Creative Suite CS2?

If you acquire CS2 now you will get the upgrade price to CS3, normally that is one third of the new license price.

If you acquire CS2 now and Adobe releases CS3 within the next 30 or 45 days (I don't know it by heart) yyou can upgrade to CS3 without any cost, but you must prove this to adobe with the invoice date and so on...

hope this helps

CS3 is slated for an early Spring 2007 release so you've got probably 3-5 months before your CS2 can be upgraded. Upgrades are hardly ever free; they are cheaper if you are a student or company that buys in volume, though.

The thing is, are you running on Intel chips? If not, you still won't get the benefit of CS3 running in Universal mode. You'll still be running in the Rosetta emulator.

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natobasso

Not sure if Freehand features are going to be inserted directly, but there are new features coming out in CS3 that might interest you. Article on this site here:
http://creativebits.org/indesign_cs3_features

Looks like Freehand still lives as its own app as part of the Macromedia acquisition:
http://www.adobe.com/products/freehand/

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natobasso

Freehand is a vector-based program so I assume it does not rasterize its effects unless you tell it to do so. I could be wrong about this.

About your printing, have you tried ripping PDF/X-1a files for print? These are very stable and are very good about flattening transparencies and other more complex effects pretty effectively.

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natobasso

I am not too familiar with PDF/X-1a but I will research that option. We are pleased with our Freehand workflow, if only we could get our files ready to rip easier and cleaner. Thanks for the help natobasso.

You bet!

Here's more on PDF/X-1a:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/faq.html#Anchor-47383

It's a print standard that printers love and I have to say I've never sent a pdf/X-1a file that a printer couldn't work with. Normally a file of this type won't rip unless it's error free.

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natobasso

My prepress workflow is equipped to use pdf/x but in all honesty we never have. there are times when having a file not rip because of some stupid error (such as an unused font) causes more problems than it's worth. all it takes is one little error for something that is not visible to bring the process to a screeching halt for no apparent reason

Not sure I understand your comment. PDF/X-1a won't rip if there are errors within the file...

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natobasso

correct, not being able to rip is a problem when there is no REAL problem, it's good not to be able to output to plate if you're actually missing something important, for example: if there's a missing font that's been subtituted causing a text reflow and nothing looks right, but if the font problem is only a reference to a font that's not used in the document at all, that will prevent a rip as well...

but that's just an obvious example that can be fixed in-house, it's the subtle things that cause the problems and invariably we'd either convert the file to a normal PDF or if that doesn't work have it resent. in any case it's the troubleshooting that usually costs the most time, not so much the actual fix.

so far it hasn't been an issue because we don't tell our customers to give us x1-a files I myself have never personally seen one but the explanation above is what my manager has told me in the past is the reason we don't want them

but we also have a good Workflow/RIP so all incoming files get normalized and otherwise massaged prior to being sent to the RIP and this tends to fix a lot of these RIP errors on import anyways.

re: fonts not used in a document, the designer should remove any fonts not used in a document...

Also, if your designers create their files correctly, the best benefit with X1-a is that the files are about as small as you can get them and print great.

Still am not understanding why you guys aren't using this format?

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natobasso

whether or not unused fonts get removed depends on the software used to create the PDF and how diligent/lazy/bright the designer is. Some apps don't create very clean PDF files (Corel Draw is notorious for this)and by the same token, some designers don't create very clean files either, no matter which app was used.

that all said, some documents will error out because a font was included in the header data. maybe this was a font that was originally used, but the designer changed his/her mind, selected the text and changed the font, but did not select the "space" between the period and the first word of the sentence, so now there is a "space" that is using Arial Bold. thus there are no actual characters that use the font, but the "space" does. another source for unused font inclusions is hidden text (turned white or put on the bottom layer to hide it) but as I said, that's an easy fix.

also regarding your designers statement, since you obviously understand the need for clean files, you, good sir, are a rarity among your peers in my experience. and if I have anything to do with it so will be every designer on this site ;) not that I'm making it any kind of mission, I'm here for the art

I pity graphic designers who don't preflight their files!

My motto is measure twice, cut once, you know? ;)

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"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling
is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." - James Baldwin