Stone Design Forums

Printing to an ink-jet printer from Create works perfectly. So does making a pdf to e-mail a set of instructions to a client. With all this success I decide to convert a Create document to pdf for prepress and take it to the printer. This is where things get tricky. If it's not a Quark or Indesign file they don't want to know. I persist it's a pdf made on a Mac. As I'm a Mac user they decide to talk to me. We find that we can print no problem to a big colour laser printer but making separations for plates in a printing press they can not do. If some one could explain the mysterious world of the print shop and how best to present documents for printing it would be much appreciated.

Did you set PStill to use PDFX1a or Prepress for job options? I think either of those will convert RGB to CMYK (I don't use this myself, so maybe this is a stupid answer).

Yes I did. Unfortunately printers in the UK seem slow to catch on that anybody can design their own invitations or leaflets and then want them printed professionally. Pdfx sounds like it should be the way forward but things get a little mysterious from this point. I hope someone can shed a little light on the best way forward. Are there any printers reading this that could give their view?

I'm away from my Mac right now, but isn't there a job option to create separations for print with PStill? I'm almost sure that it's some option in Create's preferences or something....

I'll check later tonight when I get home.

PDF/X is just a more restricted form of PDF, in marketing speak 'a focused subset' - less is here "more" because it limits the margin for errors.

If they cannot handle PDF or PDF/X ask them if they can work with plain CMYK-based EPS files (if they only place them in QXP and print from there so their default workflow can be used ) - PStill can generate them also.

Be sure to setup to output as CMYK (not RGB) and avoid transparencies for these are often troublesome.

I also advise to have a test run so you can be sure they can work with your data and their result is correct.

Shows what I know. No such thing as creating "separations," I was thinking of spot colors in a perverse way I think.

I have had a go making CMYK based EPS files. Create, Preview and Photoshop Elements could not read the file produced but Graphic Converter could. This proved to me that PStill was doing as it should and working correctly but did not give me confidence that the file would drop neatly into Quark or Indesign. This is a complex problem and I'm starting to think the best solution is to buy a faster/higher quality printer and print direct from Create without any hassle.

PStills EPS output *should* really work in most production environments. It is used at several newpaper and publishing companies as 'normalizing' means and is part of some direct CTP workflows.

The only thing currently lacking (for the MacOSX version) is the EPS screen preview, so some apps relying on the preview for placement just display the EPS as large 'X' box. This will may become a feature in future versions.

<RANT>
You should go and find a professional printing place that can handle PDF/X1a files for final output. It can't be that difficult, even the print shop in the town I used to work (19000 people town in the Black Forest) has a proper PDF workflow and can handle those files.

I can't believe we're in 2004 and there are still places that do "professional" offset printing and can't handle PDF/X-1a files.
</RANT>

My findings in the UK locally to where I live is that printers are only interested in Quark or Indesign files. I thought that PDF/X was the solution, maybe I need to send files to Germany to get my printing done. Just as easy to send the finished result back to me from anywhere in Europe. Apple have provided the ability in iPhoto to send files to Kodak for professional prints, will they cater for all our printing needs in the future?

In my opinion Create and PStill should come fitted as standard to all Mac's because they are so relevant to business/home use. Children see no reason why they should be constrained by a word processor. The word processor is dead, but Create will live for ever because it allows people to think freely and be creative at a price most can afford.

Maybe there will be a Stone statue in Albuquerque of the man himself one day or has Create got me thinking too freely!

In Tokyo (where I live since 7 years), too, even cheap places that do on-demand printing with glorified laserprinters will accept PDFs for final output.

For me Quark Xpress was the first frame based layout programme I've ever used, and it (the frame based layout, not necessarily Quark) made so much sense. Ever after I could never understand how people could stand using Wordprocessors which were so inaccurate in placement and everything. I, too, think Create and PStill should be bundled with all new Macs. It covers the wordprocessing needs of most people. Well, OK, it does not have any spreadsheet functionality, but apart from that Apple could actually ditch AppleWorks in favour of Create.

I do professional layout and--I have to admit--InDesign is the tool of choice when it comes to real high end typography/layout work, but for anything else Create is so far less bloated and it being all Cocoa (i.e. less problems with Japanese) just makes good for a lot of things.

would be great to see a preview of the Seps! Will Create go Big Time? That's the question. Except for a review of Create in Mac Addict and Apple's iApps... and the OmniGroups apps... i don't think people are giving too much credit to Cocoa Apps. I think what has to happen is that the developers have to come out swingin' then.. we'll see some greater interest. Create is wonderful, but i keep hearing that it's not intended to be used as an InDesign or Quark replacement. I do think it could be with a few more features. Prepress is a definite must. page numbering (printer style) and a few other things... but, i do think Stone is a power to be reckoned with! Power to the Cocoa!!! (just don't forget the whipped cream!)

Stone Software would have to implement a bunch of features that are not part of Cocoa (like vertical Text support), and I got the impression that the Stone guys somehow seem to be reluctant to add text handling features that are not provided by Cocoa itself already.

I'd need better control for kerning (I'd need a palette that show's me the kerning values), there would have to be more control on hyphenation, another important one would be a "indent here" key shortcut, then we'd need paragraph styles and character styles (both separately and one would have to be able to make them overlap), controls for text frame margins are missing, too.

The list of missing features to make Create an InDesign competitor is long, but I'd love to see them implement all of them and show Adobe the finger!

Will Tiger add some of these to Cocoa apps?
Is Andrew allowed to say?

I can't "say". More features just keep coming though!