Change PSD to TIF before prepress?

[johnderek]

I'm designing a tearsheet which will be printed on a commercial press. The prepress guy said that i must flatten my photoshop files and save them as tifs. He also said i need to save my illustrator files as eps. Problem is, all my PSD files have transparent backgrounds and i have applied a drop shadow in InDesign. Obviously if i convert everything to tif i will lose all my transparency and there goes all my drop shadows. Is there a way to work around this or will i have to apply the drop shadows in Photoshop? Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[harolda]

oh, and I'm sorry.
Designer: One who creates art/type/layout,....
Creates all kinds of illustrator blends, freehand lens effects, spot to process gradients,...
Printer: One who deals with and creates art/type/layout,...
Does workarounds to get all kinds of illustrator blends, freehand lens effects, spot to process gradients to actually seperate correctly.

 

[jimoblak]

I'm still lost in seeing the difference between designer/printer. If harolda has encountered problems (ie: not all fonts embedding, no bleeds, downsampling, wrong color spaces), then why doesn't he preflight the INDD file himself - - or at least communicate to his clients that they should do this? Aren't the printer and designer using the same application?

These same problems occur with any layout program. I'm surprised that harolda entered this thread complaining how others thought ID was 'cracked up' to be all that and a bag of baked rice chips. ID has much better preflight capabilities than any other DTP app.

I have come to the realization that some printers are wailing about ID because they are just too lazy to adapt to the ever-changing printing business or they want the client to feel they are being put out. The printer falsely claims they need to do more work, which equates to more billable hours. I once had to tell a printer to not to do what they called a four hour graphic conversion job (CMYK > K) so that I could do the 10 minute job myself.

harolda has used this thread to clearly point out that if an INDD doc is properly exported to PDF, it should print. A printer can do this just as well as a designer. Where is the debate here?

InDesign was designed to use PSD and AI. Quark can even use PSDs with a $249 XT. If your printer cannot make use of files that comply with the specifications of the document format, they should simply not be your printer.

- - picklefish - -

 

[HolisheT]

I just have to laugh at jimoblak, his idea of printing is the local Kinko's around the corner. Obviously he has never ran a printing press or he would clearly understand that what you see on a monitor does not mean you can reproduce it on a printing press. This is a never ending battle, the solution to your comments is to stick with copying companies that don’t have to worry about color separating files or any of bs that comes with it. If your printer excepts your files it because he wants the profits from it and does not want to get into the technical issues of the problems that you send him. They are just taking care of it for you. You ask any printer in the untied states who sends the most problem files and they will tell you graphic designers. Unless toner and ink cartridges come way down in price and copying companies stop doing click counts and make longer lasting machines, the printer will be around for a long time.

 

[HolisheT]

New to this forum but found this post I just have to laugh at jimoblak, his idea of printing is the local Kinko's around the corner. Obviously he has never ran a printing press or he would clearly understand that what you see on a monitor does not mean you can reproduce it on a printing press. This is a never ending battle, the solution to your comments is to stick with copying companies that don’t have to worry about color separating files or any of bs that comes with it. If your printer excepts your files it because he wants the profits from it and does not want to get into the technical issues of the problems that you send him. They are just taking care of it for you. You ask any printer in the untied states who sends the most problem files and they will tell you graphic designers. Unless toner and ink cartridges come way down in price and copying companies stop doing click counts and make longer lasting machines, the printer will be around for a long time.

 

[MarcusStringer]

Here is my two cents, then I'll leave you guys alone to fight to the death.

I agree with both sides of the story, I've spent many years with printers and now typesetting.

Printer's will be happy to fix any problem that crops up without complaint, if the client is happy to pay for the massive amount of downtime (dollar wise) which these problems cost in delays.

Where as, it is cheaper to get the typesetters or designer etc, to redo.

I think it is the typesetters/designers job to know what the press specs are.
I know I do, and I send work out to many different Printers who run many different presses.

This fight will never be resolved


Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[jimoblak]

HolisheT, I like to be funny but you clearly have no clue about me or what I have posted in this thread. Are you contesting my position that the designer and printer have shared goals and responsibilities to output a printed product?

This old thread is about a printer that has no clue about PSDs being placed in InDesign. Are you defending this ignorance? I am trying to understand how you are misintrepreting this.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?

 

[texasjoe]

I haven't had time to read all the posts in reply to the "original" question (but it certainly looks like an interesting discussion) but in response to the orginal question:

When you save your file in Photoshop to a TIFF, under TIFF options, put a check mark in the "save transparency" box and...

WooHoo! You have a TIFF file with usable transparency ready to be dropped in your InDesign file.

I used to place native PSDs to get transparency in InDesign, but then one day, someone taught me this nifty trick.

Hope this is helpful to you -- now back to my reading!



Joe

 

[HolisheT]

There is no ignorance to defend about this printers requests. The guy obviously is a smaller based printer that does not need to make the upgrade every time a new version comes out. The details needed to be more clear, what qty was he looking have done and what price range was he looking at. If he was looking for long run and extreme quality then your answer to find another printer was correct, but if it was short run then he needed to work with the printer so that he would stay in the price range he was planning to spend. Your going to send him somewhere that is going to charge out the ass because of all the money they have soaked into the latest software, proofing systems and ctp machines.

 

[HolisheT]

Was just venting out my frustration in these last posts and I do apologize to jimoblak. I deal with so many incorrect files at work it builds all up and you just start venting shet out.

 

[jimoblak]

Therein is the problem. This is not about upgrading to latest software. The printer apparently already had InDesign (a program which supports the placement of PSD and AI files) or else they would have told the original poster that they could not take INDD files.

The printer needed a mental upgrade. That is all.

- - picklefish - -
Why is everyone in this forum responding to me as picklefish?