Best Imposition Software for Offeset Printing Process

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
May 30, 2016
12 replies
56123 views

Hi guys, I work for a printing company, primarily focused on label production, and also general flat paper based commercial printing.

We use Adobe CC applications for our pre-press production software, and are looking at assessing the best imposition solutions for going from artwork to plates for process jobs or pdfs for digital jobs.

The main purpose for this would be to streamline operator task efficiency, ease-of-use, limitation reduction, etc. to get the most out of our time on the job.

What imposition solutions have you guys had good experience with in a print production context?

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Dov Isaacs

Legend

For PDF print publishing workflows, page imposition is best performed at the RIP itself. Virtually every modern PDF workflow system, RIP, and DFE (for digital printers) has support for imposition. Ideally, that is where it should be done!

Only when printing PDF files to non-PDF direct devices should one even consider imposition in Acrobat itself. There are a number of products that provide such imposition services within Acrobat as plug-ins. The recommendations of Eugene Tyson should be taken seriously.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

B

brehontl

Participant

I realize that this is over a year since you posted this, but I'm curious why you say "page imposition is best performed at the RIP itself.". I can think of a number of reasons, cost being the big one, why imposing prior to ripping is better. I have heard a number of people say this, but so far no-one has given me an answer that conclusively prooves this theory. Exactly why, do you feel this way?

Ron