Newspaper production

[Tenaj]

I produce a weekly 20 to 32 page newspaper with PageMaker 7.0 on a Mac G4. Many of the ads in the paper are produced in-house.

Am I producing the final document in the most efficient manner?

Currently I create an ad in PageMaker, usually with graphic elements in either .tif or .eps format and send it off to be okayed by the client.

I then put together the paper with blank boxes as place holders for the ads.

On production day, I have the newspaper file open. I then open the ad files, group everything, copy it and paste it into the newspaper file.

Is there a better way?

 

[viol8ion]

Hi, I also produce a small scale newspaper. I began with Pagemaker, and we upgarded to InDesign, however the workflow is the same.

I would advise against copy/pasting ads. I use the CTRL + D (the little 4 cornered circle thingy on Mac + D) to PLACE (also can be accessed by File>Place) to place the ads.

Other than that, it is just a tedious process. have fun and good luck!

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com

 

[carlow]

Hi,

I did two newspapers every month for 15 years.

About creating the ads I have a different workflow; I do one of the two following procedures.
Or I create my ad in Illustrator, because the graphic possibilities are better. I then save it as an eps, and place it in the Pagemaker file.
Or I create it in pagemaker and when I have the OK of the client I also make an eps file from it and then place it in the final document.

I do this because an eps-file cannot be changed in Pagemaker, so that I don't accidentally alter the original file. I don't have to have all the fonts open in my final document because the fonts are included in the eps file, so that I can have as little fonts open as my newspaper demands.
A third consideration is that I ask the people who send me ads for the newspaper the same thing. So everything has the same procedure.

Carlow

 

[Tenaj]

Thanks for the responses!

How about changing the ads to .pdfs instead of .eps files before pasting them in? Do I loose quality? Can I change them to .pdf files and then, when the paper is done, still change the whole file into a .pdf without loosing anything?

We're updating to InDesign soon but I'm assuming the production process will be the same.

 

[carlow]

Hi,

When you make a pdf of your ads and compression is used, and after that you are going to place them and export them again as a pdf, I suppose that you can get double compression, probably resulting in a certain loss of quality. But I am not sure, best thing is to go to the old trial and error method. If it works and you don't have any quality loss you can handle the ad-files as pdf as well.

Carlow

 

[viol8ion]

I have seen no appreciable loss of quality with PDF ads. Newspapers have notoriously low qulity anyway, so you have a lot of leeway with what you can get away with.

While Tenaj's advice to use only EPS is good in a perfect world, I have customers designing their own ads on a variety of platforms and applications, and the only ones I turn down are Microsoft Punisher, er Publisher ads only because I don't own the application and there is absolutely no way to consistently import these files into PM, nor is there a way to convert them to PDF in Publisher itself.

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com