Variable Data Printing Esko DeskPack Front-end Example

Transcription

1 XXX Variable Data Printing Esko DeskPack Front-end Example September 2007

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3 Copyright 2007 Esko-Graphics, Gent, Belgium All rights reserved. This material, information and instructions for use contained herein are the property of Esko-Graphics NV. The material, information and instructions are provided on an AS IS basis without warranty of any kind. There are no warranties granted or extended by this document. Furthermore Esko-Graphics NV. does not warrant, guarantee or make any representations regarding the use, or the results of the use of the software or the information contained herein. Esko-Graphics shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential or incidental damages arising out of the use or inability to use the software or the information contained herein. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Revisions may be issued from time to time to advise of such changes and/or additions. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a data base or retrieval system, or published, in any form or in any way, electronically, mechanically, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without prior written permission from Esko-Graphics NV. This document supersedes all previous dated versions. PANTONE Colors displayed here may not match PANTONE-identified standards. Consult current PANTONE Color Publications for accurate color. PANTONE and other Pantone, Inc. trademarks are the property of Pantone, Inc. Pantone, Inc., Pantone, Inc. is the copyright owner of color data and/or software which are licensed to Esko-Graphics to distribute for use only in combination with LW-Brix and CT-Brix based applications. PANTONE Color Data and/or Software shall not be copied onto another disk or into memory unless as part of the execution of the LWBrix and CTBrix based applications. This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation ( Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, the Acrobat logo, Adobe Creative Suite, Illustrator, InDesign, PDF, Photoshop, PostScript, XMP and the Powered by XMP logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft and the Microsoft logo are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. "SolidWorks is a registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation." Portions of this software are owned by Spatial Corp All Rights Reserved. JDF and the JDF logo are trademarks of the CIP4 Organisation. Copyright 2001 The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4). All rights reserved. The Esko-Graphics software contains the "RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm". Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems in the U.S. and other countries. This product is covered by one or more of the following US patents: 5,268,754; 5,689,349; 5,872,573; 5,889,932; 5,926,185; 5,933,578; 5,995,719; 5,155,599; 5,113,249; 5,323,248; 5,420,702; 5,481,379, 6,760,638, 6,954,291, 6,532,082 All other product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Correspondence regarding this publication should be forwarded to: Esko-Graphics Kortrijksesteenweg 1095 B Gent info.eur@esko.com June 2007 i

4 Esko DeskPack Front End Example There are several ways to prepare documents and data for Variable Data Printing. This is an example of a possible workflow: 1. Create a job (page 2). 2. Create a chain of tasks (page 7). 3. Perform a database check (page 17). 4. Prepare the one-up (page 19). 5. Step & Repeat and Output (page 64). 6. Repeat with multiple grids (page 74). 1 Create a Job 1. Open the BackStage Pilot and go to Job menu > New Job or press Ctrl+Alt+N / Option+Cmd+N. 2. Check Use an existing Job as a Template.

5 3. Uncheck all unnecessary elements from the Include group and click Select to choose your structure template. 4. Use the upper right text input field to search for the required template. Select the template by mouse and click the Select button. 5. Click OK. April

6 6. Enter Order ID and Job Name. Then click the Browse button to specify the location of the Jobfolder. 4

7 7. Select one of the BackStage Containers and click the New Folder button in the top-right corner of the dialog box. 8. The Job Name will be automatically displayed in the Name field of the dialog box. You can change the name, but it is suggested to use identical names for the name of the folder and the name of the job. Click OK to create a new folder. 9. Click OK to confirm your folder selection. April

8 10. Now you can edit other Job properties, when you are finished, click OK to confirm the Job creation. 6

9 2 Create a chain of tasks 1. Click the Tickets icon located in bottom-left corner or press 'Ctrl+Shift+I' (Windows) or 'Option+Shift+I' (Mac) to see the list of available tickets. April

10 2. Double-click the Expand Variable Data to PPML File (DeskPack only) ticket with as ticket name Default. 8

11 3. In the Output in text field enter SmartNames. Put the cursor in the text field and click the SmartNames button. April

12 4. In category Job Information select the Job URL SmartName and click Insert. 10

13 5. The SmartName is inserted in the Output in text field. This means that the output of the expansion task will end up in the folder of current job. To respect the structure of the job, we have to specify subfolders. April

14 6. Add the following string in the text field: /03_Output/01_Expansion/ 7. The task will now write its output to the correct folder within the Jobfolder. It might happen that the expansion will be performed several times. To ensure that the next expansion will not overwrite the previous one, BackStage can automatically create a subfolder with a date stamp within its name. Use the SmartNames dialog box to find the SmartNames Date and Time within the Category Date and add them to the text field. You can use an underscore to create a visual delimiter between both SmartNames. The string might look like this: [date]_[time]/ Close the SmartNames dialog box. 8. The complete string will look like this: [joburl]/03_output/01_expansion/[date]_[time]/ This string will work only if the repetition file is saved in the Jobfolder. 12

