ImposeIQ Suite Help & User Guide

Professional imposition, variable-data printing, OMR mark generation, embellishment previewing and hot-folder automation for Duplo DC-series finishers — in one desktop suite.

Quick Start

Impose a print-ready PDF in 60 seconds

Your first VDP merge

Your first embellishment preview

The Suite at a Glance

The ImposeIQ Suite covers the whole path from customer artwork to a finished, cut, collated product on a Duplo DC-series finisher:

ImposeIQ — Imposition

The window

The job setup sits in two collapsible columns down the left, and the right side is a live sheet preview that redraws with every change. The first column is the file and the piece — Source PDF, Templates, Piece, Press Sheet. The second is what happens to it on the sheet — Shift All, Gutters, Perforation & Crease, OMR Marks & Barcodes, Output Options — and ends with the Generate buttons. Either column folds away to a strip with the Collapse button at its head when you want the preview bigger. The header carries the unit switch (inches / mm), which re-labels every field in the app rather than just one panel, a jump to the VDP Designer, the AI Workflow hot-folder assistant, and Settings.

Above the preview, Use TrimBox decides whether the PDF’s own trim box or your typed Piece figures set the trim, Show pages draws the artwork rather than empty cells, and Reset clears the layout and the loaded file back to your saved defaults. The preview toolbar pages through sheets, flips to the back of a duplex job with Show Back, zooms with − / + / Fit, and Cut Data opens the slit and cut positions as text you can copy.

The footer strip is the live check, and it is worth reading on every job. It reports pieces per sheet, the columns × rows the layout settled on, sheet usage as the percentage of the press sheet covered by finished pieces, the fold-line count, and then either a green Within … slit/cut limits (naming the DC chosen) or an amber list naming exactly what is out of range and by how much. Nothing is blocked — you can generate a sheet a DC will refuse — but you will not do it without being told. The full set of limits it applies is in What the footer checks.

Source PDF, lock scale & zoom

Drop a full-bleed PDF on the Source box. ImposeIQ inspects it:

• 1 page → the piece repeats across the sheet.
• Multi-page → pages pair up as duplex fronts/backs, or fill a gang layout.
• If the PDF carries a TrimBox, trim & bleed are read automatically (toggle Use TrimBox above the preview). Otherwise the manual Piece fields apply.

Lock scale (no shrink/enlarge) draws each page at its own native size, centered in its cell, instead of stretching it to fit the cell exactly — the safe choice when the file is already the correct physical size and you don't want even a hairline of scaling.

Zoom (%) scales the placed artwork in 1 % steps (default 100). It multiplies whatever the base size is — the fitted size normally, or the native size when Lock scale is on — so 97 pulls the art slightly inside each cell and 103 pushes bleed outward. Applies to the preview and the generated PDF alike.

Piece, grid & rotation

• Auto (best yield) — ImposeIQ computes the columns/rows that fit the most pieces, trying both orientations. This is the everyday mode.
• Manual columns / rows — type an exact grid (setting either to 0 returns to auto). Useful to force a smaller count for step-and-repeat proofs.
• Presets — common trim sizes (business card, postcards…) fill Trim W/H for you; bleed defaults to 0.125 in per side.
• Rotation on sheet — Auto (best yield), As designed (never rotate) or Rotated 90° (always).

Press sheet, margins & gutters

Pick a sheet under Press Sheet (built-ins plus any custom sizes you add in Settings). Feed: the lead edge is the top of the preview — that matters for every DC mark. Margins are set per edge under Shift All (lead, tail, left, right) and gutters separate the finished pieces trim-to-trim:

Duplex backs & gang layout

• Duplex — with a multi-page file, pages pair as front/back (alternating pages, or split — first half fronts, second half backs). Backs are automatically mirrored for the flip edge (long-edge left/right mirror, or short-edge top/bottom). Check them with Show Back above the preview.
• Gang — every page of a multi-page file is placed once, filling the sheet with different pieces. The preview labels which page lands in which cell; fill repeat tops up leftover cells with copies.

Booklet & signature imposition

Page layout, in Output Options, decides what goes in the cells. Repeat puts the same page in every cell. Gang walks a multi-page file through the cells in order. Booklet and Booklet ×2 impose saddle-stitch signatures — the page order folds into a book rather than reading across the sheet.

Gang adds a Fill order: Across rows (left to right), Down columns (lead to tail), HC Cut & Stack, which orders the pages so that after the stack is slit apart each pile is already in sequence — the right choice when the finished pieces are collated afterwards rather than handled one sheet at a time — or DC Series Cut & Stack, the same order the VDP Imposer uses: each column runs down through every sheet, so after the DC cuts the sheets you stack column 1’s pile under column 2’s, then column 3’s, and the whole run reads in order. The Automation app’s Imposition node follows whichever order the production profile was saved with. Neither cut & stack order repeats the set into empty cells. Repeat set to fill empty cells tops up the leftover cells on the last sheet with copies instead of leaving them blank.

Booklet needs a 2 × 1 grid — one spread per sheet — and Booklet ×2 needs 2 × 2, two identical spreads stacked so the top and bottom rows carry the same content; slit the Gutter Y gap apart after printing and one run has produced two signature stacks. Picking either mode sets the manual grid for you. Duplex and long-edge flip are locked on, and the page count is padded with blanks to a multiple of four per signature, because that is what folding actually requires.

The two modes treat the sheet differently, on purpose. Booklet turns the delivered sheet 90° clockwise — Landscape, artwork and OMR marks together — and leaves Width and Height exactly as you typed them. Booklet ×2 leaves both the orientation and the Width/Height as the grid naturally needs, so its sheet often ends up taller than it is wide. That is not a mistake: the DBM-700 always short-edge feeds 2-up signature work, up to 14 in wide and up to 24 in long with the SDF-2200 and the long sheet kit. Booklet ×2 also clears every DC and OMR mark and forces the piece to portrait, once, as you enter the mode — there is no cutter pass on a saddle-stitch job — and you can change any of it back by hand afterwards.

Perforation & crease

DC-F100 fold type adds the fold to the DC Job XML, so a DC-618, DC-648 or DC-746 with the DC-F100 folder gets it with the job: V1, V2, Gate, C-Gate, C, Z or D-Parallel. Picking a type sets up its creases if the count is different; a job that already has the right number keeps its positions, so move them to where you need them. Each piece must have 1 crease for V1 or V2, 2 for Gate, C or Z, and 3 for C-Gate or D-Parallel, otherwise the fold is left out and a warning says so. C and Z use the same lines, so the type you pick is what tells the folder which to do. DC Impose has the same choice under Crease and perforate. The JDF Bridge keeps the fold when it translates between XML and JDF, but the fold travels in a private Duplo attribute there, so a DC console reading the JDF directly will not see it: send XML when the job has a fold.

Add fold lines per piece: creases draw as an orange dash-dot line and perforations as a fine green dash, both in the preview and (optionally) in the generated PDF. The positions feed the DC Job XML so the finisher creases exactly where the layout says. Offset is measured from the piece’s trim-top for a horizontal line and its trim-left for a vertical one, and each line repeats once per piece across the whole grid rather than being drawn per cell.

A crease is one full-width pass and needs only its offset; Position… drops it on a half, third or quarter of the piece. A perforation — Perf, Micro, Slice-Score or Score — can also run only part of the way across, which is what Runs sets: pick First half, Middle third and so on and both ends are filled in from the piece's real placed size, or Part of it… to type them, with the length shown beside the boxes as you go. The order you type the two numbers in doesn't matter — a range that reads backwards is simply turned around, and one that runs past the edge is trimmed to it, so the line stays on screen while you work rather than blinking out mid-keystroke. If a line genuinely can't be cut — an offset outside the piece — the row says so instead of quietly showing nothing.

Standard Pattern lays down a whole set at once: pick the tool — Perf, Micro, Slice-Score or Score — the orientation, how many divisions, and (if you want) how far each line runs. Divisions run from 2 to 7, so one to six evenly spaced lines, and the note under the controls tells you in words what Apply is about to do before you press it. Applying again with the same tool replaces that tool’s lines rather than stacking more on top, so you can step the division count up and down freely. Score only exists on the RTM module, so choosing it locks the orientation to vertical.

Draw thin guide lines on the generated PDF puts the creases and perforations on the imposed sheet as an orange dash-dot and a fine green dash — and always as its own PDF layer, named ImposeIQ Fold & Perf Guides. Switch that layer off in Acrobat (or delete it) and the artwork underneath is untouched, so the same file can go to the finisher with the guides showing and to the customer without them. The OMR marks have their own separate layer when Apply as a layer is ticked in DC Marks, so the two can be turned on and off independently.

OMR Marks & Barcodes — what the finisher reads

Everything the DC-618 / 648 / 746 needs to recognize and process the sheet, all in millimeters, drawn on the front of every sheet:

Mark	What it does
Barcode (Code 39)	Job number 1–250 in the 20–50 mm zone; optional human-readable text under it.
QR code	Free-form payload assembled from User code · BC number · Page · Total pages · Filename (pick the parts in Settings).
REG mark	Corner registration mark; position set by Marks Top / Marks Right.
Skew mark	Bar that lets the machine measure sheet skew.
Shrink mark	Second registration lower on the sheet (Shrink Top, default 370 mm) so stock shrinkage can be compensated; clamped automatically on short sheets.
DDC circles	Circular registration marks (3 or 4 mm) down both side edges for the DDC-8000 / DDC-810 PRO.
U/D + DSM	Up/Down orientation marks and side marks (lead/trail distances) for sheet-order verification.
UD-320 register marks	The lead-edge marks the UD-320 rotary die cutter reads, per its own manual — see UD-320 register marks below. Unlocks the sheet turn.
End mark	Extra bar on the last sheet of the job.
Bold	Thickens all bars to 2 mm for hard-to-read stocks.

Marks on artwork — the DC reads these off bare paper, so a mark printed over inked area won't scan and shows on the finished piece. If any enabled mark lands on the artwork (its bleed box counts, since bleed is printed too) the mark is ringed in red on the preview and the cut summary says which ones and how far each would have to move to reach clear paper. Widen that edge's margin, change Marks Top / Marks Right, or put the cluster in a different corner.

Two things about this panel are easy to miss. Auto-assign this number when a template is saved, on by default, takes the next free barcode number from the job range in Settings → Job numbers, so two live jobs can never end up sharing a barcode; untick it to keep whatever you typed. And Apply as a layer puts every OMR mark on a switchable PDF layer named ImposeIQ OMR Marks, so a prepress operator can hide or delete the marks without touching the artwork — the layer prints by default, and it is separate from the fold and perf guide layer, so the two can be turned on and off independently.

Booklet-maker and collator barcodes

The booklet maker’s OMR and barcode marks and the DSC-10/60 collator barcode have their own section, Booklet Maker OMR & Barcode, collapsed until you open it and hidden when no machine in Settings uses them.

The Code 39 barcode above is the DC cutter’s job number. Three further marks exist for the feeding and collating side of the line, each belonging to a different kit and carrying different data. All of them can print on the same sheet.

The two barcodes are built the same way: a symbology (Code 39 by default; the booklet barcode also offers Interleaved 2 of 5, Code 128 and Codabar, and the collator barcode adds Code 93 and EAN-128), a total digit count — 4 to 120 on the booklet barcode, up to 120 on the collator — and a reading order, ascending or descending. An optional Function ID takes the first two digits, a Set ID takes up to 32 more, and a check digit (mod 10, weighted 3–1) can close the string. The sheet number fills what is left. Position is set as a distance from the lead edge plus an offset from the left edge, the sheet center or the right edge, with the bar dimensions typed in millimetres. The barcode prints on fronts only, in the same mark frame as the OMR marks, so a Booklet layout turns it along with them.

The end mark is simpler and fussier. Choose whether it falls on the last sheet of the document or the last sheet of every set (with Sheets per set), which edge it sits on, how far in, and where across. Length must be 15–20 mm and thickness 2–5 mm — that is the window the DSF sensor needs to track the bar as the sheet goes past, and ImposeIQ warns when you leave it. The bar prints 100% K; a tint or a screen will not trigger the sensor. It needs 5–10 mm of clear paper all round, so the quiet zone is knocked out white by default, and the app also catches the specific clash of a tail-edge slug line sitting inside a trail-edge end mark’s quiet zone.

UD-320 register marks

The UD-320 reads a register mark off whichever face of the sheet is up, so both sides carry marks — and the machine tells the two faces apart by how far the X mark sits from the center of the sheet. ImposeIQ places them for you from the geometry in the UD-310 Operation Manual (p.30):

X mark side picks which edge of the sheet the front's 100 mm mark sits toward. The back's 76 mm mark goes on the opposite side of the sheet, the way the manual's figure draws the pair. The back page is imposed mirrored, so ImposeIQ works that out from the duplex turn — and on a short-edge turn it also moves the back marks to the tail end of the page, since that edge feeds first.

UD reading mode is either X + Y — the usual choice, both marks on both faces — or Y only, which prints the center bar alone, 10 mm from the lead edge.

