🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 01 May 98 08:27:01 GMT, David@longley.demon.co.uk (David
Longley) wrote:

>I  have  a friend who would like to bring  a  quarterly  magazine 
>which  currently  runs at about 10 pages with colour  prints  and 
>costs about 3K for 2000 copies. They want to buy a PC rather than 
>MAC  but  compatibility is a stumbling block. They  are  familiar 
>with PCs but not MACs and would prefer a PC system.
>

   What's the problem with compatability?  Things like Quark are
available for both platforms, and each platform can read the other's
files.

>Perhaps   a   second  hand Powermac?  Could  someone  suggest   a  
>suitable setup?  They had ideas of bringing the scanning in-house  
>too.   I  was  going to show them what one can  do  witha   NIKON 
>COOLSCAN   ona   PC,  but  I see two problems at least.  One   is  
>getting   anything  print  ready is likely to  be  difficult

   Why do you think this?

>  and 
>secondly,  how does  one get such large files to a  printer?

  Depends what the production house wants.  Most decent ones will
accept a variety of formats, such as ZIP carts, CDs and some will even
take SCSI drives.

>  The 
>graphics  images  must take up quite a bit of  storage.  Finally, 
>what's the best DTP to use? 
>
>Does anyone know of any good companies who deal with  such small
>clients and who can be relied on to do a good job, and advise on
>equipment?

   I'd check with your local yellow pages.  There are *lots* of
companies offering this sort of service.  My advice is to send test
jobs to a few, pick the one you are happiest with and stick with them.

  I've done this myself.  In my case (sometime in the past) the
management had rather more money than sense, and although the rest of
the company used PCs, and there was no in-house expertese in Macs,
bought Macs after being persuaded by the son of one of the directors.
They admitted that the PCs would do it fine - it was just that they
wanted a quite life.
 
  Regards,
         Harry.

The problem is that the current printer is claiming that a lot of 
work  will still have to be done at their end to get  the  images 
printing  in the right colours - ie they are trying  to  dissuade 
the user from buying say a Nikon Coolscan and flatbed to  process 
their photos.

I  use  a Nikon Coolscan and HP4c, and am aware of  the  size  of 
files  produced  - but is there an upper  practical  limit  which 
printers work with for magazines? I know this is a difficult  one 
to  answer, but it's clearly related to final file size,  storage 
and transmission.

The printer is also claiming that there is likely to be a lot  of 
slippage of text and image forcing them to have to do costly pre-
processing work.

Budget  is  about  3K (UKP) for a system to master  the  (max  12 
page) magazine. The printing costs are additional. 

The  user  would clearly like the system to cut down  on  current 
costs. 

I'm grateful for the advice so far. So Quark Express can  produce 
files  which  can be read on either MACs or PCs? What  about  the 
medium though. Say I suggest an internal CD ROM Writer - can  the 
disks be mastered for MAC or PC easily?

I was thinking of a Coolscan for the 35mm negatives, and an HP4c
for prints. Any other suggestions? How much is Quark Express?

Any good printing houses in the Maidstone/Kent area?
-- 
David Longley

Longley Consulting                                                  London, UK
Behaviour Assessment & Profiling Technology,
Research, Data Analysis and Training Services,
Small IT Systems                                http://www.longley.demon.co.uk

David Longley wrote:
> 
> I  have  a friend who would like to bring  a  quarterly  magazine
> which  currently  runs at about 10 pages with colour  prints  and
> costs about 3K for 2000 copies. They want to buy a PC rather than
> MAC  but  compatibility is a stumbling block. They  are  familiar
> with PCs but not MACs and would prefer a PC system.
> 
> Perhaps   a   second  hand Powermac?  Could  someone  suggest   a
> suitable setup?  They had ideas of bringing the scanning in-house
> too.   I  was  going to show them what one can  do  witha   NIKON
> COOLSCAN   ona   PC,  but  I see two problems at least.  One   is
> getting   anything  print  ready is likely to  be  difficult  and
> secondly,  how does  one get such large files to a  printer?  The
> graphics  images  must take up quite a bit of  storage.  Finally,
> what's the best DTP to use?
> 
> Does anyone know of any good companies who deal with  such small
> clients and who can be relied on to do a good job, and advise on
> equipment?

