[PDF] Purchase adivce

[Rioduo]

Good morning all. I'm happy to say that our IT depatment is finally willing to investivate the purchase of a software to help us with problem PDF's. I am in pre press for a group of 23 weekly + 2 daliy newspapers. I have suggested the 3 most talked about on this list: Quite a Box of Trick, Pit Stop or Crackerjack(?). I've given them the various links for the software, but would you all be willing to give me first hand advice? I know nothing about the software except what I've read and knowing my company, only one will be made availible to us. The problem we run into most often is with color being RGB. We have been able to work around a lot of problem color ads by using Acrobat 5. If the color portion is a photo within the ad, it's usually not too much of a problem, except that we often won't find out until it doesn't separte to film. Then it's a mad dash to try to fix the file. Twice this last week though, we've had ads with text created in something other than a layout program, say possibly Illustrator or Photoshop, often ending up with 4/C black text. If we suspect a problem ahead of deadline, we can often contact the artist to correct the problem, but usually, it's not discovered till right on deadline to print. I usually don't have direct contact with agency artists, we have 13 offices with thier own sales rep's & comp people, then the files are sent to us. We are on Mac's, I think my 'new' computer will be running in OSX classic (our G3's were stolen). We impose our pages in Quark 4 to send to film. So if you had to pick only one, which one would help us the most? Thanks, Jackie