Some customers experience problems using Mac’s iPages PDF export when using professional printers.

Workaround is a solution which may be useful in this case.

‘(…)When you’re ready to save your Pages document, avoid the temptation to use the Export or Print command to save your file as a PDF. Instead, if you’re running a version of the Mac OS X prior to Tiger, choose File > Print. In the sheet that appears choose Output Options from the third pop-up menu and then PostScript from the Format pop-up menu that appears. Click Save to dismiss this window and then Save again to Save the file. If you’re running Tiger select File > Print and in the resulting sheet click the PDF button, choose Save PDF as PostScript command, and click the Print button.

Now that you have a PostScript file, open it in Preview, where it will be converted to a PDF file. Once there, chose File > Save As and save the file. Although this may seem like you’re unnecessarily going over the same ground twice, saving the file as a PostScript document and then converting it to a PDF within Preview makes the file behave properly in Acrobat. When I did this, the shadows that appeared in Pages and Preview finally made their way to Acrobat as well.’
www.macworld.com/article/44923/2005/05/pagespdf.html

Internet Explorer 8 has issues rendering dhtml effects in the tabs. Users can still use IE8 but in compatibility mode:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/08/27/introducing-compatibility-view.aspx

Which works fine.

 

Recently I had a trawl around the internet looking for Free/Shareware solutions that might help our FilePrint users.  I am pleased to say that I found some great tools, that are all absolutely free to use, so go on try them out.  We will also be listing these in our support pages, with some additional advice about how to use them.

PicResize

http://www.picresize.com

Does exactly what it says on the tin - re-sizes your images.

• Go to the website:  http://www.picresize.com
• No Login or registration
• Upload your image (not sure what formats are supported)
• You then get to CROP, RESIZE and add EFFECTS
• Save it as JPG, GIF or PNG
• You can then save it to your computer, the web, or open it in an editor (drpic.com)

Great, very friendly product.

DrPic

http://www.drpic.com

This is a very user friendly bitmap editing tool.  Its by the same team who produce PicResize,

• Go to the website:  http://www.drpic.com
• No Login or registration
• Upload your image (not sure what formats are supported)
• All the standard tools are here, ROTATE, CROP, BRUSH, TEXT, etc
• Save it as JPG, GIF or PNG
• You can then save it to your computer, the web, or open it in an editor (drpic.com)

Another great, very friendly product by pic resize.

PDFCreator

http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

This is the definitive Free PDFDriver.  Unlike most of the other ‘Free’ tools, there are no limitations like watermarks on this tool.  For those who are not familiar with this product, you install it like a print driver, you can then print to it as if it is a desktop printer, but instead of printing it produces a PDF.  In fact it works just like our driver FilePrint.

This effectively means that any application in Windows can now produce a PDF.

If you are going to use it to create jobs for FilePrint, couple of things to look at:

• Make sure you are printing the correct size document, quite often, these tools are set to Letter rather than A4.  Go to Advanced and you can select from a BIG list of sizes.
• Advanced: Set Print Quality to 300 DPI.
• Advanced: Set Fonts to Download softfont
• Advanced: Set to Portable Format
• Advanced: Set fonts to Download Outline.

I know that all sounded very complicated, but, this is a very easy to use PDF product.

Scribus

http://www.scribus.net/

Scribus is a pretty good FREE desktop publishing system.  It has a very easy and quick install, with a 20MB download.

If you are a beginner/intermediate user; this product does everything you need it to do and because alot of the more advanced options just aren’t there - it is nice and clean.

Best of all, it can output directly to PDF.  I like this product so much that I am considering releasing templates to go along with it.

The one draw back for me is that it comes from the world of UNIX, so, it does not drop you into ‘My Documents’ when you want to save things, but, that’s really only a small thing.

Inkscape

http://www.inkscape.org/

This is pretty well a full blown vector image tool (i.e. Illustrator, Corel Draw).   Its a big product so I have not had time to have a real go at it, but, everything that I would normally want are there.  This actually supports the SVG format, which you might not be familiar with.  Great things were predicted of SVG, it was going to become the standard, but never quite got the momentum needed.

I have had time to look at the output and again, we have a very good Save AS / PDF tool.  This is very simple, with No Options at all - bar one: Convert Text to Paths.  This is a great little feature as it converts all the fonts into graphics, meaning that it will print PERFECTLY on any device and removes the need to embed fonts.

Again, my small moan is it is from the UNIX world and again like Scribus, the File dialogs are a little ‘odd’ - but all in all a really powerful tool.

FilePrint has recently added some new international delivery options.
Airmail is economical, easy to use and fast.
- Delivery to Europe within three working days
- Worldwide delivery within five working days
Now we can send your prints to any place in the World from as little as £1.21*

*(Airmail, Europe, weight not over 100 g)

FilePrint, the internet printer, is announcing a new Affiliate scheme. Companies may now offer their clients print-on-demand and earn 25% margin on all orders. You simply need to sign up as an affiliate. And you can then also enjoy the same low prices even for your own print needs.

It works by designers or agencies offering their clients the chance to buy professional quality print over the internet. Clients design, upload and order print from their desktops, with pre-noon orders delivered next day.

Chief executive Andy Bex says, “We wanted to create a new way for companies to earn margin on a new service to their clients. If you can influence print buying, or simply want to recommend professional quality, low cost print, you can earn margin on all the print your clients purchase.�

This new service is especially good for short runs. Flyers cost a fraction of the price of conventional print, because they are printed using new generation colour digital printers. You can now order and pay for just one brochure at a time or as few as you want.

Users simply create and upload a PDF and order the required quantity online through an affiliate account. Alternatively, companies can install the free FilePrint driver on their clients systems which lets clients to order print directly from any Microsoft application.

FilePrint offers a full range of paper qualities and print sizes up to A0 oversize and can cost-effectively print from a single copy with no set-up charge. There’s a range of finishes including binding, laminating, folding and trimming. So, any type of document can be produced including stationery, brochures, business cards, show cards, bound manuals, posters, flyers and price lists.

A choice of delivery services is offered throughout the UK including delivery directly to customers. There is no minimum order, and orders are normally delivered within two working days, regardless of UK location.

Companies can sign up to the service on www.fileprint.org/uk/about/workingwithus/affiliates/affiliates.php

Zamzar is  a great new service that allows you to convert your files online for free.  It allows you to convert your documents and images into PDF format. Check it out at  http://www.zamzar.com

Now you can place you orders with FilePrint without a need to download software to convert the document that you want to print into PDF formats.

FilePrint are constantly improving the print solution,  this latest improvement is significant.  Most digital print is produced on large sheets of paper, just over the size of A3.  When a job is received, usually these are manually setup so that the jobs repeats on the page;  so if a customer orders an A5 postcard, this will be setup up so that 8 cards are printing on the one sheet.  As this is a manual process, it increases the cost of the job, but also significantly increases the chance of human error.  FilePrint’s innovation allows all the PDFs received from customers to be automatically setup, reducing cost and removing any human error.

To get the “booklet” option, upload your document in page-multiples of 4’s.

But be aware we can only staple booklets up to 52 pages.