Professional Engraving Systems

Creating Proofs in XGW by Carey Solomon

Xenetech Graphic Workstation has many tools to aide operators to layout and engraving product. One of these tools has been the ability to print engraving jobs for proofing. More complex printing options would allow scaled proofs, tiled proofs, and the printing of multiple-plate or matrix jobs.

However, many customers wonder how they can email these proofs without their customers having to install XGW.

Undoubtedly, you have come in contact with a .pdf file. Portable Document Files are compressed files which allow you to render graphics and text into singular compressed files. These files can include simple options, such as multiple-page navigation, and more sophisticated options such as a clickable Table-of-Contents, and hyperlinks to another location, such as an Internet website. Many computers and software packages come bundled with a pdf reader so that you may view these documents, but you are generally required to obtain your own pdf writer for creating them.

While you can purchase them from Adobe (www.Adobe.com), there are many free alternatives available for download. My favorite is pdfRedirect. You can download it at www.download.com.

 

Once installed, the pdf writer is available to the computer user as an installed printer.

In this example, I will use XGW to create a simple job with 2 plates in batch mode so that 2 separate plates exist.

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If I select OUTPUT TO PRITNER from the FILE menu in XGW and select the PDF reDirect printer.....

....I can then choose my print options......

....and then finally my pdf options.

I can choose where to save the pdf file, the name to give it, and even a password required to open it. In this example, I will save it to my desktop, and call it XenetechProof.pdf. If I look at the right of the PDF reDirect window, I can see in the preview tab that the pdf file will contain 2 pages, and I can further scroll through the pages before I make the pdf file. In this example, we can see that page one says "DAVID" and page 2 says "JOHN."

Finally, when I preview the proof in a standard pdf reader, I can see both pages included in the single pdf file.

Simply attach the new pdf file to an outgoing email and your customer can then preview the job before engraving.

Almost all pdf writers will function in a similar manner, with some small program nuances. Advanced features can be found in many of the paid versions of these products.

If you opt for the paid version of pdf reDirect, you will also have the availablilty to

• Lock a pdf from editing and printing
• Embed a stamp or watermark
• Create and email the pdf at the same time