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Choosing Print Recipes:
Style Tab This tab is used to select "print recipes" through catalogs. Catalogs allow you to create groups of "hot-buttons" for often-used print recipes. For example, you may have 10 different watermark hot-buttons in a "Watermark" catalog. Just choose the "Watermark" catalog, and the buttons will appear. Choose the button for the watermark you want, check its snapshot image to be sure its right, and then print... it's that easy! You can also choose print recipes directly with the "Select" button, or through the "merge with" menu, which lists the last five print recipes you have used, and all of your "preferred" print recipes. |
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Controlling an Application's
Output: Application Tab This tab is used to control the output pages sent by the application to the printer. You can replicate the output pages from the application-- this is great when you need 2 copies of each label from a database. You can even specify the order that labels print, and then start printing on any label-- this is great when you want to print partial label sheets. You can also manage PostScript fonts or the creation of PostScript definitions by PrintChef print recipes. |
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Predefined Booklets &
Miniatures: Layouts Tab This tab is used to select from several automatic print-time features that allow you to create booklets or miniature layouts from any page size. The automatic features are great for quick-print situations, where you need a booklet, or you just want to save paper. Of course, for more control, you can always use a PrintChef print recipe to layout and design your own more sophisticated booklet or miniature layout. |
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Total Paper Control: Paper
Tab This tab is used to control the output paper sent to the printer. This allows PrintChef to specify the printing toner level, the paper uprightness, the front-to-back or back-to-front direction of the print, and the range of papers that will print. You can even pick to print fronts only or backs only. And, if you are printing with a designed booklet print recipe, then you can even specify the paper thickness so that the offset from normal page creep in a stapled booklet can be adjusted to give perfectly aligned pages. PrintChef's powerful paper range focuses on the paper not the page. This allows PrintChef to reprint the tenth piece of paper in a booklet print and guarantee that the correct pages from the booklet will appear on that paper. |
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Pages, Papers, Printers: The Paper Designer is part of the PrintChef suite of printing tools. With it, you can create new page sizes and new paper sizes. Pages are used to specify and control the area to which the application will print. Papers are used to specify the material that will be used by the printer. The Paper Designer allows you to design both pages and papers by specifying their size and print boundary. A convenient overlapping layout shows the relative size of the page and paper. This makes it easier to imagine how a print recipe layout of the pages on the paper might look. |
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PrintChef Designer: Create
your own "printing styles" The core of PrintChef's Nuclear Printing Power is the "print printing style". Print recipes allow you to create new page sizes, layout those pages onto different paper sizes, and then specify which pages will print. With a print recipe, you can create booklets, multi-ups, label sheets, letterheads, invoices, personalized output, watermarks, and so much more your own reactor will run wild with what you can print... The PrintChef Designer lets you design for the two phases of the printing process: (1) collection of pages from the application, and (2) the mapping of those pages onto the paper that prints. |
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Print Summary: Lets
you view a collection of printed files! PrintChef can 'collect' multiple print jobs into a single print stream, and then submit the print to any printer. The Print Summary dialog shows the collection of print jobs and allows you to organize the output from several applications into one print job. From the Print Summary dialog, you can play "what if" with the printed output, applying any or all of PrintChef's features to the collected print stream. And, of course, the PrintChef Preview system allows you to see just how those effects will look before you let the print go to the printer. Another benefit is that you can save the print stream as a "re:Print" file and then use our program re:Print to print the print stream over-and-over again... |
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Reprint: Reprints
files over-and-over without the application! PrintChef comes with the re:Print program. This companion utility allows you to open saved "collections" of multiple prints and then print the combined print stream to any printer. Reprint goes one step farther than the normal printing process by allowing you to reorder, remove, and append other files into the print stream. This is great when you want to prepare a collection "on-the-spot"! Imagine combining a letter, with a spec sheet, and with your company profile, and then sending that through your letterhead print recipe to create the perfect output for each customer. Reprint is great because the re:Print files are pre-spooled to make printing incredibly fast, no matter how you are going to organize the output. |
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Catalog Manager: Catalogs
can organize your printing styles! PrintChef's catalog system allows you to specify folders that contain print recipes with "hot button" definitions. A PrintChef hot button print recipe can appear on the print-time dialog as a simple push-button print recipe. This makes it very easy to select from commonly used print recipes. The cataloged folders are great for categorizing print recipes (e.g. a folder full of watermarks). These folders appear in a popup menu in the print-time dialog, so you can select any category of print recipe easily. |
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Preferred List Manager:
Your personal favorites! PrintChef's Preferred List is a list of print recipes that you use all the time. They are your favorite print recipes. PrintChef's print-time "merge with" menu contains this list of favorites. The Preferred List manager allows you to organize the items in this menu, by letting you add, delete, and order them so that only what you want will appear. |
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Logging Management: Records
every print job you print! PrintChef's logging system allows you to record information about every job that prints, to any printer, and from any program. It doesn't even matter if you are using a PrintChef effect-- PrintChef records it! The logging system can record date, time, printer, user, filename, page size, page count, copy count, and print recipe name (if one is used). And, with the reporting system, you can generate a printed report or a tab-delimited output of the report so that you can use the information in your favorite database program. |
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Security Management: Secure
by user, group, printer, job! PrintChef's security system allows a system manager to set up a job list, group or division list, and a user list, and then to assign users to divisions to jobs. At print-time, each user will then enter their password so that they can print. But PrintChef does security smartly, by allowing the system manager to identify only those printers that require security. This means that a user will not have to secure printing to their desktop printer, but that secured printing will occur for the high-end expensive 4-color printer or imagesetter. No more accidental prints that use up valuable resources. |
