Martin,

To find that it would print properly or not,
Run design checker on your computer.

Thank you Srikanth
That found many errors in a small 20 page document

 

[bjm]

Hi
I'm preparing an A5 double sided 80 (160) page recipe book to raise
funds for our church
I have contacted a couple of printers & they all use Macs, don't use
Publisher & the only way I can send them a sample is to is to convert
to PDF, which means they would be unable to edit corrections etc.

Is there another format which could be used that would be common to us
both? PDF was the only suggestion the printers gave

Why are they editing corrections?
When I send my PDF to my commercial printer, if there's a problem he calls
me & I either send a new file (for pertinent pages) or tell him it's
ok/ignore & print anyway.
bj

 

[Martin ©¿©¬]

Why are they editing corrections?
When I send my PDF to my commercial printer, if there's a problem he calls
me & I either send a new file (for pertinent pages) or tell him it's
ok/ignore & print anyway.

Hi bj
Yeah that's the way I have to do it too

 

[bjm]

I send a 16pg PDF file of 8-1/2x11" pages, no special layout or whatnot to
make a booklet. They print it out double sided on 11x17 & fold the pages so
that when we collate them they make a nice 8-1/2x11" publication. In the
"old days" I sent either a hard copy (fancy that!) or, in the less-old days,
a PRN file, until I got into making PDFs -- the early PDF -makers didn't
work out too well so I started using Acrobat & have stuck with it to reduce
chances of "compatibility issues".

Before I send it, I print it out in greyscale (though the PDF is in color
the final product isn't) on regular paper (either single or double side
printing) just to be sure that printing from the Adobe file will "look
nice". If I want to see "how it looks" as a booklet I print it that way
using the printer-settings from Adobe "double side printing, booklet
'on'" -- it makes a smaller version of what we send to our members.
This has been working very well for a number of years.

I also send the PDF to various other people; they can view it or print it
any which way they want, it's in a standard size/format.
bj

 

[Matt Beals]

Martin, a couple of thoughts.

/rant

If you are using Publisher (Windows) and your printer is all Mac based
then the idea of having them make text changes is really pretty much out
of the question. The problem lays in Adobes adherence to font licensing.
Way back when, font vendors were getting upset with Adobe for allowing
PDF's to be "edited" for typo's and such. The way it used to work was
this; if the font was in the PDF you could make a text change even if
the computer editing the PDF did *NOT* have the font installed.
Technically that is a violation of the font license agreement that
almost all font vendors use. So Adobe had to change Acrobat to first
look and see if the font was installed on the computer making the edits.
If it is, you can edit it. If not, you can't.

The second piece of this is whether to "allow", or have, someone else
make the corrections for you. If you have someone else make the
corrections for you then your original file is no longer current. It
drove me crazy to no end when I would edit someone's Publisher file to
clean it up and make a template out of it, send it back to them, show
them how to edit it, etc. only to have them not use the one I worked on.
There's also a problem with editing PDF's. Not all changes to a PDF can
be made, many more should not be made. Editing a PDF is no small feat.
Especially because each PDF generating application does it differently.
You'd be surprised at how fast and what a mess it turns into.

Your best bet is to use the Microsoft Save As PDF/XPS plug-in. Use the
High Quality or the Press Quality. If someone asks you to convert the
colors to CMYK I would be very cautious. It is far better for you as the
consumer to leave it RGB because you end up with a better printed
product. I won't get into all the details of it. But suffice it to say,
it's easier than people make it out to be.

I bet that most of the errors that they found are color, transparency
and resolution based. I doubt that they are any more complex than that.
If they have a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional 9 then they have 99%
of all the tools that they need. They either need to learn to use them
or get the motivation to use them.

/end rant


Matt Beals
Consultant
Callas Partner/Trainer
Enfocus Certified Trainer
Markzware Recognized Trainer
(206) 618-2537 - Mobile
mailto:[email protected]

Come visit me at:
http://www.automatetheworkflow.com
http://www.mattbeals.com
http://blog.mattbeals.com

Friends don't let friends write HTML email