Printshop Mail 6 1 Full Version
Giovanna Qiu
We have been using Printshop Mail for over 8 years without issues as you describe, however we are using 7.1 and have not upgraded to the 7.2 version. Our use of Printshop mail is primarily for envelope addressing and numbering. We have 2 Imagepress 7010 and a 1110p Black and white, we just install an Canon 800 and I have tried to use Printshop Mail for a simple NCR numbering job and ran into issues for the first time. In this case the first set printed fine but after that it would number only the second sheet leading me to believe there may be some issue with the rip on the 800. We however are using the less powerful G100 rip.
Thanks for your response and update on Print Shop Mail. I have been thinking about InDesign, (and had a call this morning from a mailing software company who stated that he had a huge number of clients that use InDesign for VD). Adobe's suite might be the way to go, even PhotoShop's VD will work. I think this would be a much better choice than PSM.
PROBLEM ONE: When trying to print an 8-page color newsletter, self cover, the PSM Tech support finally suggested sending one newsletter at a time to eliminate the ending error when printing 840 newsletters after processing for more than 2.5 hours, several times.
I had been convinced that the PSM software was the win-all for VD and that it would process the images only once to the printer which would speed the printing. I have tried every selection...this does not work properly. This month we decided to split the job into 4-groups of 200, however, it still took over 30 minutes to process each group before printing.
PROBLEM TWO: On 4-up postcards, 6" x 8", PSM would not print the ("standard" only choice or Japanese) trim or register marks, (and yes tech support logged onto our computer trying many times without success, finally asked us to upload the file to him. Later he emailed that he was able to do this on his system). Without trim marks it is quite difficult to determine the bleed, trim, and back up position. We finally after hours of trying, decided to print 4-up on the Canon800 (with trim marks) then cutting to size and addressing on our Buskro. This is not what we had in mind as a professional print company. I personally tried again yesterday...no luck.
Thanks to EPICOMM for getting the word out and assistance. Our industry has had enough of the software problems that don't work. Staff becomes very sad, as does management with wasted hours with software that does not meet it's obligation.
We have been using PrintShop Mail for about 10 years. It has been stable and not difficult to use. A few years ago we tested Fusion and another program and decided that PrintShop Mail is the superior program. We also use Windows 7.
We have been using Printshop Mail since 2006. It was sold to us by Konica Minolta with our first C6500. When we were sold the package we were told it was MAC friendly, it is not. I agree the software is clunky on PC's and the manual is difficult to understand. When we paid for phone support other than the delay in getting a return call I found them helpful. We still use Printshop mail for variable data text products with up to 5 or 6 fields varying within the body of text successfully. If your trying to do variable text and images at the same time we found that to be extremely slow, we have done it but not at a profitable production rate. We would break the jobs up into smaller qty's and co-mingle them in the mail trays later.
We have had other plug in's to indesign demonstrated for us but have not made the decision which to purchase. We think the MAC platform would be a better to layout variable data jobs especially if images are varying.
My organization produces a quarterly newsletter in-house that generally is from 32-60 pages. Ledger-size paper folded and stapled into a booklet by the printer. We've been using MS Publisher, but want to move to something that will make an easier transition/sharing of content in other ways, such as on our website and social media, so InDesign seems like it might be a good fit.
But, we'll still need to print the paper version (roughly 600 copies per run) for the foreseeable future, and we're doing that now (from Publisher) by directly printing using Publisher's mail-merge function, such that each copy printed has the name, address, and USPS postal barcode information (for bulk mail presort and bundling).
From what I can see, so far, InDesign wants to generate multiple PDFs, which would then get printed individually. Is there a way to print directly from InDesign, using a data source file for the merge information, similar to how we're doing this now with Publisher?
I've heard Fusion Pro and Printshop Mail mentioned for workflows like this in the past, but I've never worked on the production side of things for projects of that volume, so I couldn't give a personal recommendation for either. Maybe someone else here can point you in the right direction.
Thanks, ashleew44226948. It does sound like what we need to do is not supported by InDesign, which is unfortunate (for us). Must not be much of a need for users to do direct-to-print from within InDesign. We'll probably continue to limp along with Publisher for as long as we're still generating a printed newsletter.
Data Merge can merge to either a new InDesign file or PDF. Using InDesign alone, there is an option to merge to individual InDesign files (i.e. one record = one InDesign file) or this range can be increased using the "record limit per document" in the create merged document dialog box. The same dialog box exists when exporting to PDF but the record limit per document doesn't work for this export method.
I don't know what printer/copier you're printing to, but if it is running a EFI Command Workstation Fiery RIP, it's easier to export to PDF and then drag/drop the PDF onto the RIP and control the settings from there. My employer's workflow with the use-case that you have would be to make a base PDF file with the magazine content only, then a separate PDF containing the variable data from Data Merge, and then use a feature on the RIP to combine both PDFs together so that the RIP doesn't have to process an unwieldy amount of data.
In our case, the only difference between each printed version of the document is the address information for the recipient. Once we've verified that the merge process is displaying the correct fields in the initial printed copies, there is no need or desire to inspect every copy prior to printing (as might be the case, for example, with a catalog with content customized for each recipient). Our content is 100% the same for every recipient, except for the name/address/postal bar code information derived from the data merge file (an Excel file, in our case).
A full-resolution PDF file of one copy of a typical newsletter is in excess of ten MB (lots of color photos), so having to create 750-800 of those (or a single InDesign file containing 750-800 versions) just seems unwieldy, unnecessary and extraordinarily (and excessively) resource-intensive.
The newsletter is produced entirely in-house, currently using Publisher for layout/file creation, and a Samsung X7600 color laser printer (with saddle-stitch booklet-maker) for printing. Commercial printing still too pricey an option for our small non-profit, so we need a production/file creation option that allows us to do a direct-to-print mail merge - which Publisher does, but, apparently, InDesign does not.
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