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Printer Profile Management:
Handle each printer uniquely! PrintChef's Printer Profile manager allows the PrintChef system to control how printing is handled based on printer. Profiles allow you to define how printing is done on the backs of two-sided prints, how paper is defined, what is the default paper size, and to save all the PrintChef settings on a per-printer basis. This is great when you want to save toner automatically on one printer but not on another. |
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Report Management: Report
on different parts of PrintChef! PrintChef's reporting system allows you to generate reports on links, on the logging system, on security management, and on the image list used to stamp images into a print-merge. Furthermore, you can list the image files that are stored remotely on your printer's hard disk (where you store images for high-speed printing). And, you can generate these reports as hardcopy, or in a format that can be read by any database. |
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Preview Printing: Available
during designing and printing! The preview dialog can be activated from four different parts of the PrintChef system. You can activate it for a single print job by checking the preview button in the PrintChef print-time Print Control dialog. You can preview directly from the Print Summary dialog to examine how multiple collected print jobs will look before they print. You can preview from re:Print before you print a previously spooled file so you can see how the job will reprint before you let it go to the printer. You can even activate previewing from the PrintChef Designer to see how your current print recipe will look before it prints. And, of course the PrintChef Designer allows you to either generate pages or to play back a re:Print file to simulate the printed output of any application. |
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Variable Data & Image
Printing: PrintChef's variable data and image substitution capabilities were the first in the industry-- having been introduced in 1992 with LaserMerge (PrintChef's predecessor). And, PrintChef's variable data and image substitution is the fastest in the industry, easily beating other $4,000, $5,000, and $20,000 packages by a factor of two. This helps reduce an 80,000 page print from 1 week to under 15 hours. PrintChef's variable data printing is good for big and little jobs, so you can use it at home to mail out those church socials, or in the office to mail out those stockholder reports. Imagine changing the name printed on a magazine cover for each subscriber... PrintChef did this in the Quebec magazine "Production Imprimee". |
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Booklets, Binding, and Page
Creep: PrintChef can make all forms of booklets, from calendars, flip books, steno pads, to standard booklets-- for any size page on paper that you can design (in PrintChef of course). PrintChef's automatic booklets are great when you want to generate a booklet from the web, but sometimes you need absolute control over how a booklet is laid out... ...In this case, PrintChef allows you to design your own booklet layouts, specify exact page size, paper size and orientation, multiple parts, multiple copies of a booklet on a single sheet of paper, and even the amount of "page creep". And with PrintChef's proprietary "page creep" adjustments, every page in your stapled booklets will know just how much to shift so that outside lines up with the inside. |
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Flash Printing: Even
Scotty can't give it anymore speed... PrintChef uses specialized features found in PostScript printing that allows PrintChef to speed up certain prints to the copy speed of the printer. We have sped up the printing of a mailer from 4 pages per minute to 92 pages per minute... and when you are printing an 80,000 page mailer, that makes a difference! This feature is simple to use-- just add or create the text, image, or other objects that will be replaced on each page, and then let PrintChef do the rest! |
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Take Command of Your Printer: PrintChef comes with 138 text commands to add the time, date, page numbers, serial numbers, printer name, user name, job name, job ID, total pages, copy count, database entries, and your own custom text to any print! It also comes with 10 question commands that you can tailor to your own needs. PrintChef print recipes with question commands will ask the user that is printing any question you design. It will incorporate the user's answer in the printed or faxed output! For example, you could ask the question "What Watermark?" and then incorporate whatever text is entered at print-time as a watermark for the print. |
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Multi-Up Designs: Layout
same and different pages... You can design multi-ups for common paper sizes by shrinking normal sized pages to fit onto a target paper size. For example, you could collect normal 8.5x11 portrait letter pages onto landscape tabloid paper to create newsletters. But, you are not limited to standard page sizes. With PrintChef, you can create a new page size and then collect the new pages onto any target paper size. For example, with PrintChef, you can create pages for a Day Runner planner by creating the new page size 3.67x6 and then organize those pages 3-up on a landscape letter paper to create 3 pages of Day Runner output per letter paper (see picture below). The really cool thing is that when your word processor uses a PrintChef page design, it will adopt the new size just like any other page size-- so you can create output that matches exactly what will print. |
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Create Bar Codes from an
Application: PrintChef uses models to add special effects to the printed output of any application. The key to using these models is the "MindGate Modeling" font. This single font is used to trigger the modeling system into action. When the text is detected (like a zip code) in the modeling font, it is analyzed to determine if it matches the attached model (like the PostNet bar code). If it does, the modeling system substitutes the bar code graphic or image. A really cool example of the modeling system is the "Signature" model, which replaces the word Signature with your signature. This is great for faxes-- signed directly from your computer! Check out our available models ...and the new ones appearing every month! |
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Place Your Mark or Logo on
Anything: PrintChef has its own graphics and text tools that allow you to add features to the printed output of any application. You can also import images and place them anywhere you want. You could create your own letterhead by importing your logo image, using the text tool to create the address block, and then adding a graphic line separator. Or, you can use a PrintChef text box to add PrintChef commands to the printed page, and create your own form letters.You can even paginate and date stamp a page as it prints! |
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Personalized Copies: Great
for invoices & board meetings! Because PrintChef can place any page onto any piece of paper, it can also create 4 pieces of paper, each with the same page on it. This is great for multi-copy invoices. You can then add specialized information to each copy, like Accounting, Shipping, Customer, and Warehouse. Personalization is also useful when you want to create limited distribution documents. You could mark each page with a different name, or make it into a watermark and print it behind the page contents. |
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