User Profile for DavidRavenMoon

To the previous person who said Quark doesn't get it... YOU don't get it! I have to deal with junk sent in by people who don't have a clue how to prepare files to be printed every day. I bet who ever gets your jobs feels the same way! Transparency is NEVER used unflattened in print production. Quark is outputting the file correctly. All the so-called artist who insist on using layered native files don't have a clue what goes on after the printer gets the file. We flatten everything, and generally convert native files to formats like TIFF and EPS. Why? OPI that's why. Most RIPS don't know what a .PSD or .AI file is, and the RIP will abort. Presses don't print transparency. They print a CMYK rendering of what the shade would be if it wasn't transparent. You have to flatten and raster process (RIP) that file to get there. Transparency is more of a headache than anything else, especially with applications like Illustrator. Generally the same artist also has their transparency flattening settings to low resolution as well as their raster settings to 72 ppi! It's just a short cut for lazy people. Yes, doing it the right way often takes longer, but then the production artist at the printer wont have to mess with the stupid files all day, and the client will save a lot on pre-press time. Also, if you are printing with spot colors? Forget transparency. It doesn't work. Make a tint instead. The spot will get RIP'ed to CMYK. InDesign is great, but Quark was smart to stay away from that junk. Do everyone a favor and create your transparencies in something like Illustrator and then *flatten the file* and save it as an EPS! Your printer will thank you, or at least not call you names behind your back. I've been in print industry for the past 29 years, and I've seen nothing but the quality of files sent in go down the tubes. I don't know what schools are teaching (or more importantly NOT teaching) these days, but most designers don't understand printing AT ALL... most don't what a spot color is and when to use one, (or they wouldn't use 10 spots on a 4 color job) and don't realize that most RIP's cannot use native layered files. I see stupid things everyday like white set to overprint, spot colors used on CMYK jobs, CMYK used on two color spot jobs, spot "process black" used on CMYK jobs, and instead of doing a tint of a color, they drop a transparent white over it! Stupid. That's not the correct way to do things. It's a kluge! Who taught you people this junk? Go get your money back! Luckily these days we RIP everything to PDF first (Printergy EVO or RAMpage), but the files do get flattened. Don't fool yourself. Even then there's more problems then there should be. All those transparent areas that weren't flattened often show up as white boxes. Quark has its place in the industry, and as much as I use ID, I still prefer Quark's ways of doing things, like using picture boxes. ID is too often much like PageMaker. And when we can't get difficult ID files to print, we save the pages as EPS files and print them from Quark! [alert admin]

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Friday, August 01 2008 @ 12:49 PM PDT

Musorg 0.3.0 (Mac OS X)

Wonderful!

Saved me so much time adding tags to about 60 tracks. These tracks had NOTHING... no artist, track name, album, nothing, except in the file name itself. I was dreading having to do it all by hand, and then I found Musorg. Worked flawlessly. I was amazed how well the lookup works on pre-ripped tracks. And it's free! [alert admin]

Yes, it breaks things...

Saturday, July 26 2008 @ 10:43 PM PDT

Adobe Flash Player 10.0.0.536 (Mac OS X)

That's why it's released, so Adobe can fix it. They can't possibly check out EVERY web site. Don't complain here, go to: Adobe Flash Player 10 Feedback Form

"This public prerelease is an opportunity for developers and consumers to test and provide early feedback to Adobe on new features, enhancements, and compatibility with previously authored content. Once you’ve installed Flash Player 10 beta, you can view interactive demos. You can also help make Flash Player better by visiting all of your favorite sites, making sure they work the same or better than with the current player."

If things don't work, and there will be things that don't work, tell Adobe about it, not VT. If you don't want to be a Beta Tester, than don't install this plugin. [alert admin]

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Friday, July 11 2008 @ 06:25 AM PDT

Apple iTunes 7.7 (Mac OS X)

here's another positive review

So that makes two. :) I've been using iTunes since it was SoundJam MP. It works as advertised, does everything I need it too do, and I've never had a glitch with it, ever. We use it for our home music playback system (through great Monsoon speakers), I subscribe to a dozen or so Podcasts, buy music online, it takes care of all the iPods in the family, and I even save and watch YouTube videos via TubeSock. I even use it to encode MP3's of my own music recorded in ProTools for use on MySpace and my web site. Seems like a pretty perfect piece of software to me... and runs great on my upgraded circa 2001 G4 Digital Audio and the wife's iBook G3. AND it's FREE! [alert admin]

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Thursday, July 10 2008 @ 10:16 AM PDT

WeatherPop Advance 2.6.1 (Mac OS X)

Used to be great

I got it to work in Leopard.. but it takes forever to launch. You can't use the menu bar widget, you have to have the application in your menu bar. The Pop Doppler image hasn't updated in seven months. Yeah, they said "it works for us and we are too busy too support such a trivial thing, blah blah" I guess they forgot that they charged people money. Including me. Oh well...time to move on. The Dashboard widget works better anyway, and WeatherPop is still working on my machine, but I'm going to try Meteorologist and see how that is. [alert admin]

Friday, July 04 2008 @ 10:25 PM PDT

Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.1 (Mac OS X)

Worked fine here too

I downloaded the update instead of using the auto update. Took about two minutes to complete the update. [alert admin]

Tuesday, June 24 2008 @ 08:45 PM PDT

Digidesign Pro Tools 7.4.2 (Mac OS X)

Yay!