Source PDF already alternates front and back pages matters only for a marks-only pass over a file that is already imposed duplex — a File Name Tagger job, or the F flag in a tagged filename. With it ticked, even pages take the 100 mm X mark and odd pages the 76 mm one. Leave it off for a file of fronts. Imposing here marks both faces correctly on its own and ignores it.

ImposeIQ VDP places the same marks the same way on its merged records.

Turning the sheet for the UD-320

Tick UD-320 register marks and a further option appears: Turn the imposed artwork on the sheet, by 1° or 2°, clockwise or counter-clockwise. It is offered only with UD-320 marks on, because it is the rotary die that wants the work presented slightly off-square — a straight die edge lying exactly parallel to the cylinder strikes along its whole length at once instead of rolling into the stock.

The sheet size does not change, so the turn eats into the margins: the block sweeps its corners outward. A 2° turn on a 10 × 15.5 in block needs about 10.53 × 15.84 in of room. ImposeIQ measures that and warns if it will not fit or if the clearance drops below 0.02 in, rather than letting a piece run off the edge. The preview shows the turn exactly as the output has it, marks square and artwork angled.

ImposeIQ VDP has the same option in its own DC marks panel, working the same way on the merged records.

Choosing the DC machine

DC machine in the XML and JDF, at the top of OMR Marks & Barcodes, says which DC runs this job: DC-618, DC-648, DC-746 or DC-746 B2. Leave it on From Settings and every DC ticked in Settings → Machines counts.

• Warnings in the footer are only for the DC you picked, and the “within limits” line names it.
• The press sheet list says what each size means for it, such as 14 × 20 — fits DC-648 or 18 × 24 — exceeds DC-746. On From Settings it names only the sizes the ticked machines disagree about.
• The XML and JDF carry the machine name. DC-746 B2 writes DC-746, the machine the ticket drives.
• The choice is saved with the template, and an imported JDF sets it.

For a job run from the DC-746 JDF Console and a BCR-02, three marks settings go together:

• QR code and QR holds only the JDF job ID: the Console matches the scan against the ticket’s JobID, so the QR holds that and nothing else. Ticking the second turns on the first.
• White space around the REG mark and QR keeps 3 mm of paper clear around both. On a tight layout that can cut into the nearest piece, so check the corner on an 8-up.
• JDF: DC has the DC-ST100 stacker names the stacker in the ticket. With it ticked the footer also checks the DC-ST100’s limits.

The DC-746 B2: DC-20000 cut sheets

Pick DC-746 B2 as the DC machine and a press sheet over 370 mm each way, such as ISO B2, and a DC-20000 cut sheets panel opens under Press Sheet. The DSF-20K feeds the B2 sheet, the DC-20000 cuts it across its feed into 2 or 3 cut sheets, and each turns 90° onto the DC-746. A sheet up to 370 mm wide skips all of that and feeds straight into the DC-746.

The sheet is laid out as a 20 mm lead strip, the cut sheets with 10 mm gutters between them, and at least a 10 mm trail. A 500 × 707 mm sheet gives 2 cut sheets of about 333.5 mm or 3 of about 219 mm. Each must be 210–370 mm long. The panel lists the cut positions from the B2 lead: set them on the DC-20000, whose own job files ImposeIQ does not write.

• The preview, grid and footer show the chosen cut sheet as the DC-746 sees it, with its lead edge at the top. The form’s margins and gutters apply to each cut sheet, and the width and height stay the B2 sheet.
• Each cut sheet has its own REG mark, 12 mm in from the cut and the B2’s left edge, its own barcode and its own QR. The B2 also prints the DC-20000’s REG line across its lead, 1.5 mm wide and 13 mm in, when REG is on.
• Equal lengths are one DC-746 JOB, with one XML or JDF. A multi-page file runs through the cut sheets in order, and a single sheet fills them all.
• Unequal lengths are one JOB each: the barcode number goes up by one per cut sheet, the job name gains JOB A, JOB B, and the QR, XML and JDF follow, so an export saves one file each. A multi-page file stays on equal lengths.
• Double-sided B2 sheets line the backs up for the flip you pick. Landscape is ignored. PDF layers don’t carry onto the B2 page as layers you can switch.

Photo Layout does the same for photo orders, dealing several sizes onto one B2: see B2 sheets on the DC-746 B2. In a workflow, see DC-746 and DC-746 B2 JDF workflows.

What the footer checks

These are the numbers the footer strip measures every layout against, taken from the Duplo spec pages. They are warnings, not locks — the app will still generate the sheet, and there are jobs where you know better than the check — but every amber line is something the machine is likely to argue about.

Two further checks are about marks rather than geometry. Every enabled OMR mark is measured against every piece, and any that lands on inked area — bleed counts, since bleed is printed — is ringed in red on the preview and named in the footer with how far it would have to move to reach clear paper. The machine reads these marks off bare paper, so one printed over artwork will not scan and will show on the finished piece. The end mark gets its own set of checks for length, thickness and quiet zone.

Generating output

• Generate Imposed PDF — builds the press-ready file. Open PDF after generating, on by default, opens it as soon as it is written.
• Export DC Job XML — the slit/cut/crease program the DC cutter imports directly. Embed DC job XML in the generated PDF attaches it inside the PDF so one file carries both.
• Slug line — an audit line (file, trim, N-up, sheet, date) drawn in the margin at your chosen position, or off.
• Secure Transfer — encrypt the PDF/XML pair for sharing outside the shop (see below).

Trim marks at each piece is on by default and is kept out of the lead zone where the machine reads its marks. Its four numbers are worth setting once to your house standard: Length (3 mm default, 1–20), Offset from the trim corner (0.5 mm default, 0–5), Thickness in points (0.5 pt default, 0.1–3) and Color, which is a full colour picker rather than a black-or-nothing switch — useful when the marks have to survive on a dark stock.

Cut Data, on the preview toolbar, opens the slit and cut positions for the current layout as plain text you can select or copy to the clipboard, in inches and millimetres. The same panel exports a Duplo HC-series guillotine program: a sequential .csv for an HC-550i or HC-680i that you copy straight to a USB stick, slits first, with a Job Number and Job Name. Auto-assign the job number on export takes the next number from the HC job range in Settings → Job numbers, the same way the barcode number does.

Secure Transfer

Wraps a PDF, a DC job XML, or both, into a single .iqenc package encrypted with a passphrase — AES-256-GCM with a PBKDF2-derived key, all of it the browser's own cryptography rather than anything home-made. It protects the files in transit: email, a USB stick, a shared drive. It is not a substitute for keeping either computer secure, and it is only ever as strong as the passphrase you pick.

Create Package — choose a PDF and/or an XML (or tick Use the current layout's DC job XML instead to include what is on screen), type the passphrase twice, and save. Open Package — choose the .iqenc, type the passphrase, and each file inside is saved one at a time. The status line names the full path every file was written to; if you cancel a save it says which file was skipped rather than leaving it looking like the passphrase failed.

Templates

Save the entire layout — piece, sheet, margins, gutters, rotation, fold lines, every mark and its numbers, lock scale and zoom — under a name and an optional description, and recall it with two clicks. Templates are numbered in the order you create them and live on this machine; Settings → Templates lists every one with its number, name and description and is where you delete the ones you have finished with. Saving a template is also what draws the next barcode number, if auto-assign is on.

Clicking Save confirms it right there: a green line under the name says the template was saved, or updated if the name already existed, and the button reads Saved ✓ for a few seconds. An orange line says what went wrong if it could not be saved. A saved template appears in the workflow step’s list the next time that window comes to the front.

Three buttons move a layout off this machine. Export file writes the template out and Import file reads one back, which is how a layout reaches a second workstation or a colleague. Import DC Job XML / PDF… goes the other way: hand it a DC job XML, or a PDF with one embedded, and ImposeIQ reads the slit, cut and crease program back out into a live layout — the quickest way to pick up a job that already exists at the finisher.

Settings & defaults

The Settings panel holds machine-level configuration:

• Custom press sheets — add your house sizes to the Sheet dropdown.
• QR code contents — which parts build the QR payload.
• DC Marks slug line — position (off, tail left/center/right, or either side vertical) and which values print: Shrink Top, Marks Top, Right, Barcode number. Saved immediately.
• Defaults — how the app starts and what Reset returns to: Show pages, Trim marks, Lock scale, Auto (best yield), rotation, slug position, gutters, and the full set of DC mark defaults. Set them once, click Save, and every session starts your way.

Preflight & Repair

ImposeIQ Preflight PRO

ImposeIQ Preflight PRO (it was called Preflight Repair) is the one preflight tool on the Home screen - the older ImposeIQ Preflight no longer has a tile. It is also what the MIS uses to check artwork as it arrives on a job. It reads every object on every page, the way callas pdfToolbox and Enfocus PitStop do: each path, text run, image and gradient, with its real position, colour, overprint and transparency. The older structural checks only looked at the file’s framework. Choose a PDF, pick a profile and press Check.

What it checks. About forty checks in eight groups:

• Pages and bleed. Bleed measured side by side from the artwork that reaches the trim (“short on the left, 0.03 in”). Also: text within the safety margin, a missing trim box, blank pages, mixed page sizes, the finished size against the job size, and page counts.
• Colour. RGB and Lab in vector art, text and images. Also: spot colours (with a keep list for spot UV and foil plates), the same spot under two spellings, registration colour on the artwork, and total ink for vector art and inside CMYK images. White objects set to overprint, which vanish on press, are caught too.
• Text and fonts. Fonts not embedded, Type 3 fonts, text below a minimum size, small reversed text, small rich-black text, small text in more than one ink, and black text not set to overprint.
• Lines. Hairlines and zero-width lines, measured at their printed width.
• Images. Effective resolution at the size each image is placed (with a separate floor for 1-bit line art), resolution far above what is needed, JPEG 2000 / JBIG2 compression, and 16-bit images.
• Transparency, layers and interactive content. Transparency, layers, content on hidden layers, printing comments and stamps, form fields, JavaScript and attached files.
• PDF/X through the existing structural checks.

Profiles. Profiles are built in for a digital press with Duplo finishing, offset coated (320% ink), offset uncoated (280%), newsprint (240%), wide format, Duplo DDC embellishment, PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-4. Adjust the checks lets you change the severity (error, warning, note or off) and the limits of each check. Save the result under your own name; your profiles appear in the workflow step and the MIS as well.

Fixes. Each fix changes only the objects it is about. The fixed file is always saved as a copy. The fixes:

• Colour: overprint off on white objects; small black text set to overprint; small rich-black text to 100% K; spot colours to CMYK through each spot’s own CMYK recipe, keeping any spots you list (SpotUV, Foil); merging a spot named two ways; registration colour to black.
• Lines: hairlines thickened to a minimum.
• Document: hidden-layer content deleted and the layers removed; printing comments and form fields flattened into the page; JavaScript and application private data removed; an ICC output intent set.
• Already available before: mirrored bleed, page-box clean-up, rotation, attached files, the Trapped flag and ICC colour conversion.

Seeing the problems. Click a finding to open its page with every problem outlined: red for errors, orange for warnings, blue for notes. The trim and bleed boxes are shown dashed. Two more tabs are useful: Inks, fonts & images lists every ink, font, image (with its ppi) and colour space, and What changed lists what the fixes did.

Reports. Save report writes a self-contained HTML report. Save marked-up PDF writes a copy of the PDF with each problem outlined and commented, which is handy to send to a customer.

callas pdfToolbox, Enfocus PitStop and other engines

Shops that already own a preflight engine can use it through ImposeIQ. Open Engines… and add one. Find installed engines looks in Program Files for pdfToolbox and PitStopServerCLI.

• callas pdfToolbox (command line). Runs your .kfpx profile and reads pdfToolbox’s XML report. Exit codes 0–8 are the result (3 and 8 mean errors); 100 and above mean pdfToolbox could not run (licence, a damaged or encrypted file, a timeout). When the profile has fixups, the corrected PDF is kept.
• Enfocus PitStop Server (command line). Runs PitStopServerCLI with a Preflight Profile (.ppp) or Action List (.eal) and reads the task report and the XML report.
• Any other engine with a command line. Write its arguments with {input}, {output}, {report}, {profile}, {outdir} and {name}, and say which exit codes mean a pass or warnings only.
• Hot folders. For PitStop Server, Enfocus Switch or pdfToolbox Server hot folders. ImposeIQ drops the PDF into the input folder and waits for it to reappear in the success, warning or error folder, reading any report left in the report folder.

Whichever engine runs, the results come back in the same form: pass or fail, errors, warnings, pages and reports. No password is stored for any engine.

In workflows and the MIS

Workflows: the Preflight PRO (ImposeIQ app) step, first in the ImposeIQ apps list, checks every PDF on a job with the built-in engine or any engine above. The older Preflight and Preflight Repair steps are no longer offered for new workflows; workflows that already use them keep running, and their step name says to use Preflight PRO. The example workflows use Preflight PRO.

• With the built-in engine it can also apply fixes and carry the fixed file forward.
• It can check the finished size against the MIS job and save an HTML report and a marked-up PDF to a folder.
• It sets [var.preflightPassed], [var.preflightErrorCount], [var.preflightErrors] and [var.preflightReport] so a Route step can send failed files for approval.

