Bottom Line...Preps 5

[lostmind]

We're switching over to OS X and I have to upgrade my Preps 3.7 to 5. Can someone tell me what problems I should expect? Also...I noticed on Creo's website that Preps 5 is now compatible with Quark 6 and Acrobat 6. I've been using Q6 and Acrobat6 with no problem in Preps 3.7...anyone know what wasn't working? Just thought I'd ask! Thanks!

[matmac]

I'm evaluating PREPs (v5 MacOS X) to replace INposition (2.5.4 MacOS 9.2.2). I used PREPs 4.x previously as part of Apogee Pilot Workflow(Windows 2000).

Pros.
Smart Marks - Creo have made a big deal about these, maybe over-inflating the users expectation. This said, I have found them easy to config and once defined, alot faster to set layouts with multiple marks. (Note other forum topics listed on Smart Marks)

Perfector Layout - Under 4.x the Perfector layout (in my experience) didn't work. Under 5 it does.

Separated Layout Preview. (I don't remember this in the previous version of Preps). Not very fast on my G4, but very useful to get a full file preview, including separated preview prior to hitting the print button.

Cons.
Configuring printers. Not using LW8.7 (or higher) in MacOS X, there is not the ability to access ppd features directly when printing from Preps 5. Preps 5 relies on a small app called "Ppd Browser" to locate a copy of the ppd for the devices that you have created through preps then alter the ppd settings for that device. If there are ppd features that need to be changed when printing. (My example was a printer configured to perform seps vs. a composite or grayscale output) to do this I have to create 2 separate devices in PREPs, one with the ppd configured one way and another with a changed ppd setting.

PrepsPrintCenter. When printing a file from Preps, Preps has a builtin print spooler called "PrepsPrintCenter". This guy loads when a layout is printed and performs background printing similar to Mac OS's desktop printers. In my experience, this method is DOG SLOW. Part of this is due to my network, the other is just Preps. I found it alot faster to select Ps file as the target printer. Print to file. Then drop the .ps file into a hotfolder. The other point is PrepsPrintCenter gives NO indication of what progress the file has made, just that it is running. I found this particularly strange that the app offers little to no feedback of what is actually printing and at what stage.

As for the compatibility issues. Perhaps Creo is referring to the fact that they have produced a "PXT" extension for Quark 6.