Customer File Submission

[indolering]

We all know that customer files are the stickiest part of any print
job, Publisher and PowerPoint files being the worst. I tried making a
slick little presentation to use PrimoPDF but the files were not
turning out well, lots of errors (especially with images) and huge
files sizes.

I was thinking about using an open source product called PDFCreator
from PDFForge. It defaults to a print quality PDF-X setting and is
simpler to use.

My boss counters that we should have our customers install a PS
printer driver and have them print to file, using distiller on our
side to convert it too PDF. I was worried about file size, and the
fact our customers couldn't see the digital proof before sending it
(eliminating 50% of the redundant communications.)

Does anyone have input on this?

-Thanks,
Indolering
Google video downsampled these pretty heavily, but they might be
usefull to some:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7243856751108849881&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1578833454721919487&hl=en

[Ken Graham www.communityprinters.com]

> We all know that customer files are the stickiest part of any print
> job, Publisher and PowerPoint files being the worst. I tried making a
> slick little presentation to use PrimoPDF but the files were not
> turning out well, lots of errors (especially with images) and huge
> files sizes.
>
> I was thinking about using an open source product called PDFCreator
> from PDFForge. It defaults to a print quality PDF-X setting and is
> simpler to use.

I've suggested pdfcreator to a few customers http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator.
I find it much faster than Adobes product for creating pdf's from, for
instance my estimating program.

In 2 cases customers were happy, able to save items for web and for me
to print on a larger printer than they had. In the 3rd case the person
wasn't confident to even install it which was too bad as they were
using print shop and her pdf's using it were about screen resolution.

Current version of pdfcreator works pretty good but there is
considerable argument going on about them installing a search bar in
Internet explorer by default which tracks your clicks. This can be
avoided by not selecting the internet explorer add on or by carefully
reading each installation item and de-selecting it.

Ken Graham www.communityprinters.com