MIS: each PDF on a job’s Artwork card has a Preflight button. The result shows as a Passed or Failed badge and is written into the job’s history. Setup → Artwork preflight chooses the engine and profile, whether to check against the job’s trim size, and whether to check incoming artwork automatically. That is on unless you turn it off: every PDF that arrives on a job — attached by hand, on a Storefront order, from a JDF ticket or from a workflow — is checked with Preflight PRO in the background, and the badge appears when it is done. Reports go in a Preflight folder beside the artwork (a Storefront upload’s go in the job’s own folder). A fixed copy never replaces the customer’s file.

What it is for

The rest of this section describes the earlier Preflight Repair layout (now Preflight PRO). Its repairs are all still available as fixes above.

A customer file arrives and you need two questions answered before it costs you a press run: what is wrong with it, and how much of that can be fixed without opening the artwork. Preflight Repair answers both. It checks a PDF against the same rule set ImposeIQ Preflight uses, then rewrites the file’s own structure to fix what can be fixed safely, and writes a new PDF beside the original.

The distinction worth holding on to: Preflight reports, Repair rewrites. Running diagnostics never touches the file. Repair never silently overwrites it either — it always asks where to save, and the name it offers is the original with _repaired on the end.

The window

Pick a file with Choose PDF… and the header shows its name and size. Nothing else in the window does anything until a file is loaded — both action buttons tell you to choose a PDF first.

The two actions sit together above the settings because they are the whole tool. Run Diagnostics reads the file and lists what it finds. Repair & Save As… applies whatever is ticked under Repairs to apply and asks where to write the result. They are independent: the diagnostics settings below do not influence a repair, and the repair options do not influence a diagnostic run.

Presets

The Preset card saves the whole set of repair options under a name, so the combinations you reach for repeatedly are one click away — a “leave the colour alone” set for customers who supply RGB on purpose, a “no bleed added” set for files that must not grow, a full clean-up set for the worst of the incoming work. Choose a saved preset and every option below changes to match. Type a name and press Save to store the options as they currently stand; the ✕ beside the list deletes the selected one after a confirmation.

Presets store the repair options only. The PDF/X standard and minimum DPI under Diagnostics are not part of a preset.

Run Diagnostics

Diagnostics has two settings of its own, and both apply to this run only.

PDF/X standard starts at None — skip and offers three targets. Each one turns on a specific bundle of rules and a maximum PDF version:

All three require exactly one OutputIntent with subtype GTS_PDFX and the keys that go with it, an unencrypted file with a document ID in the trailer, a Trapped value of True or False in the Info dictionary, every font embedded, no referenced or attached files, and page boxes that are present, correctly nested and sitting at the origin.

Min. image DPI checks each image at the size it is actually placed on the page, not at its stored pixel dimensions. The same picture used twice at two different sizes is checked twice, once at each size — which is precisely the case worth catching, because it is the small placement that passes and the large one that goes soft on press.

What the standing rules check

Even with PDF/X set to skip, a diagnostic run always applies the default rule set, grouped four ways:

The result is a count and a table of rule, message and page number. “No issues found against the checked rules” means exactly that — against the rules that were checked, not against every rule that exists.

Repairs to apply

Each repair is independent and each one is off by default except page-box normalization. Nothing is applied until you press Repair & Save As….

Add missing bleed

Mirrors the artwork outward on any page that does not already have enough bleed, at the size in the box beside it — 0.125″ by default, adjustable in sixteenths from 0.03125″ to 0.5″. Pages that already qualify are left untouched.

This is the control behind the “no bleed added when the file has none” case: leave it off and the tool is guaranteed never to add bleed, which is what you want when the customer’s file is deliberately trimmed flush or when a mirrored edge would look wrong. The report afterwards says how many pages were processed and how many already had enough.

Normalize page boxes

On by default, because it fixes the most common geometry complaints without changing a pixel. MediaBox is moved to 0,0, CropBox is reset to match MediaBox, and a TrimBox equal to the MediaBox is added — but only on a page that has neither TrimBox nor ArtBox, so an existing trim definition is never overwritten. Any other box that was correctly placed relative to the old origin moves by the same amount, so nothing drifts out of register.

Clear page rotation

Sets /Rotate to 0 on every page. Worth doing when a file looks right on screen but imposes sideways, which is the usual symptom of rotation carried in the page dictionary rather than in the artwork.

Remove embedded / attached files

Strips the document’s embedded-files name tree and any file-attachment annotation. Both PDF/X and most RIPs object to them, and they are almost never something the customer meant to send.

Set document Trapped flag

A dropdown rather than a checkbox: Leave as-is, True or False. PDF/X requires the Info dictionary to say one or the other; plenty of files say neither. Set it to False unless the file really has been trapped.

Convert RGB/Gray to CMYK

This is a real ICC conversion, not a formula. Every plain RGB or grayscale fill, stroke and image is converted against the target profile you pick. What is deliberately left alone: spot colours (Separation and DeviceN), Indexed-palette images, JPEG2000 and fax-compressed images, and anything already CMYK. The report lists what was left so you can see what is still there.

Intent offers relative colorimetric (the default and the right answer for most print work), perceptual, saturation and absolute colorimetric. Absolute simulates the source paper white and is rarely what you want on a job going to press.

Declare the target profile as a PDF OutputIntent writes the profile into the file so a RIP knows what the CMYK numbers mean. On its own it does not certify PDF/X-1a conformance — run the PDF/X checks as well.

Saving the result

Repair & Save As… opens a save dialog in the original file’s folder with the name already filled in as original_repaired.pdf. Cancel and nothing is written — the window says so rather than pretending it saved. Afterwards the right column lists What changed, one line per repair that actually did something, including the repairs that ran and found nothing to do.

In a workflow

Repair is also available as an Automation Workflow step, which is where it earns its keep: a hot folder that repairs every arriving file to a saved preset before anything else touches it turns the worst part of customer intake into something that happens without you. The workflow step uses the same engine and the same presets as this window. See Preflight templates under Workflow Automation.

ImposeIQ VDP — Variable Data

The window

The console walks top-to-bottom through a job: 1 Template → 2 Data → 3 Fields → 4 Imposition → 5 DC Marks → 6 Merge & Export, plus PDF/VT fields and the sheet slug. The big canvas is your design surface; the header toggles Design / Preview, saves and opens projects, and opens Settings.

1 · Template PDF

The template is the static artwork every record prints on. Drop it in — 1 page = front only, 2 pages = front & back (page 2 is adopted as the back automatically). Load side-2 (back) PDF… attaches a separate back file; Back flips on picks the mirroring edge (long = left/right, short = top/bottom).

Bleed in this PDF decides what happens to a file that does not declare a TrimBox. Use the page exactly as supplied (the default) treats the page as the finished trim size: nothing is resized and the cut marks go on the page edge — right for a 3.5 × 2 card supplied at final size. Add 1/8 in mirrored bleed grows the page by an eighth of an inch on all sides, mirroring the edge pixels outward, for artwork that runs to the edge and arrived without bleed; the piece then imposes 3.75 × 2.25 and the cut marks sit an eighth of an inch inside the artwork, which is where they belong on a bled job. A PDF that does carry a TrimBox is read from the file either way, and the line under the picker always says what was done. Changing the setting re-reads the original file, so it is safe to flip after loading.

Lock scale and Zoom (%) work exactly like ImposeIQ: when imposing, each merged piece is normally stretched to fit its cell; lock draws it at native size instead, and zoom scales the result in 1 % steps.

2 · Data

Drop a CSV or Excel file. Columns appear as chips, and View data table opens the whole list for checking. Records drive everything downstream: previews, merge range, counters and PDF/VT metadata.

3 · Fields

Four kinds of field go on the template. Each is dragged to move, resized from the corners, rotated by the yellow dot, nudged with the arrow keys and removed with Del. Shift-click selects several at once, and the align buttons snap them to the first-selected field — or to the page when only one is selected. Every field can also carry a Condition, so it prints only on the records that match.

Text

Mix static text with «Column» placeholders; one line per row keeps address blocks tidy. Fonts are the four built-ins — Helvetica/Arial, Times Roman, Courier and Symbol — plus any TTF or OTF you add with Add font file, which saves into the project so the job opens the same way on another machine. Size, bold and italic, alignment, colour and rotation are all per field. Rotation has coarse and fine controls: the usual 90° steps, plus 1° and 2° clockwise and counter-clockwise nudges for artwork that was designed slightly off square.

Image

Build an image library with Add images (JPEG · PNG · TIFF), then drive the field one of three ways:

Fit decides what happens when the picture and the box disagree: Fit keeps proportions inside the box, Fill crops to cover it, Stretch distorts to match. Opacity is per field.

Barcode

Generated with bwip-js, so the preview and the export are the same code. Eleven symbologies:

The value mixes static text with «Column» placeholders the same way a text field does, and the Insert data column helper drops a placeholder in at the cursor. Human-readable text prints the digits under a linear code; Bar color and Transparent bg handle codes that sit on coloured artwork. A barcode is never stretched to fit its box — the whole point is that it still scans.

Number

A counter, and more flexible than it first looks. Three presets get you started — Sequential «{n}», Pagination «Page {n} of {p}», and Bates stamp «BATES{n}» at six digits — or write your own format mixing static text, column placeholders and tokens:

Counts up sets the scope, and it is the setting that catches people out. Once per record means copies of the same record share a number — right for a raffle ticket per person. Once per output page advances on every side, front and back — right for sequential numbering that has to be unique on every printed face.

Switch to Preview to page through real records; fields that overflow their box are flagged there rather than discovered in the merged PDF.

4 · Imposition

The same engine as ImposeIQ, tuned for VDP runs: sheet size (default from Settings), piece size from the template, bleed, margin, gutters, manual or auto grid, rotation, crop marks — and the crucial record order:

• Across rows — 1, 2, 3 left→right.
• Down columns — 1, 2, 3 top→bottom.
• Cut & Stack — records are distributed so that after the finisher cuts the pile, the stacks collate straight into mailing order. No hand-collating.

5 · OMR & Barcode

Identical marks and geometry to ImposeIQ's DC Marks — barcode, QR, REG, skew, shrink, DDC, U/D, DSM, end mark — drawn on the front of every imposed sheet. The DC Marks slug line from Settings prints here too.

6 · Merge & Export

Choose the record range (From / To) and Copies each, then:

• Export Imposed PDF — merged records laid out N-up with marks. The everyday output.
• Open the PDF after saving — tick it and every exported PDF opens in your default viewer the moment it's saved.
• Export 1-Up Merged PDF — one record per page (front/back interleaved for duplex), for digital presses that impose downstream.
• Export PDF/VT and Export Imposed PDF/VT — see below.

Embellishment — spot UV & foil on variable data

A record can carry coating as well as ink: the same name in varnish, a foiled logo on the premium rows only, or both together. Tick Produce coating plates with every export and every export writes its coating files beside the print file, as …_SpotUV.pdf and …_Foil.pdf.

7 · PDF/VT record fields

PDF/VT wraps the merged output in an ISO 16612-2 structure — a DPart page hierarchy with per-record Document Part Metadata built from the data columns you tick — plus an output intent from your ICC profile. Set the destination ICC profile and Output Condition Identifier (e.g. GRACoL2013, FOGRA39) once in Settings.

8 · Imposed sheet slug

A "Sheet N of M · Records …" audit line on the front of every imposed sheet, with position, font size, color and edge distance controls. Record numbers are absolute rows from your data file, so a reprint range is easy to identify.

Projects (.viq)

Save Project bundles everything — template PDF, back side, data, images, custom fonts, every field, and the full imposition/DC setup — into a single .viq file. Open restores it identically on any machine running the suite. Save one per repeating job and reruns become a two-click operation.

Settings

• Units (inches/mm) and Theme — shared across the whole suite.
• Default sheet size and Default rotate piece (Auto — best yield, Never, Always 90°) for new projects.
• Lock scale on by default — new sessions start with the template lock enabled.
• Imposition & DC Marks defaults — dial in sections 4 & 5 the way your shop runs, hit Save current as default, and every new project starts there.
• DC Marks slug line — same options as ImposeIQ: position plus Shrink Top / Marks Top / Right / Barcode number.
• PDF/VT defaults — ICC profile and output condition.

OMR Generator

Marks for a PDF that is already imposed. Where the Imposer draws marks as part of building a sheet, this puts them on a file somebody else built — and it does it in volume, without anyone opening the app.

What it is for

A finished, imposed PDF arrives from a customer or another prepress system and it needs Duplo collation marks before it can run on a bookletmaker or a folder. Nothing about the layout needs changing — only the marks are missing. The OMR Generator adds them to the file as it stands.

The marks it adds

Bold Marks increases the registration, skew, end and shrink marks to 2 mm thickness. Turn it on when marks are being missed on dark or heavily inked stock — a thin mark on a dark ground is the usual reason a set does not split where it should.

Positions are set the way the machines are specified: Width Marks from Lead Edge, Conveyance Mark from Trail Edge, DDC Marks from Edge, mark length, and registration mark diameter — all in millimetres, because that is how the finishers are documented.

