Trueflow demo was good but made me chuckle.

[Nellster]

Hi all, went for the demo of trueflow and the platesetter with Screen on wednesday. Of course I took along my trusty MS publisher 6pp A4 newsletter that I run to film at the moment. What a surprise, they didnt have publisher installed.

So I gave them the indesign files I brought with me. All went well and the operator was very good explaining it all to me.

Setting up the custom imposition proved a little tricky because it was folded ermm 3 A4's in a row = 630 x 297 opened up. (well actually 625 cos of the shorter page).

Setting this up proved to be problematic as he could not save the imposition at all, errors on saving. So he had to split it into 2 seperate jobs. Ok I said.

Then the whole comp seemed to need a reboot to continue.

Then as we began to produce plates the plate machine makes strange noises and has to have the plate ripped out by hand.

Hehe, I say do I have to do this with every job?

Well it was impressive apart from the glitches.

Went a month previous to see apogee at Heidelberg and funnily enough the rip crashed there too.

Both systems seem very similar.

I will be working one or the other soon when they decide which one to buy. Is the learning curve very steep? I run to B3 film now using only manual imposition and not even punching the films. Planner/platemaker sorts it all out on the bench.

Man the print game used to be easy in the old days.

Nellster

[MarkTonk]

Hi Nellster,

You stated "Went a month previous to see apogee at Heidelberg". I think Steve from Agfa would enjoy this if Heidelberg did the demo. Apogee is an Agfa workflow and MetaDimension and/or Printready is a Heidelberg workflow. With all the workflows out there, it can be confusing.

If Heidelberg Signa Station was used, the impostion should have easily been saved.

By the way, if you did look at MetaDimension, it is based on Adobe CPSI, I beleive Trueflow is still based on Adobe Extreme.

Best regards,

Mark Tonkovich
Heidelberg USA
Product Manager, CtP & Proofing

[Nellster]

Thanks for that info Mark. It was a bit confusing remembering all these new terms and strange names. I will get used to it there is no doubt.

Looking forward to an easier life.

Nellster

[jun]

it is quite all same workflow.from trueflow to metadimensions.they all JDF based workflow.anyone of them will do.if you are familiar with manual stripping you can easily learn it.goodluck

[Nellster]

Holy cow, trueflow is coming in on the 27th of this month. I have no macs or pc's yet to make up my network.

Well done to screen for a super training cource, it went well and I feel much more confident now in jumping in with both feet when it gets here.

Wish me luck,

Nellster

[prepress_brillance_43]

Trueflow is great in my opinion, but I havent actively worked with any of the others. If you have knowledge of manual stripping you will do fine...


I have to admit that by watching the Signa Station video that Prepress_vee posted:

thread

I was impressed and it seems to have much more functionality than trueflow, but I think it depends on which options you buy with trueflow, we stayed pretty basic here due to our needs...



Good luck.

[Nellster]

I have 7 years of bench striping and planning under my belt to fall back on as well as many years on the mac & pc, just not anything like this.

I'll watch that video prepress_brillance_43.

Its a shame I am not getting the enhanced flatworker to allow for different pagesizes in the same layout. Polisher would have been good too, but all in good time. I am going to have to do a fair bit of manual imposition in indesign for a while until I can swing it to get the extra tools.

Whats the difference in flatworker to preps? I assume preps is much more expensive? The demo guy said trueflow can accept preps files.

I had a meeting with my new boss today, I am working for him from the 1st of march. He aint clued up on what kit we need to get going and was a bit peed off when I told him how much stuff we need. He is retiring this year so he really isnt interested in the technology.

Will post my progress in a new thread as I go to give you guys a laff or two.

Nellster

[prepress_brillance_43]

Its a shame I am not getting the enhanced flatworker to allow for different pagesizes in the same layout.

I am going to have to do a fair bit of manual imposition in indesign

yep, me too. we really should have gotten the enhanced. I do almost ALL of my layouts in Indesign because EVERY job is a gang of 3-6 different trim sizes.. luckily I have the extra time to manually impo, because I only have to stay ahead of 1 Heidelberg MO press.

Good luck with all your adventures in the coming months keep us tuned in to what you like and dont like.

[Ritchie]

Originally Posted by Nellster

Its a shame I am not getting the enhanced flatworker to allow for different pagesizes in the same layout. Polisher would have been good too, but all in good time. I am going to have to do a fair bit of manual imposition in indesign for a while until I can swing it to get the extra tools.

Whats the difference in flatworker to preps? I assume preps is much more expensive? The demo guy said trueflow can accept preps files.

I wouldn't put too much emphasis into attaining Full Flatworker.
I have been using Screen workflows for a while now, from original TaigaSpace through TaigaStream and now TrueFlow. Gang signatures of different sizes and orientations have always been problematic. We used to impose in Quark as most files were native but Quark does not output PDF files very consistently if using these to impose with. We now have Full version of Flatworker which imposes using PJTF files created by TrueFlow, IMHO the procedure is long winded and disfunctional. For these type of impositions we impose PDF's in InDesign which so far has been the most successful.

With regards to Preps, I can give you limited information. Preps is a stand-alone prgrame which imposes PS and PDF files like Trueflow, but with Trueflow it seems you have much more flexibility with re-importing and editiing single pages. Signatures are very much part of the whole Trueflow workflow.

Hopes this info helps, good luck

Andy

[Rickyp_uk]

Originally Posted by Ritchie

I wouldn't put too much emphasis into attaining Full Flatworker.
I have been using Screen workflows for a while now, from original TaigaSpace through TaigaStream and now TrueFlow. Gang signatures of different sizes and orientations have always been problematic. We used to impose in Quark as most files were native but Quark does not output PDF files very consistently if using these to impose with. We now have Full version of Flatworker which imposes using PJTF files created by TrueFlow, IMHO the procedure is long winded and disfunctional. For these type of impositions we impose PDF's in InDesign which so far has been the most successful.

With regards to Preps, I can give you limited information. Preps is a stand-alone prgrame which imposes PS and PDF files like Trueflow, but with Trueflow it seems you have much more flexibility with re-importing and editiing single pages. Signatures are very much part of the whole Trueflow workflow.

Hopes this info helps, good luck

Andy

Here Here me and mr prepress 43 use the same method. I think Flatworker is the one weak link in what is otherwise an outstanding package. If Screen could come up with something along the lines of dynastrip we'd be laughing