No more booting into Tiger! This was a free upgrade for me, and I bought 7.3.1. So far my experience is DigiDesign is a first rate company to do business with. Cubase is my main DAW, but I also use ProTools and Logic. Each has its own place, and depending on who I'm working with, I have to have the right tools. Lately I'm using ProTools more and more. Now I just have to wait for some of the plugins. [alert admin]

Friday, June 20 2008 @ 02:23 PM PDT

Logitech Control Center 2.6.0 (Mac OS X)

Weird scrolling

I want to like this software... I tried it with my MX700, and the features are nice. But the scroll wheel action is very annoying, so I went back to USB Overdrive. It puts a very exaggerated acceleration to the wheel, so you either get very little scrolling when you want to click line by line, and then it makes a big jump. I just want the scroll wheel to work in a linear fashion. [alert admin]

v.11 runs natively on Intel Macs

Tuesday, June 10 2008 @ 01:16 PM PDT

Apple Safari 3.1.1 (Mac OS X)

Works fine here

Nice and fast (and works with every Java site I could find) [alert admin]

Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful

Wednesday, April 16 2008 @ 09:29 PM PDT

Apple QuickTime 7.4.5 (Mac OS X)

No problems here

Installed the update on a G4 running 10.5.2, a Mac Pro running 10.4.11 and a G5 running 10.4.11. So far everything works as it did before the update. [alert admin]

Read Comments (1) | More Info | 3 of 3 users found this helpful

Friday, April 04 2008 @ 04:03 PM PDT

Last 10 Comments by DavidRavenMoon [ Search for All ]

There is no Macromedia website. You mean the Adobe website. They list it as version Shockwave 11.0.0.465 but the link is for version 10 PPC, probably because I'm on a G4.

Quark as Layout Program

Thursday, August 07 2008 @ 11:29 AM PDT

Amen to that!

Sunday, August 03 2008 @ 10:00 AM PDT

Right... you said flat. The original poster was saying why does Quark make you flatten transparencies. Quark makes perfectly good PDF's also, but we use Printergy to make the PDF's, not the native app.

Saturday, August 02 2008 @ 10:50 AM PDT

ooooo

XPress makes very good PDF's, and it's fast too. I work in a PDF workflow and we have no issues with Quark at all. We actually save PostScript files, and Printergy refines the PDF's. PDF's can be a pain too, because many people don't make them the right way. But Quark works in a PDF workflow as well as ID. And lets not forget Quark ran on Mac OS X at least a year before the Adobe stuff…

Saturday, August 02 2008 @ 10:47 AM PDT

I've never had an issue with EPS files... but you should link them, not embed them. Some people think it's OK to copy and paste images into a document. Then that breaks the OPI links. The other issue is people don't know the correct way to save an EMP files, and they are often missing the fonts. Adobe has made it fairly brainless to save a PDF file from ID, and that's a very good…

They Just Want More Money

Friday, August 01 2008 @ 06:12 PM PDT

Very good points. Quark and Peak... two programs I use, and both of them are WAY over priced! I still like Quark, but it's too expensive, the install process is nonsense with that 100 character long serial number, and they are just generally a PITA to deal with. Looks like they made some nice changes in the new version, and it's still over priced. Not as bad as RAMpage or Printergy EVO though. And they nickel and…

Friday, August 01 2008 @ 04:41 PM PDT

I absolutely agree. I love Adobe stuff. Been using them since Photoshop 2.5 and Illustrator 88. I was never crazy about Pagemaker, I liked Quark much better. Obviously everyone else did too. InDesign is great in its own way, and I use it more and more for my own work. But Quark is still a very good program. They are a little slow to implement some things, but at least…

Friday, August 01 2008 @ 04:35 PM PDT

To Mr DavidRavenMoon

"WHy are they sending you open files?" Oh you'd be surprised... I'm talking Photoshop files with 25 layers and live type layers and all! Same with Illustrator files. We don't understand it... to us it's just sloppy work or laziness. Or they just don't know any better. Once Adobe let ID work with native files it was all over! Then Quark followed suit. But both companies should know better, because in the end…

Most issue filled application on any PC

Friday, August 01 2008 @ 04:25 PM PDT

Transparency is NEVER used unflattened in print production. All the so-called artist who insist on using layered native files don't have a clue what goes on after the printer gets the file. Presses don't print transparency. They print a CMYK rendering of what the shade would be if it wasn't transparent. You have to flatten and raster process (RIP) that file to get there. Transparency is more of a headache than anything else, especially…

Friday, August 01 2008 @ 12:25 PM PDT

Die already, Quark

"Why won't this beast of a software just go away!" Because a LOT of large companies still use it. I use InDesign a lot more for my own work, but at work we still get a large number of jobs done in Quark. Why are people using it? Because they like it. Do we really need an Adobe monopoly? I don't think so.