The QR / secondary code

As well as the collation barcode, a sheet can carry a second code built from the job’s own facts. Tick the parts you want — user code, the barcode number, page number, total pages, a static text string, the file name — and put them in the order you want with the arrows. They are joined with hyphens in the order shown, so a code scanned at the machine reads the same way every time and can be matched against a job ticket without anyone interpreting it.

Size and the right and bottom margins are set in millimetres. Show barcode text prints the number in human-readable form under a linear barcode, which is worth having whenever an operator may need to read it aloud or type it into a controller.

Watch folder workflow

The app is built to be left running rather than opened per job. Three folders drive it:

The folder paths are saved, so the arrangement survives a restart and the app can sit in the tray watching. The tray menu shows whether the watcher is active and how many files it has processed.

Explorer integration

Apply OMR (Explorer) adds a right-click Apply OMR item to PDFs in Windows Explorer, so a one-off file can be marked without opening the app at all. Toggling the same switch off removes the registry entry again — nothing is left behind.

Statistics and troubleshooting

A running count of processed jobs sits on the main screen and can be reset per shift, which is the simplest way to confirm the watcher is actually doing something.

File Name Tagger — marks and job tickets in the filename

The File Name Tagger writes machine settings and job information into the filename, so a PDF carries its own instructions wherever it goes. Nothing is stored in a database, nothing is embedded in the file, and nothing has to travel alongside it — the name is the ticket:

What it is for

A tagged file solves two different problems at once.

• The machine settings travel with the artwork. A file named Booklet (J12 L7 RE).pdf tells the Imposer to draw barcode 12, 7 mm marks, a registration mark and an end mark — no template to pick, no operator to brief. Drop it in the Apply marks folder and the marks get drawn.
• The commercial information travels with it too. Customer, quantity, PO, due date and priority sit in the second group, where the shop can read them straight off a folder listing and a workflow can route, name, email and bill by them.

How the two groups are told apart

Both delimiters are yours to choose, and hot folders fill up with names written by older builds, so position is never trusted. The rule is the shape of the token:

Because a ticket token always has a hyphen after its key and a mark token never does, a group can be identified by reading it. A group that parses as neither is left alone — a title like Menu (Spring).pdf keeps its parenthetical and is not mistaken for a tag.

Profiles and watch folders

A profile is a named set of codes, and each one owns a real subfolder under the watch root. The folder is the instruction: drop a PDF into Watch\Booklet and it comes out carrying the Booklet profile's codes. There is no UI step for the operator to forget. Open this profile’s folder jumps straight to the watch folder that profile is bound to — quicker than retracing the path, and it is how you check that files are actually landing where the profile expects.

• Folders are created on demand, so a new profile is droppable immediately.
• Renaming a profile moves its folder — unless files are still sitting in it, in which case the old one is left alone and both exist, which you can see and sort out.
• A file is only touched once it has stopped growing. A PDF copied across a network share appears the moment the copy starts; renaming it mid-write would corrupt it.
• Keep the original copies instead of moving, leaving the dropped file in place.

Everything in the window edits a draft. Nothing reaches disk — no renamed profile, no new watch folder — until Apply is pressed, so a half-typed name never creates a stray folder. Profiles that Apply is about to act on are flagged with a dot.

Marks — the on/off codes

These are the boolean marks. They collect into a single uppercase-only token at the end of the mark group, in this order, so RBQC means registration + bold + QR + caption.

Values — the numbers and choices

Tick a value to write it into the filename. Anything left unticked is left out of the name entirely, and an omitted code means "leave the machine on whatever it is already set to" — which is not the same instruction as "set it to 0". That is why each value is opt-in rather than dumping all nineteen into every name.

The job ticket

The second group carries who the job is for and what is being made. It is written by the Job ticket section in the main pane, and every field is optional — a blank one is simply left out of the name.

Text is squeezed into something a filename can carry everywhere: spaces become underscores and anything outside A–Z a–z 0–9 . _ - is dropped, so Acme Printing & Litho, Inc. becomes Acme_Printing_Litho_Inc. That is lossy on purpose — the filename is the traveling copy of the ticket, not the system of record. If the shop needs the name spelled exactly, that lives in your MIS.

Job ticket for this drop

Customer, sales rep and cost center belong to the profile — retyping them on every drop is how they end up inconsistent. Job number, PO, quantity and due date change job to job, so those four also appear in a Job ticket for this drop panel beside the drop zone.

• It layers on top of the profile: a box left blank keeps whatever the profile already says.
• It is never saved with the profile and never written to disk. A stale job number silently stamped onto tomorrow's files would be worse than typing it again.
• The job number clears itself after each drop — it belongs to one job. The PO stays, because a batch usually shares one.

The preview at the top of the window shows the finished name with the two groups colored separately, and it tracks the drop panel as well as the profile, so what you see is exactly what the next drop will produce.

Applying the marks back

Apply marks closes the loop. Point it at a folder of tagged PDFs and it reads the codes back off each name and hands them to the Imposer engine to draw — the same engine, the same marks, not a copy. Nothing in the applier draws a mark itself.

Codes it does not recognize are logged and ignored rather than failing the file, so a name that picked up an extra parenthetical somewhere still gets its marks.

Machines you have turned off

Marks for a machine unticked in Settings → Machines on the Home screen are hidden across the whole suite. A code for a machine you do not own can still sit in a filename harmlessly — it simply has nothing to drive.

Metadata Tagger — the same tag, inside the PDF

The File Name Tagger writes the mark codes and the job ticket into the filename. The Metadata Tagger writes exactly the same thing into the file, and leaves the name alone. Two tools rather than one switch, because a shop normally standardises on one or the other, and one folder tree per tool means a drop is never ambiguous about which it was meant to be.

What it writes

Two carriers, on purpose. Belt and braces, because prepress is full of tools that only read one of them:

The iq:marks and iq:ticket strings are the authoritative pair — the same tokens the filename version writes between its brackets. The per-field keys are there so an MIS can map one value without implementing the grammar:

Title, Subject, Keywords and Author

Those four are the fields a person actually sees, so the ticket can fill them in. The setting lives beside the folder pickers and has three positions:

Metadata another tool already put there

Artwork usually arrives with an XMP packet already in it — Dublin Core from InDesign, the press's own fields, a color policy. That packet is merged, not replaced. Only the ImposeIQ rdf:Description is removed and rewritten; everything else is left byte for byte as it was, and re-tagging the same file over and over leaves exactly one copy of our block rather than stacking them.

Profiles, folders and the drop panel

Identical to the File Name Tagger, deliberately — an operator who knows one knows the other. One profile per watch subfolder, the folder is the instruction, a file is only touched once it has stopped growing, nothing reaches disk until Apply, and the Job ticket for this drop panel layers job number, PO, quantity and due date on top of the profile for the files you drop by hand. Choose a PDF… loads a single file to tag by hand, and Open this profile’s folder jumps straight to the watch folder that profile is bound to — the quickest way to confirm files are landing where the profile expects.

The one visible difference is the preview. The filename version can show the finished name in a line; here the honest answer to "what does this do to my file" is a list, so the preview shows the two token strings, how many Info keys they become, and the marks and ticket in plain words.

Inspect a PDF

Reads what a file is already carrying and changes nothing. The badge says which carrier answered, which is the useful part:

It also shows Title, Subject, Author and the page count, so it doubles as a quick check on what a customer actually sent.

In a workflow

Tag PDF metadata (Files) is the same encoder driven by step settings, for jobs that arrived by email and went through preflight rather than being dropped in a folder. It has three modes:

Die Line Reader

A customer sends a die-line PDF: the finished shape drawn as colored rules over the artwork. Someone then has to work out what the machine is being asked to do and build the job by hand, measuring positions off the page. The Die Line Reader does that reading for you — drop the PDF in, check what it found, and export the DC job XML.

The two color conventions

There are two conventions in circulation and they contradict each other, so the reader has to know which one a file follows. It works this out on its own; the Color convention box shows what it decided and lets you overrule it.

Customer die line — what a print buyer's designer draws:

Duplo DC template — the templates Duplo supplies, named like 648-B2-604/TableTent_12x18_2up:

Reading a die

Setting your own colors

The two conventions above cover most files, but plenty of shops draw their dies their own way. The ⚙ Settings button sets the rules: one row each for Cut / slit, Perforation and Crease, and for each a color family and whether it counts when drawn solid, dashed, or either.

Faint lines at the bottom of the dialog sets how washed out a color may be before it is treated as artwork instead of a die line. The default keeps pale tint boxes out of the way. Lower it only if a die drawn in a tint is coming up empty.

How the finished pieces are worked out

A DC controller does not think in cut lines, it thinks in blocks. Where the cut lines close into rectangles the reader uses those directly — which is exactly what a Duplo template gives you, since it draws each finished block as a rectangle. That is the accurate answer and it is tried first.

When the cuts do not close — a die of bare slits and cuts running off the sheet — it falls back to reading the bands they divide the sheet into, and decides which are product by width: an outer band with the sheet edge on one side and a cut on the other is trim, and trim is always narrower than the pieces it is trimmed from. A sheet with a single cut down the middle and pieces running to the edges gives two equal bands, neither narrow, so both are kept — the right answer for that layout.

The panel says which method was used, and the block outlines are drawn on the preview, so you can see what it decided before you export rather than at the machine.

The XML it writes

The same DuploDCJobTemplate the Imposer exports, so a file from here imports into the PC Controller — and back into ImposeIQ — exactly like one produced by the rest of the suite. One CutBlock per finished piece, in points, origin bottom-left.

Perforations are written relative to the piece they cross rather than to the sheet, which is how the controller addresses them: it repeats a single entry onto every matching block. Four identical perforations across a 2 × 2 layout therefore collapse to two entries, not eight — one per position on the piece.

What a DC cannot cut

Only straight lines square to the sheet. Any die line that is diagonal or curved is counted and reported in the panel rather than quietly left out of the export — if a shape needs a rotary die, you want to find that out while you are still looking at the file.

Perforations and creases that fall outside every finished piece are reported the same way. They are usually in the trim, but occasionally they mean the piece grid came out wrong, which is worth a second look.

Digital Die Cut

Give it one die shape and a sheet up to B2, and it finds the layout that cuts the most pieces. It nests by the real outline rather than the bounding box, so a tag, a carton blank or a triangle can drop into the notch of the row next to it. Then it writes the imposed artwork, the cut file and a DXF for the die maker or the cutter.

The die shape

Page 1 is read (pick another page if the PDF has more). Lines are sorted by color family, the same way the Die Line Reader does it, so the CMYK magenta Illustrator gives you for "red" still counts as red.

If Auto picks the wrong thing, set each color by hand. The note under the counts says the piece size, its area, and how much cut, crease and perf one piece needs.

Cutter, sheet & margins

Width is the edge across the feed; length is the edge that feeds. The lead edge is the top of the drawing.

DPC-400 / DPC-600 marks and QR job recall

The DPC cutters find the sheet by camera. The marks are the same everywhere in the Suite — the Digital Die Cut app, the OMR Generator, the Imposer, Book, the VDP Imposer and the workflow Die cutter marks step: black circles (or crosses) 5 mm in from every edge, no more than Most apart and never less than 43 mm apart, plus one extra mark near the lead corner so a sheet fed the wrong way round is caught. Use 5–10 mm marks on a DPC-400 and 3 mm dots on a DPC-600.

QR job recall. DPC Connect reads a QR on the sheet and opens the cut file whose name matches it (QR “monkey” opens the file “monkey”). Turn it on and the QR is printed in the corner you choose, in the 5 mm edge band beside the corner mark, 7–10 mm square. Left blank, it carries the file’s own name without .pdf — in the Digital Die Cut app that is the cut file it saves, so keep that name and keep the cut files together in the folder DPC Connect’s QR profile points at. Keep the QR in the same corner on every job.

Layers. DPC Connect assigns a tool to each PDF layer. For a DPC the Digital Die Cut cut file comes out with cut, crease, perf and reg marks layers, and the Imposer and Book put the DPC marks on a reg marks layer when marks are put on their own layer. Add “reg marks” in DPC Connect under Settings → Standard settings → Import so it is recognised.

DPC-2024 corner marks

The DPC-2024 is a plotter, not a camera table: its AAS II sensor reads four L-shaped marks, one in each corner of the job (the “4-Point Positioning” marks its Illustrator plug-in draws). Every app that prints DPC marks — Digital Die Cut, Index/Bleed Tabs, the Imposer, Book, the VDP Imposer and the workflow Die cutter marks step — draws them for you when the machine is set to DPC-2024: 1 mm thick, 15 mm from the sides, 10 mm from the lead and 25 mm from the trail (the manual asks for at least 25 mm there so the sheet does not drop while it is measured), with the artwork kept 5 mm inside them. Their length follows Duplo’s table: 11 mm on A4, 16 mm on A3/SRA3, 23 mm up to B2 (adjustable 5–50 mm in Digital Die Cut). Keep the marks off the pinch-roller tracks and light the cutter evenly. There is no QR recall, so with more than one cut file the sheets come out grouped by cut file.