David,

Any printer that can't readily accept either Mac or PC formatted files
should not be used. How can a company ignore what 90% of the world runs
on? We do our work on PCs without a problem. When our original printer
wouldn't accept the PC files we went elsewhere. When the new printer
would only accept PC work done in certain programs, we went elsewhere.
We believe that our vendors need to be as customer-oriented as we are
and do the job that the customer wants, not what the printer wants.

We do similar work as your friend for clients. We produce the magazine
layouts in Corel Ventura 7 (soon upgrading to 8), altho we have Quark
and Pagemaker available. When given a choice, we find Ventura is much
easier to use and allows for better control. We scan using Corel
Photo-Paint or CorelDraw. I am not familiar with the Nikon scanner, but
don't be mislead by your printer. Its not the scanner that matters, but
the software.

What we do is create the product in Ventura and then print to a
postscript file. We give the printer the postscript file with the
pictures embedded (if possible) and they simply output from the PS file.
There is nothing for them to do particularly. Separations are done in
CorelDraw if needed. In some cases, we use Adobe Illustrator.

Richard H. Adin
Editorial, Graphic, Design, & Production Services
Rhache Publishers, Ltd.
9 Orchard Drive
Gardiner, NY 12525-5710
TEL: 914 / 883-5884 or 883-7169
E-mail: rhadin@ibm.net

What your friend wants to do is not very complicated, nor does it need
to be expensive.  A pentium class computer, mid-level scanner, and 600
dpi laser printer would allow him or her to pretty much accomplish the
goal.  A 4x6" color photograph, scaned at 250 dpi (about normal for a
magazine that prints at 133 lpi) will save as a .tif file at about 4.25
meg, a .jpg at a little over 500K.  However, putting two of those photos
on a letter size page (filling it), produced a file only a little over
4.5M large.

I use PagePlus from Serif to publish a weekly newspaper, but in the past
have I have produced color pages for a magazine.  It's only drawback is
that it isn't great when file sizes get large (at least not on a P-233
with 64 meg ram), so I do each page as a separate file.

If you're interested, I can send more info via e-mail.

Mike

We do a lot of newsletters! And., I would consider this to be in that class
(rather than  a magazine). If you are going to generate files "inhouse" do
so on an acceptable platform within your workable community - be that
local, national or worldwide. It all depends on your distribution. 

If you are working locally, check with your local service bureau to see
what formats they prefer for fo;m generation. Film is universal to all
printers!!!!!.

The qustion has to be asked "Why do they want PCs?" Is there an economic
reason or does some ignorant middle management type say this is what they
want?

It really boils down to "who" is using the equipment, rather than what
equipment is being used. Also, what budget is there?


Gary
To respond remove the "x" from the above address> 

I  have  a friend who would like to bring  a  quarterly  magazine 
> which  currently  runs at about 10 pages with colour  prints  and 
> costs about 3K for 2000 copies. They want to buy a PC rather than 
> MAC  but  compatibility is a stumbling block. They  are  familiar 
> with PCs but not MACs and would prefer a PC system.
> 
> Perhaps   a   second  hand Powermac?  Could  someone  suggest   a  
> suitable setup?  They had ideas of bringing the scanning in-house  
> too.   I  was  going to show them what one can  do  witha   NIKON 
> COOLSCAN   ona   PC,  but  I see two problems at least.  One   is  
> getting   anything  print  ready is likely to  be  difficult  and 
> secondly,  how does  one get such large files to a  printer?  The 
> graphics  images  must take up quite a bit of  storage.  Finally, 
> what's the best DTP to use? 
> 
> Does anyone know of any good companies who deal with  such small
> clients and who can be relied on to do a good job, and advise on
> equipment?
> -- 
> David Longley