15 9. Now you can add another ticket to the chain. Click the Add button to open the Add Step dialog box. April

16 10. Select the default ticket RIP Variable Data to JLT File and click OK. 11. This warning dialog box appears, because the ticket has only default values, and some have to be specified. The warning will not appear when ticket is saved. 14

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18 12. The panel with the RIP settings appears. In almost every case, they will remain unchanged. However, do not forget to set the correct properties in the Output tab. 13. In the Configuration Set group, choose a predefined configuration from the drop-down list. The Output Path will be taken automatically from the configuration set, but the name can be adjusted by using SmartNames. 14. Now the chain is ready and has to be saved for later use. Select File menu > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or 'Cmd+S' (Mac). 16

19 15. Give a custom name to the chain and click OK. 16. Close the window by selecting Close from the File menu or press Ctrl+W (Windows) or 'Cmd+W' (Mac). If you are asked to save changes, do so. 3 Perform a database check In order to create a design that is suitable for Variable Data Printing, we have to know the field names of the used database. Make sure that you have the correct information before you start preparing the job. When designing a one-up it is not needed to have access to the database that will be actually used for printing. Instead, a small subset with just a few records April

20 can be used. In the example below, a database with following field names will be used: first_name last_name id_code pieces weight These are examples of typical entries: Elizabeth McCannon g The CSV database file will look like this: first_name,last_name,id_code,pieces,weight Elizabeth,McCannon, ,3,750 g You can enter those two text lines in a text editor and save it in UTF-8 encoding with the CSV suffix. On Macintosh, you can use TextEdit and following settings. 18

21 On Windows, you can use Notepad with following settings. April

22 4 Prepare the one-up 1. Create or open the existing design and save it in the Jobfolder. 20

23 2. File settings can look like this. April

24 3. Open the Trim Box and Media Box plug-in. 22

25 4. Click the Fit Trim Box on Artboard icon to set the label size. April

26 5. If your label also has bleed, specify this parameter as Media Box dimensions. After this operation, the palette can be closed. 24

27 6. Open the SmartMarks dialog box by choosing Variable Data from the Esko plug-ins menu. April

28 7. Choose File SmartNames from the palettes menu. 26

29 8. Click Load from CSV. April

30 9. Browse for your design database file and set the correct import properties. 28

31 10. Click OK to confirm the creation of the File SmartNames. Save the one-up. The position of the SmartMark can be set in relation to the Named Object. Follow these steps to create a Named Object in the salmon picture. 1. Select the salmon picture. April

32 2. In the SmartMarks palette, click the Unnamed Object(s) and enter the custom name. 3. Press Enter to make this change effective. 30

33 4. Click New SmartMark to open the New SmartMark dialog box. April

34 5. Click Text Mark. 6. Enter your text and apply the appropriate text style. 32

35 7. Click the SmartName button to open the Insert File SmartName dialog box. April

36 8. Choose first_name from the Field Name list and click OK to insert the File SmartName to the text edit field. 34

37 9. Repeat the previous step to insert last_name as a File SmartName. April

38 10. Click Next to open the Inks properties of the Text Mark. 36

39 11. Set Ink to Knockout and click Next to set the Position properties of the Text Mark. April

40 12. For Attach to, select Named Object and set Object Name to picture. The blue square represents the referenced object and red one the SmartMark. Use the mouse to move the red square under the blue square and set Vertical Offset to Click OK to create the SmartMark. 38

41 14. Since settings are created, the server can generate the SmartMark. Click Update SmartMarks Preview to submit the one-up to the server. April

42 15. During preview generation the one-up document will be closed and the Tasks palette will appear. 40

43 16. When the preview task is ready (task Status is set to Success), double click the task to retrieve the updated document from the server. The preview task is automatically deleted from the Tasks palette after the one-up document is successfully retrieved from the server. April

44 17. Open the Text Mark to insert a line break in the text edit field after the static part of text and repeat the previous steps to submit the one-up to update the preview. The position of the Text Mark should be adjusted. 42

45 18. Use Illustrator s Selection Tool to move the Text Mark closer to the salmon picture. April

46 19. Check the Text Mark properties to modify the offset. In this case the offset can be set to -2.5 mm. Click OK to apply this change immediately. 44

47 20. The change in position of the generated SmartMark is applied immediately. There is no need to send the one-up to the server for regeneration. April

48 Now we will create a Datamatrix barcode. 1. Create a new rectangle with a white fill, which will represent the safe zone for the barcode and assign a custom name to this rectangle. Make sure, that this object is not created in the Variable_Data layer. 2. Click the New SmartMark icon and select Barcode Mark in New SmartMark dialog box. Select as Type Datamatrix and click the SmartNames button to open the Insert File SmartName dialog box. 46