Locator marks (digital cutters)

The cutter's locator camera finds black circles or black crosses, from 3 to 20 mm across; 6 mm and 10 mm circles are recommended. The marks go round the sheet edge, 5 mm in, outside the pieces, spaced no more than 40 cm and no less than 4.3 cm apart — set Most apart lower for more marks on a long sheet. The cutting area is kept 3 mm clear of them (14 mm from the edge with 6 mm marks). The pattern does not have to be symmetrical: One extra mark near the lead corner adds one beside the lead / left corner so a sheet fed the wrong way round is caught. The marks print in 100% black on the art PDF and the cut file, and the DXF carries them on the MARKS layer — circles as true circles.

A T-shaped 90 × 100 mm tag on B2 shows why it matters: one punch is held to 12 pieces by the rule limit, three punches of an 11-piece die give 33. Production shows Punches per sheet, Pieces per punch, the Rule on the die, and the punches needed for the quantity. The preview draws a dashed box around each punch. The cut file PDF shows every punch on the sheet; the DXF is the die itself, with the other punches on a REPEAT layer for reference.

How the layout is found

The shape is looked at from above, below and both sides — its silhouette. That says how close two copies can sit side by side, and for every sideways offset of the next row, how close that row can come. The gap is added the way a disc would roll around the outline, so the gap is kept in every direction, not only straight down.

Each is tried upright and turned 90°, running across the sheet and down it, then laid on the real cutting area and counted exactly. A staggered or interlocked layout is only listed if it gets more pieces than a plain grid.

Place the layout decides where the finished block of pieces sits inside the cutting area — Centred in the cutting area, or Tight to the lead edge. Centred is the safer default because it leaves equal slack at both ends; tight to the lead edge is what you want when the sheet is close to the cutter’s length limit and every millimetre at the trail matters.

Untick Pieces may be turned when grain or print direction matters, and Alternate rows may be turned 180° when every piece has to face the same way.

True-shape nesting

The row layouts above repeat one pattern across the sheet. True-shape nesting does not: it places each piece wherever its real outline fits — into the notch of a neighbour, into the strip left at the end of a row, at whatever turn you allow — one piece after another, each as close to the lead edge and the reference edge as it will go. It is what a shape with a hook, a corner cut-out, a tab or a slant needs, because those leave room that no repeating row can use.

Two ways of building the layout are tried and the one that fits more pieces is offered. From scratch: pieces are placed one by one, scanning across the sheet and down it, with all the turns, with quarter turns only, and with a pair of opposite turns. Around a row layout: the best row layouts are kept exactly as they are and every gap, notch and leftover strip around them is filled with more pieces — the layout's name then says how many were fitted into the gaps. A true-shape layout is therefore never worse than the row layout it grew from.

• The gap is always kept. Every piece is at least the gap away from every other piece in every direction, measured on the real outlines. The sheet is worked out on a fine grid (a fraction of a millimetre) and always rounds toward more room, so a finished layout can be a fraction of a millimetre looser than perfect, never tighter.
• Zero gap. Pieces in a true-shape layout end up about one grid cell apart rather than sharing a cut line. When you need shared cut lines, use the row layouts — they are still listed.
• Art turns with the piece. The imposed art, the bleed clip and the cut file all follow the turn, at any angle. If print or grain direction matters, keep the turning on quarter turns or switch turning off.
• Machine limits still apply. The margins, the reference edge, the marks, the rule limit and the punches per sheet work the same way. Waste separation (DSM-SP) needs straight columns, so when it is ticked the nesting method is hidden and the row grid is used.
• Time. Expect a second or two, longer with a small turning step. Compare sheet sizes uses a quicker setting so it stays responsive.

Samples

Seven sample die lines are built in, each with its artwork on the same page: jigsaw pieces, hang tags with a punched hole, lightning bolts, star badges, plus badges, pine tree tags and gingerbread people. Pick one from Samples… at the top of the window, or from the tiles on the start screen. Each opens on the cutter, sheet and nesting settings where true-shape nesting beats the best row layout — 2 to 6 more pieces per sheet — and the Die shape card says by how much. Opening a sample changes the cutter, sheet, gap and nesting settings to the sample's; change them back, or open your own die line, when you are done. They make good demos for a customer: export the imposed art and cut file just as you would for a real job.

Artwork & bleed

Art can be the die-line PDF itself (art and die on the same page), a separate artwork PDF, or nothing at all when you only need the cut file. A separate art page is placed centred on the die page — right when the art file simply has more bleed than the die file — or top-left corners together. With a simple shape, separate art is centred on the piece.

Each piece's art is clipped to its cut line pushed out by the bleed. The bleed is held to half the gap, so one piece's bleed can never print on the next one. At a zero gap there is no room for bleed, and art stops at the cut.

Numbers, compare & export

Production shows pieces per sheet, yield (finished piece area against the whole sheet), sheets for the quantity with and without overs, rule per sheet and waste — and a production time estimate: make-ready plus run time, with the time per sheet. The DSM-1000 runs at its rated 3,100 sheets/hr (2,250 with waste separation), one press cycle per punch. A digital cutter has no sheets-per-hour figure, so its time follows what each sheet cuts: the cut, crease and perf length at the knife speeds, a lift and move per piece, and the feed and mark reading per sheet. Open Time settings to put in your own figures — each cutter keeps its own, and the note there shows what Duplo publishes for it (DPC-400: 56–150 sheets/hr on Duplo’s samples; DPC-600: 12–45 s per 13 × 19 in sheet). The starting figures are estimates: time a real sheet and replace them.

Compare sheet sizes lays the same die on every standard sheet from SRA3 to B2 (plus 20 × 28 in, flagged when the cutter cannot take it), shows the sheets and the production time for each, and highlights the best use of stock — and the quickest to run, when that is a different sheet. Click a row to switch to it.

The last cutter, sheet, margins, gap and bleed are remembered on this machine and carried by the Suite backup.

Templates

The Templates card at the top of the settings saves everything on screen under a name you choose: the cutter (for example DSM-1000 B2), the sheet, margins and reference edge, registration or locator marks, punches per sheet, rule limit, waste separation, gap, turning and nesting method, artwork placement and bleed, line colours, the simple shape and the quantity and overs. Type a name and click Save as template; pick it from Saved templates to put all of it back and lay the sheet out again. Update with current settings replaces the chosen template, and Delete removes it. The die line and artwork files are not part of a template, so one template serves every job of that kind.

Export… saves the chosen template as a small .iqdiecut file and Import… loads one, so a template moves between computers, and between the Suite and the online edition. In the Suite, templates are kept on this computer and carried by the Suite backup; online, they are kept in your browser.

Cover Builder

A page-layout editor for one job: the cover of a perfect-bound book. It works like a small InDesign laid out for covers — the flat cover is drawn as back cover, spine and front cover with the folds, bleed, safe areas and hinge creases shown — and the spine width comes from the book itself rather than from a number someone typed in. ImposeIQ Book's cover panel still does quick covers; use Cover Builder when the cover needs real design work.

Opened from ImposeIQ Book. Book's Open in Cover Builder button starts Cover Builder with the book's body PDF, trim, bleed (when the book has one), stocks, creasing and binder filled in, and a banner at the top of the Book tab says it is linked. Stock, glue, creasing and binder changes made here go back to Book; the body PDF, trim and bleed stay Book's. The spine, flat size and the saved cover PDF's location are reported to Book as you work. Back to Book in the banner brings the Book window forward.

Body PDF & spine width

The spine is pages ÷ PPI, plus a glue allowance if your binder needs one, plus twice the cover caliper if Add cover wrap is on. The pages come from the body PDF, less any pages that are really the cover (Pages in the PDF that are the cover) and plus any blanks you will add to finish a signature. An odd count is rounded up — a leaf is two pages.

Enter it switches to a spine width typed by hand. The spine is shown at the top of the canvas and on the Book tab, with exactly how it was worked out. Everything on the front cover is anchored to the front cover, so when the page count changes and the spine grows, the front art moves with the front panel instead of sliding into the spine.

Editing the cover

Dropping files on the canvas places them — onto an image frame if you drop on one, otherwise as a new frame fitted to the panel under the pointer. Snap catches trim, bleed, folds, hinges, safe areas, panel centres and other objects. The Layers list shows / hides and locks each item; Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[ move it up and down. Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (Ctrl+Y) cover every change. With nothing selected, Properties sets a background colour for the whole spread or for one panel; panel colours stop at the folds and run into the bleed on the outside edges.

Colours are written to the PDF as CMYK when the CMYK box is ticked (the default for the swatches: 100K, rich black 60/40/40/100, process colours) and as RGB otherwise. Preflight warns above 320% total ink.

Inside covers, flaps & glue

+ Page adds another outside or inside spread, or duplicates the current one — handy for a second version or a dust jacket. The inside spread is the outside turned over, so it runs inside front · spine · inside back. Untick a page to leave it out of the PDF; an inside page with nothing on it is left out automatically if Output says so.

French flaps add a flap panel at each end with its own fold. Right binding edge swaps the front and back for books that read right to left.

On the inside cover the spine and a strip past each spine fold are kept white — ink there stops the binder's glue taking. The strip is hatched on screen; set its width under Cover stock & creasing, or turn it off. The strain-relief (hinge) creases are shown as green dotted lines, and Export DC crease XML writes the same DC jobs ImposeIQ Book does — one per pass, fed with the spine square to the feed.

DC / OMR marks

Under Output, DC / OMR marks prints the Duplo DC registration marks and job barcode on the cover sheet — REG mark, skew and shrink marks (DC-648 only), the Code 39 barcode with optional text, and a QR code — with the same sizes and positions as Book's OMR Marks. Only the marks a machine ticked in Settings → Machines can read are offered.

• Needs a press sheet. Set PDF page size to Centred on a press sheet. The DC finds the marks from the real sheet edge, so the PDF page has to be the sheet that is fed.
• Top-left of the page. A cover goes into the DC spine-first, square to the feed, so the page's left edge leads. The marks sit on the lead corner: the top-left of the PDF page.
• Two-pass covers. With no up-crease module, fold + strain relief runs twice. The second run is the sheet flipped over, inside face up, so the inside page carries the pass-2 marks with the next barcode number. That page prints even if it has nothing else on it.
• The DC job matches. With marks on, Export DC crease XML describes the press sheet, where the cover sits on it, and the same mark and barcode positions. The crease positions do not change.
• Checks. Preflight flags marks that would print over the cover's bleed or fall off the sheet. Use a bigger sheet or change Marks top / Right. The marks go on their own switchable PDF layer, “ImposeIQ OMR Marks”, unless you untick it.

DDC and UD-320. The same card also prints DDC marks (DDC-8000 / DDC-810 PRO) and UD-320 register marks, placed as in Book, in the same spine-first feed as the DC marks:

• DDC: circles down both side edges of the outside face. You set the margin, spacing and diameter. The first row starts 25 mm from the lead edge when the DC corner marks are on. Rows move off the shrink mark and anything else in the way.
• UD-320: the 100 mm Y bar at the lead edge, plus in X + Y mode the X mark. It goes 100 mm from centre on the outside and 76 mm on the inside, on the other side of the sheet, so both faces carry marks and the inside page always prints.

Preflight warns if the UD-320 X mark lands on a DC mark. When that happens, move the X mark to the other side of centre.

Folding the panels. Click the heading of any card in the right-hand panels — or a small heading inside one, or Pages or Layers on the left — to fold it away, and again to open it. Collapse all and Expand all are at the top of the right-hand panel. What you fold is remembered, including the cards in Properties, which are folded again each time you select something.

Templates

Templates… in the top bar keeps a cover for next time. A template holds the cover’s trim size, bleed and safe areas, binding, stocks, creasing, flaps, output and marks, and every frame on every page — text, shapes, barcodes, pictures and the fonts they use. It does not hold the body PDF. Open a template after loading the body, and the body stays: the spine is worked out for that book, not the one the template was made from.

• Save as template — give it a name. Tick Include the pictures and fonts to carry them; up to about 2.5 MB goes with the template, and a picture that does not fit is left out while its frame stays, empty, ready for the next picture. You are told what was left out.
• Open replaces the cover on screen (it asks first if there is anything on it). Update replaces a template with the cover now on screen. Delete removes it.
• Export… writes an .iqcovertemplate file to move a template to another PC; Import it there, or drop the file on the window. A template is kept on the PC it was saved on, so export the ones you cannot lose.
• Ready-made covers — four starting points built from the same panel geometry as the editor, so they sit right at any trim: a navy trade paperback, a cream digest novel, a full-bleed picture front, and plain white. Each has the title, subtitle, author, spine text, back-cover copy and an ISBN barcode in place, to type over.

A template is not the same as Save defaults, which keeps only the settings (never the artwork) for every new cover, nor the same as Save…, which keeps one finished cover, body PDF and all.

Settings and defaults

More → Settings… shows what new covers start from. Save defaults keeps this cover's:

• trim size, bleed and safe areas, and binding
• stocks, creasing and binder, and flaps
• output and press sheet
• OMR / DC / DDC / UD-320 marks
• units, guides, snap and press sheet view

Artwork and text are never part of the defaults. After saving, New starts every cover from the defaults. Apply defaults to this cover puts them onto the open cover without touching its artwork. Reset to factory defaults forgets them. With no saved defaults, a new cover starts from the last one you worked on.

