The site for prepress & print devotees

Prepressure covers design techniques, PDF, PostScript, fonts, JDF and numerous other prepress topics that have to do with printed communication and graphic arts. This site teams up with B4Print.com, the favorite stake-out of many prepress professionals who regularly visit its forums or the front page which offers the latest news on design, prepress and printing.

The poll: using InDesign for multi-channel publishing

Every time I go to one of Adobe’s road shows, they demonstrate how InDesign can be used for more than just print publications. Since I am quite fond of Indy, I also use it for creating on-screen presentations and manuals. I do wonder however how many people regularly export InDesign content to Dreamweaver. Adobe’s attempts to convince us that InDesign is a great authoring tool for Flash content also leave me scratching my head. It all looks fine with the well-prepared sample files used during those seminars but how many people actually work this way?

If you are an InDesign user, please use the poll to the right to tell us what you use it for. Multiple answers can be selected. As usual, there is a thread on the B4print forums to share your thoughts with others.

Apple products shouldn’t be sold via mail order

In 1990 Guy Kawasaki wrote a book called ‘The Macintosh Way’ about what he had learned as an Apple product manager. That book is now available as a free ebook. The following paragraph made me chuckle: “… despite an Apple policy not to sell anything via mail order. (This policy was put into place because Apple had filed a number of lawsuits against dealers who were selling Apple hardware by mail. Apple’s legal contention was that Apple products require support and set-up and therefore shouldn’t be sold through the mail …” I guess things have changed slightly in the past 20 years!

A cool one million

On Friday 20 August, around 11 o’clock in the evening, someone looked for the one millionth time at a page on this site. I would like to thank that anonymous person who, according to Google, most likely came from London and found Prepressure.com using a Google query about editing PDF files. He looked at the relevant page for 53 seconds using Firefox before heading elsewhere.

Oops, my newspaper just crashed

With all the attention that Apple’s iPad is getting from the publishing industry, I couldn’t resist and bought one as soon as it was released in Belgium. Being an avid newspaper reader, the first app I installed was from De Standaard, a local newspaper. For 15 euros per month the app allows you to download the complete content of the newspaper. You can browse through the layout or read the articles in a bigger text-optimized view. You can also navigate through the pictures of the day (similar to what the Boston Globe does) or load the latest news updates from their web site.

The jury is still out on whether I am going to ditch the printed paper and go for its electronic equivalent. One advantage of the printed newspaper is that it never crashes. Up to now the app of De Standaard crashes about twice a week and occasionally article windows refuse to close properly. Each time restarting the app is just a matter of pushing the home button and double-tapping the newspaper icon. It just proves that there is still some tweaking needed before the electronic experience will be flawless. On the other hand there are no crumpled pages or issues with misregistration, hickeys, moiré and ghosting with the iPad app!

You can find an article with my first impressions of the iPad on this page.

PrepressPete is tweeting

One of the fat women in finishing kept ranting about ‘working her ass off’. I looked at it and said ‘Nah’. That is when the fight started.

What’s new?

New or reworked pages on hating iTunes, the Apple iPad, STE boxes, iOs 4 fonts,  the year 2000, EPUB, late binding, QR codes, color in PDF files, Het huis van Alijn, the 2010 archive, DIN A7, 2009, using Windows 7 in prepress, Windows 7 typefaces, the A6 paper size, the names of glyphs, Windows 7 font handling and various dictionary terms.

Also have a look at

- B4Print – the prepress forum for people willing to go off-topic once in a while.
- Prepress Pilgrim – DJ’s ramblings on prepress, the web and whatever itches him.
- InDesignSecrets – The podcasts are even better than the site.
- Publicious – Interesting blog about publishing & XML.

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