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DeepDish · Jan 27, 2003, 08:41 PM

Please, I don't need any cutting edge artist telling me how great ID is vs Quark.

I believe ID is the future, but is it ready for prime time yet when it comes to Rip'ing and Postscript for making plates and going to press.

I hate Quark the company, but make a lot of money using Quark for a living.

I see ID3+ as being the future of layout though.

I need to hear from pre-press people who have experience with ID created .pdf files before creating CTP plates.

Thank you,
DD

art_director · Feb 12, 2003, 11:14 AM

Originally posted by DeepDish:
Please, I don't need any cutting edge artist telling me how great ID is vs Quark.

You should be slapped for that comment.

I am not a prepress person but have been told that ID2 makes easy work of production. Some printers in my area now prefer ID2 files over Q v.X files.

::maroma:: · Feb 13, 2003, 01:47 PM

We just switched to ID2 from Quark for the last few projects that we've done. All of our normal printers have no troubles with our files whatsoever. And we've done some fairly complicated stuff. Things like 4+1 color, transparencies within ID2, books, etc. I don't know what all the fuss was/is about. ID2 has been great. Each of our printers, when asked about ID2, didn't hesitate in answering "Of course, we can work with ID files."

One thing I don't care for much about ID2 is the speed. Unfortunately I have to work on a G4/500 (old in puter years) and ID2 crawls on it when the document starts getting complicated. Even on low settings. But I've seen it run on a newer machine, and the speed is much better.

godzookie2k · Feb 13, 2003, 02:58 PM

I might be mistaken, but a pdf is a pdf is a pdf, doesn't matter where it came from.

not speaking of x compatible necessary applications, WHERES MY GODDAMN X COMPATIBLE FLIGHTCHECK?

fetopher · Feb 13, 2003, 04:34 PM

A PDF isnt always a PDF. Well, at least for our printers. We have had some problems with the PDFs ID creates. Our printers told us ID uses a newer version of PDF that they cannot handle. So, we generate our PDFs in Distiller, which is still just a Classic app. I'm hoping that by ID3, Adobe will program some backwards compatablity into the PDF and PS generation. Still, we would never go back to Quark.

Corys · Feb 15, 2003, 12:15 AM

I could be wrong here, but I think ID by default creates PDF version 1.5 files (it does have the ability to create 1.4).

I think 1.5 supports transparencies natively without the need to flatten them..
that could be where people are having probs with ID files..

we have ripped a few ID jobs and it all seemed to work okay..other than getting to know the little quirks about the program (like with any program).

you can run into problems when the transparency effects are used heavily. I do have to do a ton of manual trapping with illustrator files that use these effects..but just from my own playing around the way illustrator flattens files seems to be much better than AI.

but if you want to stay in business, you better learn how to deal with it..cause these problems will not just go away.