See it on the sheet. Tick Press sheet in the bar under the canvas, or press S. The view zooms out to the whole press sheet with the cover where it prints, and draws the crop and fold marks, the slug and the DC / OMR marks for the side you are on (outside = pass 1, inside = pass 2 on a two-pass cover). A caption shows the sheet size, the pass and the barcode number, and the lead edge is labelled. Pick the sheet size from the list next to it. Turning the view on also sets Output to Centred on a press sheet, so the sheet you see is the sheet that prints. You can keep designing in this view. A red outline means the cover does not fit the sheet.

Confirm the reading positions on the machine with a test sheet before a live job, as with any new mark layout.

ISBN barcodes

Type the ISBN-13 with the hyphens your ISBN agency issued, e.g. 978-1-4028-9462-6 — the check digit is verified and the line above the bars is printed exactly as typed. An old 10-digit ISBN is converted. The five-digit add-on is the price: 51995 is $19.95 US, 90000 means no price. EAN-13, UPC-A, QR and Code 128 are there too. Keep the bars 100% black on white; the size is shown as a percentage of nominal, and retail scanners want 80–200%.

Preflight & export

The Preflight tab lists, per page: text or barcodes outside the safe area or crossing a fold, text that does not fit its frame or is under 5 pt, images under 250 ppi (warning) or 150 ppi (problem), spine text on a spine under 0.25 in, barcodes under 80%, heavy ink, an empty front cover, and a cover that does not fit the chosen press sheet. Click an item to jump to it.

Embellishment Studio

A 3D preview of what a job looks like after finishing. Drop in the artwork, mark where the varnish and foil go, and the Studio renders the finished piece — raised spot UV catching the light, foil throwing a highlight as it turns, a textured stock catching a rake of light — on a card, a carton, a bottle, a can or a folder. It exists to answer the question a printed proof cannot: what will this actually look like on the customer's desk?

The window

Three columns. Artwork and channels on the left, the live 3D preview in the middle, and the settings tabs on the right — Effects · Camera · Light · Sheet · Export. Both side panels collapse with the arrow tabs, or with [ and ], when you want the preview to fill the window for a customer.

The preview is live: drag to orbit, right-drag to pan, wheel to zoom. The round buttons under it are save PNG, auto-orbit, front view, hero ¾ view, macro close-up, rotate 90°, and compare-to-plain.

1 · Artwork

Drop in a PDF, JPG or PNG, or start from one of the ten built-in demo samples (business card, wedding invitation, menu cover, cosmetics carton, annual report, wine label, poster, book jacket, gift card, trading card). The demos are the fastest way to show someone the effect when you don't have their file to hand.

A plain two-page PDF is the common case of a piece with real front and back art — a bottle's rear label, a table tent's other panel, a hang tag's reverse. Page 2 of a two-page file defaults to Back side / other side in that same picker rather than Spot UV, so the obvious case needs no manual re-picking; any role row (a page, a layer, or a spot separation) can be set to it. This is distinct content, not a mirrored copy — it renders on whichever face is the reverse of the current shape (back cover, rear panel, back label, the far panel of a tent) and, once set, takes over automatically from the Repeat the artwork on the back checkbox below. Because it has no channel data of its own, it renders as a clean print with no spot UV or foil showing through from the front.

The piece takes its proportions from the artwork's aspect ratio, so a portrait file gives a portrait piece. If a file comes in the wrong way round, Rotate piece 90° (the ⟳ button, or R) turns the artwork and both channels together, so the varnish and foil stay in register.

Working side

Side 1 and Side 2 under the artwork panel are a place to stand, not a second document. Clicking one turns the piece round so you are looking at the face you are setting up; orbit past the edge yourself and the chips follow the camera, so the panel never claims you are on a side you cannot see. The note underneath tells you what side 2 is currently carrying — its own imported artwork, the mirrored repeat of side 1, or plain stock.

Each side has its own spot UV and foil channel. The channel buttons, the wand, the auto-masks, the alignment nudge, Undo and Reset channel all act on the side you are standing on — the side is shown next to the headings of steps 2 and 3 so a wand click never lands on the face you are not looking at. Side 1 might carry a spot UV build while side 2 carries foil, or nothing at all, exactly the way the two sides of a sheet are two jobs to a finisher.

Side 2 does not need artwork to carry channel work: wand a shape onto it with nothing else on the back and it renders as a build standing on bare stock. If side 2 does have artwork — its own imported page, or the mirrored repeat of side 1 — the wand reads its colors from that.

Separately, the Apply to selectors decide which sides an effect is switched on for at all. Spot UV and foil default to Auto, which means "wherever the channel is actually drawn" — wand something onto side 2 and it appears there, with nothing else to set. The fixed Side 1 / Side 2 / Both sides settings are for switching a side off without erasing its channel. The surface pattern's Apply to has no Auto, since a stock texture is not drawn anywhere — it defaults to side 1.

2 · Embellishment channels

Two independent channels decide where the finish lands: Spot UV and Foil. White means coated, black means bare. Pick the channel you want to work on, then build it up:

Channel alignment nudges a channel across, up and down, or scales it slightly, for when a supplied separation is a hair out of register with the artwork.

3 · The wand

Turn the wand on and click a color on the piece: everything within the Color range joins the selection, across the whole artwork rather than just the patch you clicked — design colors repeat, and selecting all of a spot color at once is the point. Each click adds to what is already there, so a selection builds up from several colors. Widen the range to take in more of a gradient.

Set whether the wand writes to Spot UV, Foil, or Both. Undo steps back through every change; Reset channel returns it to how it arrived. Press Esc or click Wand again to put it away.

4 · Surface pattern (whole side)

A stock texture across the entire side — every bit of it, not just where the artwork carries ink or the DuSense coating covers. Pick Pattern (sand, linen, leather/croc, ripple, braille dots, brushed line, basketweave, dot screen, water droplets or wood grain), then dial in Depth for how strongly it reads and Scale for how large the features are — scale is physical, in centimeters of sheet, so the same setting reads the same on a business card and on a poster.

This is a separate layer from the DuSense coating texture on the right-hand Effects panel: that one only textures the raised varnish itself and only where it's applied, while this one textures the stock the whole piece is printed on — an embossed cover paper, a textured hang tag board, the ripple on a table tent panel. The two can be combined — say, a linen stock under a smooth gloss DuSense build.

Water droplets and wood grain are the two scene textures in the list rather than stock finishes: droplets for a chilled bottle or a beverage can, wood grain for a hang tag, a table tent or packaging meant to read as timber.

Apply to chooses Side 1, Side 2 or Both sides — side 2 is whichever face is the reverse of the current shape, whether it is carrying real back/other-side art or the mirrored repeat. A stock texture usually belongs on the whole sheet the piece is cut from, so Both sides is closest to how the physical stock behaves; the single-side settings are there for a case like a laminated cover over an uncoated back.

DuSense® digital spot UV

The raised clear coat a DuSense DDC-810 Pro or DDC-8000 lays down. The Coating height slider runs from the coater’s minimum (10 µm on a DDC-8000, 15 µm on a DDC-810 PRO — pick yours under Settings → General) to 80 µm and defaults to 80 — the machine’s real range, not an illustration. A preset or an imported .json asking for anything outside it is held to it.

The usage read-out under these controls is the practical one: coverage as a percentage and in cm², varnish volume and weight per piece, and pieces per liter — the figure you need to cost the job.

DFL digital foil

Toner-reactive foil from a DFL-500 or DFL-700, transferred over the coated area. Twenty-four foils are stocked in the swatch strip — golds, silvers, chrome, gunmetal, black chrome, colored foils, plus holographic rainbow, linear prism and oil slick.

Foil coverage / intensity is two controls in one: below 50% the foil fades in, above 50% it drives harder — more mirror, more contrast against the stock. Apply to works like the coating's: Auto follows wherever the foil channel is drawn, and Side 1 / Side 2 / Both override it.

Foil spread / choke — trap over Spot UV exists because spot UV and foil are separate press passes and the two drift out of register. A positive spread grows the foil slightly past the varnish edge so a hairline of bare varnish never shows; a negative choke pulls it inside. Set it to what your own press actually holds rather than leaving it at zero and hoping.

Unifoil® metallized stock

Prints the job onto a metallized sheet rather than adding metal on top. This is a different thing from foil and worth understanding, because it is what makes the effect sell: the sheet itself is metal and the ink prints over it, so the metal reads through wherever the artwork is open and is buried where the ink is dense. Leave the highlights open and they come back as chrome.

Choosing a product sets the holographic pattern and caliper it actually ships with; both stay editable. Metal show-through controls how far the metal reads through the ink, Metal brightness how hard it reflects, and the holographic patterns shift hue as you orbit the piece — which is exactly the thing a flat PDF proof can never show a customer.

Lamination & stock

Uncoated, gloss, matte, soft-touch or satin film, plus a Stock texture slider for the tooth of the paper. Soft-touch under a raised gloss varnish is the classic luxury contrast and it reads convincingly here — the coating is glossy against a stock that is deliberately not.

Caliper / thickness and Reverse-side stock set the sheet's edge thickness and the shade of its back, both of which matter when the piece is seen at an angle.

The product shapes

The same artwork and channels render on any of eight products, under Sheet → Product / substrate:

Repeat the artwork on the back puts the same art on the reverse — back cover, rear panel or back label, mirrored so it reads correctly rather than backwards. If a PDF's Back side / other side role (see 1 · Artwork) has real back art loaded, that takes over automatically and this checkbox is ignored.

The whole front repeats, not just the ink. Side 1's DuSense spot UV and DFL foil are copied to side 2 as well, so the back shows the same coating and foil in the preview, the coverage figures count it, and Export plate writes a side 2 spot UV / foil plate. Work you draw on side 2 itself is added on top. Untick the box and side 2 goes back to exactly what was drawn there. An Apply to set to Side 1 — front is switched to Both sides when you tick the box, so the copy is not hidden. Auto already follows the channels.

Camera, light & environment

Five environments — blurred showroom, studio softbox, warm gallery, dark room with a spotlight, and a daylight window — each with rotation, intensity and background blur. The key light has azimuth, elevation, intensity, warmth and shadow softness; hold L and drag in the preview to move it by hand.

Hold B at any time for a plain sheet — the same artwork with no embellishment — which is the comparison that closes the sale. The ◐ button does the same thing.

Exporting — plates, GIF & video

The two plates are written differently, because the two processes want different things:

Sides. Each side's channels are exported separately — a multi-page PDF, or one PNG per plate, named …-spot-uv-side1-plate, …-foil-side2-plate and so on. A channel that is empty on a side is skipped and named in the note under the button. Note that unlike the preview — where an untouched foil channel simply follows the varnish — an empty foil channel does not export a copy of the spot UV plate. Sending a printer a foil plate that is quietly the varnish artwork is the kind of thing that gets found on press.

Save any look you like under My presets, optionally including the camera and lighting, and export presets as .json to share with a colleague. Fifteen quick looks are built in, from Raised gloss spot UV and Deep 3D sculpt through to Unilustre® + spot UV and Ultralustre® card.

Shortcuts

Package Studio

Package Studio takes a flat packaging PDF (the artwork with its cut and crease lines) and folds it into the finished box in 3D. It shows the spot UV, foil and metallic board the way they will look once the carton is cut, folded and glued. The customer sees the assembled package before anything goes to the die cutter. Open it from Home and drop in a PDF, or start from one of the built-in samples.

The built-in samples are on the start screen and in the Built-in samples menu. Each one opens on the board and finish it was designed for:

• Lone Star Coffee is a tuck-and-tab box on white board with matte lamination, striped spot UV and gold foil.
• Aurora Serum is a tall reverse-tuck cosmetic carton with a die-cut window. It is on silver metallized board with a white plate, so the bare silver shows only in the band and badge, and it has rose-gold foil.
• Hill Country Tea is a straight-tuck box on kraft, with copper foil leaves and a gloss spot UV label.
• Cacao 72 is an open-ended chocolate sleeve on gold metallized board with soft-touch lamination. Gold shows through the medallion and band, and it has a spot UV dot pattern.

What the PDF needs

One page laid out flat: artwork, dieline and plates together, as a converter would supply it. The studio reads the PDF's own content, not a picture of it, so it can separate these:

• Dieline. Stroked lines in a cut ink and a crease ink. These can be spot inks named like CutContour, Die, Crease or Score, or layers named Cut and Crease. Failing that, the usual colour convention is used: red solid lines are cuts, and blue or green lines (or dashed red) are creases.
• Spot UV, foil and white ink. A spot ink or a layer whose name says what it is: Spot UV, Varnish, Gold Foil, White. These normally overprint the art. The studio lifts them out of the artwork, so the art underneath shows. It then lights them as the finish.
• Other pages. Page 2 of a two-page file is taken as the inside print. It can also be set to a spot UV, foil or white plate. Use + Spot UV file or + Foil file for a plate supplied as a separate PDF or image the same size as the dieline.

Every guess is shown in the Dieline and Plates & layers cards, and each one can be changed from its drop-down.

