OK, B&C Printing. Here's the link URL that will lead you directly to the ID Users Forum.

<b>http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?14@@.ee6b330</b>

Many of those in that forum are also from the printing press community and I'm sure some of them may have an answer/suggestion to your question. You will be surprised that the folks there are even willing to answer your queries about Quark Xpress out of sympathy for those who have been orphaned.

Be forewarned, though, to avoid whining or flaming InDesign. Present your problems clearly and you will get solutions.

BTW, your complaint about selecting objects in a layer beneath the top layer, etc. are not accurate, as Ancient Designer had noted.

Good luck.

I presume you mean me.

Which questions did I not answer?

Did you check your private messages?
 

Did you check your private messages?

No I did not. I don't follow this board closely enough to keep up with private messages. Nor did I see any specific questions for me to answer nor any error messages. Feel free to post information in this forum. I'll answer to the best of my ability as time allows. No promises, though.

whoops
 

So I guess I shouldn't of got our finance department to stump up too much money to go from Quark 5 - 6?!?

I guess I should get a demo of indesign and try it out,
Is it easy to pick up how to use it, I'm in the middle of a huge project at the moment involving loads of handbooks and related leaflets and posters... maybe I should try and lay one out in indesign
is it hugely expensive like quark or is there good deals for small users (4 seats)
also my usual printers are quarkers, but I guess I can send them pdfs
Cheers all
Joe

upgrade
 

After a year or so of contemplating, my company is making the leap to the adobe cs suite. We are relatively small 25 employees, but will be doing the upgrade from 9 to OSX and the adobe CS suite over a weekend.

I have been working on Indesign for a couple of weeks and couldn't be happier. Although there are little things like importing layers from quark that I would like to see, it is very nice! One other thing, making fractions could be a little easier too! Although this might be able to be worked around with a simple character style. Not sure yet have to get into a big book with it to test!

Let me know if you guys have any small tricks!!!


Jeff

If you are in the middle of a big project, stick with Quark until it is completed. Use this time to get used to inDesign (basically-don't let your customer suffer for your learning time). Use one of the project items as your test bed to see how it works and outputs. Stay very close to that Adobe forum!

http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/main.html

trouble!
 

Well being that I am the entire IT department, the powers that be want it done all at once! So what we are doing is meeting next week to schedule all jobs that may have to go out the week following the update. Hopefull we can punch out all time sensative jobs next week, and have a full week for any problems that may come up.

I have a major question though. One of our remote artist said she had problem installing Panther on a G4? Said she had to basically do a low level format, not sure why you wouldn't start with a low level format, but any suggestions out there?

We will be installing panther on all G4's and a few blue and white G3's

Jeff

Because of the new format structure, I would anticipate some reformatting. In the long run, it may be better to start from scratch. However, the Panther installer should be smart enough to know what it needs to do. Stay close to this forum as well. Get some advice in advance on how to proceed...

http://discussions.info.apple.com/We...Bk.0@.599b3149

Whew, big job ahead. I hope it goes smoothly. However, Panther is a very mature build, all should go well.

thanks
 

Thanks for all the advice guys and gals, this forum is pretty quick with responses! I have alotted 20-24 hours next weekend to get the upgrade on 20 machines along with the install of the CS suite! Hopefully all with go well!!

Jeff

Let us know Monday how things turned out. I always find this process fascinating. What was the good and what was the bad. Much information can be gleaned from such projects.

update
 

I will definately post the monday following the install, (will be the first monday in april). Next week will be spent scheduling jobs and getting all software in and ready!!!!

Jeff

Re: trouble!
 

I highly recommend you buy new video cards for your G3s. You *can* install Panther on them (I still have a B/W G3 at home and it's running 10.3.3 beautifully) but you'll get much better performance, particularly in a graphics heavy environment, with more video RAM. Panther would like at least 16 MB and your G3 has 8, if I'm not mistaken.

And PLEASE don't forget to update your Firmware before you move from OS 9 to Panther. Apple tech knowledge article #86117 http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117

Good luck!

thanks
 

yeah will definately be updating the firmware before we do the switch! Thanks for the heads up on the video cards though, will look into doing that also!!

Jeff

Ok, I just checked on www.everymac.com and your B/Ws should have 16 MB of video RAM which is the minimum for Panther. So you shouldn't have to get new video cards, but it might be helpful!

useful info
 

wow I am going to have to put a favorite link to this thread with all the helpful links! Thanks for checking on that for me. I did get up and look around, we are only putting panther on one blue and white, and the guy's a meathead:D so he will be fine for now! Great being IT manager!! I have been glued to the Apple discussions all day. It's amazing that so many people are having problems with the 10.3 install? They aren't very clear as to whether they are ugrading from Jaguar or doing a clean install (which I will be doing, doing low level reformat, then installing Panther).

Jeff

One of the ways mentioned to get around InDesign incompatibilities at the printer is to send in a PDF. Does this mean a designer can just save his/her project as a PDF (using OS X's built-in capabilities), send it to the printer, and expect good quality output? Or will Acrobat be needed to "massage" the PDF to produce the best printed output?

printers
 

I have been working very closely with our service bureaus and our larger web printers and all but one are very happy that we are switching from Quark to Indesign. So far I have gotten feedback saying to use the default Indesign settings for press output on the PDF from one bureau and the others have just said to send a test file and they will specify settings from there. So it's just going to take a few mock ups before we get it close to perfection.

We have been using a third party PDF generator for the past 4 years that has become outdated and is no longer supported due to the mfg. going out of business. So a change is definately welcomed in my eyes!!

Jeff

<One of the ways mentioned to get around InDesign incompatibilities at the printer is to send in a PDF. Does this mean a designer can just save his/her project as a PDF (using OS X's built-in capabilities), send it to the printer, and expect good quality output? Or will Acrobat be needed to "massage" the PDF to produce the best printed output?>


There is no single answer these questions. It depends on what you want to do. There are many variables.

E.g., if you are having trouble printing an ID document in your laser printer, a PDF done by exporting your document to PDF format could be a workaround, although you may not really get what you want. It's better to find out what's wrong that your laserjet wont print an ID doc. For instance, our Xerox 5400 and HP 5000 used to spew out blanks with some gibberish and it turned out that the culprit were images processed in Photoshop and saved as EPS with the binary encoding, which were used with many of our logos. This had stumped us for some time because the HP 5000 used to print all logos when it was connected to our server via Appletalk. The problem arose when we linked the printer to our network (XServe) via Rendezvous. The solution was to open the offending images in Photoshop and resave them either as EPS with the ASCII encoding, and better still as TIFF or PSD. If you have Acrobat 6, you can even use it's Distiller component to save everything in PDF.

If you are sending to a printing press, you have to ask them first if they are ready with a PDF file exported directly from InDesign. There are still many printers (printing shops) who ain't ready for the PDFs done by exporting from ID. But they can take those made in Apogee or distilled using Acrobat Distiller.

tips and tricks
 

Thanks for the heads up! We will be definately be using acrobat 6 here in conjuction with the ID PDF's. I know 2 of our presses here in Florida like the ID pdf's, they say it's easier on their RIPS, not certain as to which RIPS they are using, (I know that would be of great importance, but it escapes me at this time).

Jeff