Vancouver InDesign User Group

On Tuesday September 22, 2009, was the third meeting of the year of the Vancouver InDesign User Group, arranged by Jeff Kew, The Chapter Representative. This is the first meeting that I have attended and found it very interesting and helpful, the topic this meeting was Prepress — Best Habits, It was a great turnout as nearly 75 members attended. Refreshments that were provided and lots of prizes were given away! The meeting was held in the Vancouver Film School, http://www.vfs.com.

Jeff Kew began the meeting with a quick intro of Adobe’s Sebastian Distefano and himself. Jeff followed up by discussing and showing off the plug-ins that were graciously donated by our meeting sponsors for door prizes.

Sebastian Distefano focused on Adobe tools such as the Ink Manager, Separation Preview, Flattener Preview and PDF/X export settings. In the second half of the meeting, Jeff Kew started off by reviewing some online resources then moved on to demonstrate some real world practical examples/tips and tricks of prepress and also discussed how many third-party plug-ins can be big timesavers in the prepress process.

Here are a list of some of the prizes that were donated and given away at the meeting, it is a great selection of plugins, books and programs.

Photos from the event

InDesign CS4 software
http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/family/

Books and DVDss on Photoshop, InDesign, and Prepress
http://www.focalpress.com/
http://oreilly.com/
http://www.peachpit.com/index.aspx

InDesign plug-ins from the following companies:

65 Bit – Multido & Reveal (these are free, get them now)
http://www.65bit.com/products/products.shtm

CtrlPublishing – Ctrl Layers
http://www.ctrl-ps.com/products/ctrllayers

Extensis – Suitcase Fusion 2 and Portfolio 8.5
http://www.extensis.com

FOLDRite – Template Master ($99 sale on right now)
http://www.foldfactory.com/shop.php

InsiderSoftware – FontAgentPro
http://www.insidersoftware.com/FA_pro_plus.php

GLUON – Cropster for Mac
http://www.gluon.com/product-cropster-id.html

Gridiron Software – Flow
http://www.gridironsoftware.com/products/flow.html

Markzware – FlightCheck Pro 6.5
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_professional/

Zevrix – Bundle (LinkOptimizer lite, BatchOutput, InPreflight)
http://www.zevrix.com/index.php

And Photoshop plug-ins:
Nik Software – from the Complete Collection (for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture)
http://www.niksoftware.com/

Alien Skin – Blow Up
http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/index.aspx

Printing Gift Certificate:
TPH – Biz Card Printing: 250 Digitally printed cards
http://www.tph.ca/locations/default.aspx?

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Comments From Evaluation Sheets
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“As always, Seb is a fascinating speaker”  -Wes Jang

“I think Adobe guest was absolutely amazing.
Thanks for bringing him in”  -M. Yigit Karakilic

“Excellent presentation/topic, lots of useful info”  -Five Seventeen

“Like the balance of Adobe and non-Adobe perspectives”  -Alex Henning

“Perhaps tried to accomplish too much in one meeting.
More focused approach might have been more useful”  -Eileen O’Hanley

“Very informative and helpful as always”  -Malcolm Summersby

“Very easy and understandable, talking about day to day issues”  -Thorsten Gohl

“This was my first event, and I was very impressed”  -Megan Hollstedt

“Good rundown/demo of the stitching issues and overprinted spot colours in flattened PDFs…great real world prepress and file-fix tips”  -Cam MacGregor

“Good topic tonight – perfect in fact – it answered a lot of questions”  -Beth MacLaren

“Thanks for sharing all the tips and tricks. I’ve learnt a few new things”  -Amy Lau

“Great technical info for prepress, updates and plug-ins”  -Diane Smallwood

“The loose format was OK, but not as focussed as prior sessions”  -James Gross

“Both great presenters”  -David Bailie

“Jeff showed great tips for prepress”  -Maggie Tung

“Great recommendations for plug-ins plus other programs”  -Ruth Johnson

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Next Meeting
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The next meeting is being planned for sometime in December, with the topic: discussing Asset Management.

Visit the Vancouver InDesign User Group

Thanks to Jeff Kew for the event meeting wrap-up and photographs