How the box is folded

The panels are the spaces between the cut and crease lines. Every crease with a panel on each side is a fold. A crease broken by a lock slit still counts as one fold. A window cut inside a panel is treated as a hole you can see through. The largest panel stays still, and the others fold 90° away from the printed side, so the art ends up on the outside. That is how almost every folding carton, tray and sleeve goes together.

Where two flaps end up in the same place, the smaller one goes inside by one board thickness. This covers a glue flap under a side wall, dust flaps under the lids, and a tuck behind the back wall. Step by step folds the body first, then closes the flaps from the inside out. All at once folds everything together.

Board, spot UV and foil

• White SBS prints the art as it is. Kraft darkens the transparent process inks with the brown board, and white in the art shows as bare kraft.
• Metallized board (silver, gold or holographic) reflects through the CMYK. Choose where white ink goes underneath: from the white plate, under all printed areas (metal only where the art is left blank), or none at all.
• Spot UV is drawn as a raised clear gloss. DuSense spot UV height sets how tall it reads. Pair it with Matte or Soft-touch lamination for the strongest contrast.
• Foil takes its shape from the foil plate. Choose the foil from the swatches. Holographic shows a rainbow that moves as the box turns.

Saving

Save PNG saves the view as it is. Save video records the flat sheet folding up step by step, then a slow turn so the foil and varnish catch the light, as a WebM file ready to email. Without a licence, both carry the DEMO mark. Package Studio shares the Embellishment Studio licence.

3D Viewer

The 3D Viewer keeps a gallery of print projects and shows each one the way the customer will hold it. Folding cartons and presentation folders fold up from their dieline, cards stand with their edges, and every foil, hologram, spot UV, varnish and emboss catches the light of a studio room. Open it from Home, drop a PDF on it, or open one of the samples: a presentation folder, a business card and Package Studio's four cartons.

The Presentation Folder, Business Card and Envelope Creators and Gilder each have a View in 3D button. It sends the job as it is on screen, with its dieline and finishes, and it opens here as a new project.

Projects

• + Add project opens a PDF; dropping one anywhere on the window does the same. A new project is saved to the gallery straight away, with a picture of the view.
• Click a project to open it. The ⋮ button shows its details: rename it, describe it, open it or delete it.
• Samples open without being saved. Press Save to keep one, with whatever you changed.
• Changes to a saved project are saved when you go back to Projects, or at once with Save (Ctrl+S).

The side panels

The icons down the right edge open the panels; click the open one again to hide it. The letter keys do the same.

• Layers & Design (L). The print, then one layer for each finish found in the file. Spot inks and PDF layers are read by name, the way Gilder reads them: Gold Foil, Silver, HoloPrism, Spot UV, Emboss, Deboss and so on. Each layer has a Material (print, 15 foils, 4 holograms, spot UV, raised UV, matte varnish, soft-touch, white ink, blind), a Micro/Nano texture (brushed, linen, diamond plate, carbon, hammered, sparkle dots, pinstripe) and Embossing (emboss or deboss, with its height). Under them are the board, the laminate, and which lines are the cut and the creases.
• Shape (S). Automatic folds a file with creases and shows anything else as a card. Fold, Card and Flat sheet choose for you. Board caliper sets the card's thickness and how far stacked flaps sit apart.
• Folds (D). Every fold edge, lettered A, B, C… on the model too, with its angle. All folds every edge together, the same as the bar at the bottom left. Click a panel on the model to pick its edge, then use Fold other way, Put outside or Make base.
• Camera (C). Front, ¾, side, back and top views, yaw, pitch, distance and lens. Set to current view makes this the view the project opens on.
• Lighting Environment (E). Studio softboxes, shop shelf, gallery strips, dimmed warm light and a daylight window, with rotation, exposure, the key light and the floor shadow.

Moving round and saving

• Drag to turn, right-drag to move, use the wheel to zoom and double-click to reframe. Space folds or unfolds.
• The buttons at the bottom right are, in order: save a PNG, full screen (F), turntable (T) and hide the panel (H).
• Save video records the job folding up and then turning slowly in the light (WebM). Without a licence for the Embellishment Studio, saved pictures and video are marked DEMO.

Envelope Creator

Envelope Creator builds any standard envelope as the flat blank that gets printed and converted, and folds it up in 3D with the seal flap open or closed. Put the customer's artwork on the front and the flap, choose a security pattern for the inside, and save the print PDF and the dieline. Open it from Home and pick an envelope type on the start screen; Envelopes… in the top bar brings the start screen back.

Sizes and types

95 standard sizes in thirteen families. The width is always the edge along the opening and the depth runs away from it, so a #10 is 9 1/2 × 4 1/8 and a 9 × 12 catalog is 9 × 12 with the opening on the 9" end.

Any size can be typed in, and the Seam and Flap shape can be changed on any envelope: diagonal, side or centre seam; commercial, square, wallet, baronial, Euro, round, booklet, catalog or remittance flap. The seal-flap, bottom-flap and side-flap sizes are worked out from the envelope and can each be changed; Standard flaps puts them back.

Flat and assembled

Three views across the top of the picture:

• Flat — outside: the printed face of the blank, with the cut line in red and the folds dashed in green.
• Flat — inside: the reverse of the blank as it prints — mirrored, because it backs up the outside — with the security pattern, the glue areas, the gum line and the window film patch.
• Assembled 3D: drag to turn, wheel to zoom, double-click to reframe. The first slider folds the blank up (side flaps, then the bottom flap); the second opens and closes the seal flap. Flat, Flap open and Flap closed jump straight there, Turn over shows the other side, and Turntable spins it.

A window envelope shows a letter inside with the recipient's address through the window (untick Show a letter inside to hide it).

Artwork

Every artwork slot takes a PDF (page 1, kept as vector in the print PDF) or a PNG / JPEG image.

• Front: fitted inside the front, or filling it with bleed to the folds.
• Logo and return address: top left of the front. The type size drops on small envelopes so the block still fits. Tick White background to knock a white box out of the artwork behind them.
• Postage: a stamp area (shown on screen only) or a printed permit indicia with your class line and permit number. A white background can go behind either, so the stamp or indicia sits on clean paper.
• Recipient: shown on screen only until you tick Print the recipient on the envelope. Printed, it takes a size, colour, position and angle, and can carry «Column» merge fields.
• Variable data: choose a .csv or Excel file whose first row names the columns, then click a column to drop its merge field into the recipient or a text box. Use the arrows to preview each record. Print PDF then writes one envelope per record (the outside, then the inside, for duplex), and the press sheet fills each blank with the next record, sheet after sheet. Pick the range of records to print.
• Text boxes: any number of extra lines of text on the front. On Flat — outside, click a box to select it: drag it to move, the side squares to change its width, the corner squares to scale the type, and the yellow dot to turn it (hold Shift to snap to 15°; arrow keys nudge, Delete removes it). The same settings are in the form, including the exact angle. Each box has its own font — Helvetica, Times or Courier, or one of fifteen bundled families such as Roboto, Montserrat or Playfair Display, which are embedded in the PDF — with Bold and Italic. Each box can be set to print only when a column equals, contains, starts with, is empty or is not empty, or is greater or less than a value — for example a line that prints only for records where VIP is yes.
• Reset: the button in the top bar puts every setting back to its default — the #10 envelope, the sample addresses, no artwork, text boxes or data file — after asking you to confirm. Saved templates are not touched.
• Folding the panel: click the heading of any card, or a small heading inside one (Recipient, Variable data…), to fold it away; Collapse all and Expand all are at the top. What you fold is remembered.
• Press sheet view: roll the mouse wheel to zoom in and out about the pointer (50% to 800%), drag to pan, and Fit to see the whole sheet again. With variable data, ◀ ▶ (or Page Up / Page Down) step through the sheets and show which records are on each.
• Spot UV & foil: two plates for the front. Give each a mask file (a PDF or image: dark areas are coated, white and transparent areas are not) and/or set any text box or the recipient to Prints as Spot UV or Foil — Ink + Spot UV puts varnish over the ink, Spot UV only and Foil leave the text out of the ink. They show in purple and gold in the preview. Spot UV plate… and Foil plate… write black-on-white plates (one page per record with variable data); on the press sheet, Spot UV sheet… and Foil sheet… lay the same plates out blank for blank with the DDC circles, ready for the DDC-810 and the DFL-700. Tick Also put them in the print PDF to add overprinting spot colours named Spot_UV and Foil for a printer who wants a single file.
• Gilder: the button in the top bar opens this envelope in Gilder — the print PDF of the outside and inside, with the Spot UV and foil plates written in as the spot colours Spot_UV and Foil, which Gilder reads as Spot UV gloss and gold foil. Gilder shows the gloss and the foil catch the light on the finished envelope, to check it or show a customer, and writes the embellisher's CMYK file and plates. With a data file open it takes the record on screen. An envelope with no plates opens with Gilder's own suggestions.
• Back: artwork and a line of text on the seal flap, turned so they read on the closed envelope.
• Whole outside: a file that covers the whole flat blank plus bleed, for jobs laid out as a flat blank already.

Security patterns

The pattern prints on the inside of the whole blank so a letter cannot be read through the paper: wavy lines, guilloche, crosshatch, diamond lattice, basket weave, honeycomb, confetti, fish scales, repeating text (your own words, e.g. CONFIDENTIAL or the company name), microtext lines, blockout (crosshatch and confetti together) or a solid tint. Pick the ink colour and set the tint, scale and angle. Patterns go into the PDF as fine vector lines, one ink. Inside artwork, if any, is laid out as the reverse side prints and goes over the pattern.

Press sheet — multiple up

The Press sheet card lays the flat blank out many-up on a press sheet, the same way Digital Die Cut does it: rows, turned rows or true-shape nesting, whichever fits the most blanks inside the cutter's margins. The Press sheet view above the picture shows the result; Front and Back switch between the two sides of the sheet.

Imposed sheet PDF writes page 1, the front (the outside of every blank plus the cutter's marks), and page 2, the back (the inside print — the security pattern — lined up behind every blank, for a sheet turned over left to right). Artwork is clipped to each blank's cut line plus up to half the gap, so one blank's bleed never prints on the next. Cut file PDF writes the same layout as CutContour and Crease spot lines with the cutter's marks, for the die maker or the cutter. The card also shows the blanks per sheet, the paper used and the sheets for the quantity. Checks warns when the blank will not fit, the sheet is outside what the cutter takes, or a mark lands on a blank.

UD-320 — turn the artwork 1°. With the UD-320 chosen, tick Turn the artwork 1° clockwise (to the right) to print the artwork turned one degree clockwise about the centre of the sheet, to match a die that cuts a touch out of square. Only the artwork and its proof die lines turn — the X and Y marks and the slug line stay square, and so does the cut file. The turn is made on the front and copied to the back, so the two sides stay in register. Checks confirms every turned blank still sits on the sheet and clear of the marks.

Saving

The Output card also shows the flat blank size, which side it opens on, the USPS mail class (machinable letter, non-machinable, flat or parcel) and how many blanks fit on the chosen press sheet. Checks warns when the seal flap will not close the back, side flaps meet, a window is too near an edge or the blank will not fit the sheet.

The last envelope and its settings are remembered on this computer and carried by the Suite backup. Artwork files are not kept — add them again when you reopen, or save a template with the artwork in it.

Templates and showcase samples

The Templates card at the top keeps a whole envelope so a reorder opens exactly as it ran: size, flaps, window, paper and closure, return address and postage, the security pattern, the output settings and the press sheet. Type a name and choose Save as template; tick Keep the artwork in the template to keep the artwork too (pieces over 2.5 MB are left out, and the card says which).

Showcase samples are finished envelopes with their own artwork — a wedding baronial with a gold monogram flap and floral liner, a #10 double-window bank statement with permit indicia and a blockout tint, a red 6 × 6 holiday square with a tartan liner, a 9 × 12 kraft real-estate catalog, a black-and-gold #3 coin gift-card envelope, a #6 3/4 remittance with a donation form on the flap, a DL window corporate envelope, and a navy A-7 wedding invitation envelope with gloss Spot UV botanicals and a gold foil frame and monogram — it opens with both plates already loaded, so it shows how the two masks sit on the front and what goes out as the Spot UV and foil plates. Open one from the start screen or the Showcase samples list; everything in it can be changed and saved as your own template. The brands and addresses in the samples are made up.

Presentation Folder Creator

Presentation Folder Creator builds a pocket folder as the flat blank that gets printed and die cut, and folds it up in 3D with the pockets glued and the cover open or closed. It is the Envelope Creator for folders: the same views, artwork slots, variable data, text boxes, Spot UV and foil plates, press sheet and templates. Open it from Home and pick a folder type on the start screen; Folders… in the top bar brings the start screen back.

Types and sizes

The other types come in 9 × 12 (letter), 9 1/2 × 14 1/2 (legal), 11 1/2 × 17 1/2 (tabloid), A4, A5 and A3. The size is the size of one cover. Any size can be typed in; changing it puts the pocket height, glue tab and slit height back to what suits the new size.

