Comments on: My adventures in online postcard printing (or why the shoemaker’s children run barefoot).

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:34:38 +0000

How do we get ahold of you Jean-Claude Tremblay?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:33:35 +0000

We always use address and mail houses for sending postcards and mailings. They print the mailing address on the mail piece or postcard, and postage in bulk is a better rate than doing it yourself- not to mention the time they save. Write us and we will give you a great mail house resource we use.

By: Jools

Jools — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:49:00 +0000

Thanks Vector, that seems to be my only option - except I left a blank area on the back of the card to put updated info on (I’m a realtor) - someone suggested I get a laser printer - however, the ones I’ve investigated you have to individually hand feed the cards one at a time - any other ideas ?

How do others deal with this problem I wonder? 8,000 cards for $250 was just too tempting I guess

The printer tells me satin is the only finish they do, that or high gloss, thank goodness I went with satin…

By: vectorbabe

vectorbabe — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:43:52 +0000

Jools,

Yes, the finish is the problem.

You’d be better off printing your information on small labels and sticking them on the back of the cards.

Much easier and they won’t smudge.

By: Jools

Jools — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:38:35 +0000

Oops, one more thing - the front of my cards are glossy, the back is satin finish - which I guess is the problem.

Help somebody !

By: Jools

Jools — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 18:36:46 +0000

I had a different problem (hope I’m allowed to digress here) - I found a brilliant online postcard store, my cards came back perfect ! My problem is when I try to print the addresses and details on the back the ink smudges ! Try laying out 1500 postcards individually to dry ! (25 mins min.) - can someone tell me how I solve this problem (have 8000 postcards left and I’m worn out catching each indiv. one - my printer is an inkjet ! Can anyone help me !

By: PJ Cassel

PJ Cassel — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:45:29 +0000

In addition, the Attributes palette from InDesign sets the attributes from within the application.

By: PJ Cassel

PJ Cassel — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:42:53 +0000

Now for my two cents. The one word that really sticks out is “export” (the dirty word of printing). I’m in prepress, and this is based on experience. My employer got a direct to metal plate maker. It has a RIP that supports a pdf workflow. I got a PDF from one of the customers, a small hand bill, I had to set it 10 up as a work and roll. I made the mistake of exporting the pdf file and sending it to the RIP. This is the most bizarre thing I had ever seen, the two sets of files on the left were right, and the other three sets on the right changed in the plate making process. Text characters piled up on top of each other. I was beside myself. I sent a copy of the file to tech support, and either they’re still working on it, or they don’t have an answer.

I went back to the impositioned file, and took a different route. I printed to a PS file, ran it through distiller, and sent that PDF file to the RIP. I must have spent 15 minutes on the RIP preview to make sure the file was right before making plates.

Since then, exporting to PDF is for PDF Proofs, printing to PS and distilling is for press.

As far as text under a transparency, I’d suggest using the Separation Preview to see if it’s going to be a problem with the color output. Only if the Photoshop image had a blending mode, there might be an issue. When transparency is used to screen back an image, or object, it can change the output of text or objects below it. Just don’t forget about setting “Overprint” options on the preview palette, or in the native graphic application, such as AI (I think PS assume everything overprints).

By: Mike Smith

Mike Smith — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 05:44:51 +0000

I know this thread is a little old but I’d like to comment about the text behind a tansparency problem. Perhaps you have solved this already. I work in the prepress dep of a printshop in VA, and we deal with many clients each using different design software. ID is one of them, and we have noticed that if you change the layer order so that the text is on top, or change the blending options to normal, then the file will rip just fine.

By: Bob Hopfner

Bob Hopfner — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:38:14 +0000

I can vouch for sometimes changing file colors. At Magnetstreet, we are always changing rich black on our IGEN because anything buy K=100 alone will be grey, it prints CMY on top of the K so CMYK=100 comes out rather grey. We always call our customers and let them know what we are doing and find out exactly what they are looking for. No one wants reprints. At 600dpi we do look out for rendered type, especially partially rendered type. yuck! But the IGEN does a pretty good job on our postcards and fridge magnets. We have digital presses and we use words like loupe and I even have Photoshop on my computer! Check us out at http://www.magnetstreet.com

cheers,
Bob