49 3. Choose Field Name id_code and click OK to confirm your choice. April

50 4. The File SmartName is now inserted in the Code edit field. If you are sure that every database record has the same amount of numbers, you can set Symbol Type to Best Fit. If this is not the case, it is advised to ask your database supplier for maximum amount of numbers in this database field and set the appropriate item from the Symbol Type. In this example, 16x16 will be sufficient. Click Next to open the Inks properties. 48

51 5. Set Ink to Custom and click Select Inks to open the Select Inks dialog box. April

52 6. Select Process Black and click OK to confirm your choice and close the dialog box. Click Next to open the Position properties. 50

53 7. Set Attach to to Named Object and as Object Name choose safe zone. The red square should be in the center of the blue square. Click OK to have the server generate a preview update. April

54 8. In this example, the safe zone is too large. 52

55 9. Use Illustrator tools to adjust the size and position of the safe zone rectangle. The Barcode Mark will follow the new coordinates automatically. April

56 10. Create a new SmartMark by clicking 'New SmartMark...' from the fly-out menu (or by clicking the shortcut icon). 54

57 11. Choose a Text Mark, and add the SmartName 'weight' to the text field. April

58 12. Choose the appropriate formatting and text aligning and click 'Next'. 56

59 13. From the Inks options, select 'Knockout' as the ink used for this Text Mark. April

60 14. Attach the Text Mark to the top right corner of the Trim Box. 58

61 15. Run the preview task, and give the new Smartmark the name 'weight'. April

62 16. Adjust the position of the newly created SmartMark by using the Illustrator position tool, and create a new Text Mark by clicking the New SmartMark button and choosing Text Mark as SmartMark type. 60

63 17. Add the SmartName 'pieces' to the text field, followed by the word 'steaks'. Choose the appropriate text formatting. April

64 18. From the Inks options, select 'Knockout' as the ink used for this Text Mark. 62

65 19. Position the SmartMark under the Text Mark 'weight' and enter a rotation of 10 degrees. April

66 20. Generate a preview, and give a name to all remaining unnamed SmartMarks. Your one-up is now ready to be stepped and output. 64

67 5 Step & Repeat and Output 1. Open the stepx dialog box by choosing stepx from the Esko plug-ins menu. April

68 2. Define the media dimensions (Plate Size) and imaging area (Sheet Size). The height of both areas must be equal for web-fed presses. Click Next to open the Grids properties. 66

69 3. Define the repetition properties for the one-up. Click Next to edit the Variable Data properties. April

70 4. Make sure that Enable Variable Data is enabled, otherwise all options in this dialog box will be greyed out and stepx will work in static one-up mode. 68

71 5. In this example, the database containing the actual data will use CSV format, therefore click Open CSV to open the Open CSV Database dialog box. April

72 6. In case that the field names are separated from the database file, specify the location of both files and click OK to confirm your choice. 70

73 7. Specify the content filling properties and click the Next button to define the Output properties. April

74 8. Select Workflow as Task Type and select your predefined chain of tickets from the Ticket Name drop-down list. A SmartMarks Set can be selected as well. It is possible to save the properties of this job, without the parameters set in the Output dialog box. To do so, click Save. 72

75 9. Click Launch to start the chain which will result in a job on the HP Indigo press. During this operation the one-up will not be closed and you can see the task progressing in the Tasks palette. April

76 10. The result on the HP Indigo press should look like this: 74

77 6 Repeat with multiple grids Prepare 3 one-ups. The one-up used in the previous example can be used. For the second one you can use the first one with a different background color. For the third you can create a datamatrix barcode of 20 mm by 20 mm. 1. Open the stepx dialog box by choosing stepx from the Esko plug-ins menu. April

78 2. Define the media dimensions (Plate Size) and imaging area (Sheet Size). The height of both areas must be equal for web-fed presses. Click Next to open the Grids properties. 76

79 3. Select the first label from the One Up list. April

80 4. Set the same repetition properties as in the screenshot below and click the Plus button in the bottom-left corner to add another grid. 78

81 5. In the second grid, select the second one-up and set Align to to Grid 1. April

82 6. Set the same repetition properties as indicated in the screenshot below and click the Plus button in the bottom-left corner to add another grid. 80

83 7. Define the properties of the last grid and click Next to define the Variable Data properties for each grid. April

84 8. Grids are totally independent from a Variable Data point of view. Each grid can have a different database and a different filling order. However, this also implies that you have to specify the properties of each grid individually. Define the properties for the selected grid and continue with Grid 2 and Grid 3. Then click Next to define the Output properties. 82

85 9. Select Workflow as Task Type and select your predefined chain of tickets from the Ticket Name drop-down list. A SmartMarks Set can be selected as well. In the Save As text edit field you can enter a custom name. It is possible to save the properties of this job, without parameters set in the Output dialog box. To do so, click Save. April

86 10. Click Launch to start the chain which will result in a job on the HP Indigo press. The result on the HP Indigo press should look like this: 84