Pockets, slits and spine

• Pockets: none, the back cover, the front cover, or both. Opened, the front cover lies on the left and the back cover on the right, as a book does.
• Pocket height and top: a third of the cover height to start with (4″ on a 12″ folder). The top can be straight, a curved scoop, angled, or have a thumb notch.
• Glue tab: the pocket flap hangs below the cover; the tab on the cover's outer edge folds in first, then the pocket folds up over it and is glued down. The glue is dotted on the dieline. Untick the box to leave the tab off, for a pocket that is stitched or taped.
• Business-card slits: one straight slit or two corner slits, in the back pocket, the front pocket or both. Height up is measured from the bottom edge of the cover to the slit; the card stands above it. Across moves it from the middle of the pocket.
• Spine: 0 makes a single fold. Anything more makes two folds that distance apart, with the spine between them to carry its own artwork and a line of spine text that reads along it.
• Corner radius rounds the outer corners of the covers.

Flat and assembled

• Flat — outside: the printed face of the blank, with the cut line in red and the folds dashed in green. The pocket flaps hang below the covers.
• Flat — inside: the reverse as it prints — mirrored, because it backs up the outside — with the glue areas and any inside artwork.
• Assembled 3D: drag to turn, wheel to zoom, double-click to reframe. The first slider folds the glue tabs and pockets up; the second closes the cover. Flat, Open and Closed jump straight there and Turn over shows the other side.

Artwork

Every slot takes a PDF (page 1, kept as vector in the print PDF) or a PNG / JPEG image.

• Front cover and back cover: fitted inside the cover, or filling it with bleed to the edges. The art is clipped to its own cover so it never runs across a fold, and stops at the pocket's hinge.
• Spine: artwork and a line of text, when the spine width is more than 0.
• Logo and company details: the logo sits top left on the front cover and the address block bottom left on the back cover; a white background can go behind either.
• Inside front, inside back, whole inside spread: laid out as the folder looks opened flat. An optional pattern (tint, guilloche, repeating text) can go under it.
• Whole outside: a file that covers the whole flat blank plus bleed, for jobs laid out as a flat blank already.
• Personalised name, variable data and text boxes: as in the Envelope Creator — open a .csv or Excel file, type «Column» merge fields into the name block or a text box, and Print PDF writes one folder per record.
• Spot UV & foil: two plates for the front cover, from a mask file or from text boxes set to print as Spot UV or foil. Gilder in the top bar opens the folder in Gilder, its plates marked as Spot UV and gold foil, to see them catch the light and write the embellisher's files.

Press sheet — multiple up

The Press sheet card lays the flat blank out on a press sheet exactly as the Envelope Creator does, with the DSM-1000, UD-320 and digital-cutter marks, DDC circles and the DDC-810 QR. A folder blank is large: 9 × 12 two-pocket folders are about 19 × 16″ flat, so expect one up on a B2 sheet and two up on the small mini sizes. The checks tell you when a blank will not fit or a mark lands on a blank.

Saving, templates and samples

• Print PDF: page 1 the outside, page 2 the inside, with crop marks and a slug line; the dieline can ride in the same file. Dieline PDF has CutContour (cut and card slits), Crease and Glue spot colours.
• Templates: every setting on the panel, and the artwork when it is under 2.5 MB, kept on this PC and exported as an .iqfolder file to move to another PC or send to a shop.
• Showcase samples: a law-firm proposal with a card slit, a two-pocket listing folder with spot UV and foil, a school admissions folder, an expanding-spine annual-report binder and a mini wedding invitation folder. Each opens fully editable. The brands and addresses are made up.

Door Hanger Creator

Door Hanger Creator builds a door hanger as the die-cut card that gets printed, and hangs it on a door knob or a lever handle in 3D. It is the Envelope Creator's window for door hangers: the same artwork slots, variable data, text boxes, Spot UV and foil plates and templates. Open it from Home and pick a die on the start screen; Dies… in the top bar brings the start screen back.

Dies, holes and sizes

• Sizes: 3 1/2 × 8 1/2 (the usual), 3 1/2 × 11, 3 2/3 × 8 1/2, 4 × 9, 4 × 10, 4 1/4 × 11, 4 1/4 × 14, 4 1/2 × 12, 5 1/2 × 8 1/2, 99 × 210, 100 × 210, 105 × 297 and A5 — or any size typed in.
• Hole cutout: any die's hole can be swapped for another. Hole size offers the die-maker's sizes, 1″ to 2″ (1 1/4″ on a 3 1/2″ hanger, 1 3/8″ on 4″–4 1/4″, 1 1/2″ wider), or type a width. Below the top is the card above the hole. An oval or slot has its own height; a hook or keyhole its channel width.
• Slit: none, up and out to the side, straight out, or straight up, opening to the right or the left. It is cut 1 mm past the edge so the die cuts clean through.
• Top: square, rounded corners (with a radius), arch or peaked, with the rise above the shoulders.
• Checks warn when the hole is too small for a door knob's 3/4″ shank, leaves under 3/8″ of card beside or above it, runs off a curved top, or the perforation runs too close to the hole.

Flat and on the door

• Flat — front and Flat — back: the printed faces with the cut in red and the perforation dashed in green. The back is shown as it prints, turned over left to right.
• 3D: the hanger on a door, the top of its hole resting on the handle's neck — a round knob or a lever. Front, Back and Turn over turn it round on the handle; untick On a door to see it on its own.
• Artwork: front and back, each a PDF or an image the size of the whole hanger plus bleed (the hole is cut out of it); a logo under the hole and company details at the foot; a name or address from a data file and text boxes, as in the Envelope Creator.

Gilder, the Imposer and saving

• Gilder (top bar, the Spot UV & foil card and Output) opens the hanger in Gilder with its Spot UV and foil marked, to see them catch the light and write the embellisher's files.
• View in 3D opens it in the 3D Viewer, cut out round its die line.
• Impose › sends the print file — front and back, the die line in CutContour and Perf, the finishes as overprinting spot colours, one hanger per record with a data file — to the Imposer, which makes the press sheets and the cutter's marks.
• Print PDF: page 1 the front, page 2 the back. Dieline PDF: CutContour for the outline, hole and slit, and Perf (dashed) for a tear-off.
• Templates are kept on this PC and exported as .iqhanger files. Showcase samples: a lawn-care offer with a tear-off, a Just Listed house top with foil and Spot UV, a hotel Do Not Disturb keyhole and a pizzeria hook with its menu on the back.

Photo Layout

Photo Layout takes one photograph and the sizes a customer ordered — say 6 of 10 × 13, 30 wallets and 20 4 × 6 — and lays every print out on press sheets that a Duplo DC slitter / cutter / creaser finishes in one pass, with the DC-ST100 In-Line Stacker stacking the output by size. It writes the press PDF, one Duplo DC job XML per layout and a job sheet for the operator.

The photo and the order

• Photograph: a JPEG, PNG or one-page PDF, or Use a sample photo. Click the picture to set what has to stay in every crop (a face); each size is cropped round it.
• Placement: Fill crops to cover the print with full bleed; Fit shows the whole picture inside a white border.
• Order: a line per size — wallet 2.5 × 3.5, mini wallet, 3.5 × 5, 4 × 5, 4 × 6, 5 × 7, 6 × 8, 8 × 10, 8.5 × 11, 10 × 13, 11 × 14, 12 × 18, the square sizes, or custom — and its quantity. A print runs the way the photograph does (a portrait photo prints portrait) unless the line says otherwise.

How the sheets are planned

• A DC slits the whole length of the sheet and cuts across its whole width, so a sheet is a grid: every print exactly fills the cell where its column meets its row, one way round or the other. A cell nothing fits is waste.
• The planner tries three ways — sizes sharing sheets where the grid allows, one size to a layout run until its quantity is made, and one size to a layout with a part sheet for the rest — and keeps the one with the fewest press sheets, then the fewest layouts (each layout is a DC JOB), then the fewest prints over the order.
• Every layout is checked against the chosen DC (DC-648, DC-746 or DC-618, from the Duplo finisher specs): the feed size, the slitters (two per gutter plus the edges), the 30 cuts, a column gutter of 0 or 5–15 mm, a row gutter of 0 or at least 3 mm, the 3.2–55 mm edge slitter margins, the lead and trail cuts, the 48 × 50 mm smallest piece. Twice the bleed gutters let every print keep its bleed and are raised to what the DC can drop.
• The tabs over the sheet step through the layouts; each shows how many sheets to print, its lanes, and where its output goes.

The DC-ST100 In-Line Stacker

The DC-ST100 connects to the DC-648 and the DC-746 (not the DC-618). Each lane off the DC becomes its own stack across the conveyor — three across as standard, five with the OPG-01 side guides — and two or more across need gutter slits. When the finished size or the slit positions change from one JOB to the next, the stacker moves to a new row of stacks by itself. So with the stacker on:

• each lane carries one size, there are at most three lanes (five with the side guides), and the column gutters are slit gutters;
• prints longer than 216 mm along the feed (a 10 × 13) cannot be stacked: they are planned on sheets of their own, routed to the delivery tray or the insert tray;
• the stock has to be 230–400 gsm; the job sheet works out the stacks from its thickness (40 mm high at most).

The stacker's own settings — ST100 Connection, Stacker setting, Space b/w rows, Repeat counter, preset counts — are kept in each JOB on the PC Controller (System → Exit), not in the job XML. The job sheet says what to set for each JOB.

Press PDF, job XML and job sheet

• Press PDF: one page per layout (or every sheet written out), the photograph embedded once and cropped into every print, with the DC REG mark and job barcode at the lead edge and a slug saying how many sheets to print.
• Marks on every sheet (Sheet and finisher): Job number in words under the barcode prints the DC JOB number in plain figures below the job barcode, so an operator can read it. Slug line runs along the trail margin with the job name, layout, DC JOB, what is on the sheet, the sheet number of the total, the output and the date. 2D code on every sheet adds a QR code or Data Matrix holding the PDF's file name and “Sheet n of total” (for example Photo order - press sheets.pdf | Sheet 3 of 11), in the lower right corner by default, placed the way the OMR Generator places its code (30 mm in from the right edge of the sheet, 4 mm up from the trail edge, 10 mm square); lower left or top left in the lead margin are there too. With the code in the trail, the trail margin grows to keep the prints clear of it, and the slug line stops short of it. The sheets are numbered straight through all the layouts. Because every sheet's code is different, the press PDF then writes every sheet out. A warning shows if the code will not fit the margin clear of the prints.
• DC job XML: one Duplo DuploDCJobTemplate file per layout — the format the Imposer and Book write — with a CutBlock for every print (its own size and position, in points from the bottom of the sheet), the REG mark and the barcode area. JOB numbers run on from First DC job number.
• Job sheet: every DC JOB, the sheets to feed, the output (stacker or tray), the stacker settings, and each lane's size, prints and stacks.
• Everything for the DC puts the press PDF, the XML files and the job sheet in one folder. Output from an unlicensed copy is marked DEMO.

Templates

The Templates card sets the whole window up for a kind of work — press sheet, DC, stacker, margins, marks and DC job numbers — in one click. Four come built in (Photo lab 13 × 19 — DC JOB by size, Portrait packages 13 × 19, Wallets and 4 × 6 on 12 × 18, Square prints on SRA3, Photo lab B2 — DC JOB by size (DC-746 B2)). Save keeps the settings on screen as your own template (tick Save the order with it for a standing order); Export… writes it as a .iqphoto file for another PC or for the Workflow Photo layout step, and Import… reads one back. The photograph is never part of a template.

Order files

Order file… (or drop the file on the sheet) reads the sizes and quantities from a CSV, a text file or an Excel workbook: a size and a quantity on each line in either order (4x6, 20, 20 x 3.5x5, wallet 40), or Size and Qty columns, with an optional portrait / landscape and a Job: Smith family line for the job name. A size that comes twice is added up; lines that do not read are listed.

DC job numbers by size

Under DC job numbers, One per size, from the table gives every size its own DC JOB, the same on every order: by default 3.5×5 = 200, 4×6 = 201, 5×7 = 202, 8×10 = 203, 8.5×11 = 204, 10×13 = 205, 11×14 = 206, 12×18 = 207, wallet = 208, mini wallet = 209, 4×4 = 210, 4×5 = 211, 5×5 = 212, 6×8 = 213, 8×8 = 214, 12×12 = 215 — edit the table to match your PC Controller. Each size then runs as its own layout, always on the same grid, so the barcode on its sheets calls up the JOB stored for it. XML for every size… writes the whole library once: a job XML for each size in the table, each in a folder named for the size and the press sheet (4x6 on 13x19\JOB 201 - 4x6 on 13x19.xml); sizes that do not fit the sheet are left out and named.

B2 sheets on the DC-746 B2

Choose B2 (500 × 707 mm) as the press sheet (or DC-746 B2 as the DC) and the order is laid out for the DC-746 B2. The DC-20000 cuts each B2 sheet across its feed into cut sheets — JOB A at the lead, then B (and C) — after a 20 mm lead strip, with 10 mm gutters between them and a 10 mm trail. DC-20000 cut sheets a B2 picks 2 (333.5 mm each) or 3 (219 mm each), or whichever prints fewer B2 sheets. The cut sheets need not be the same length: Cut sheet lengths is Equal or unequal, whichever prints fewer (it tries every JOB A and B length in 5 mm steps, and keeps equal lengths on a tie), Equal, or Set them — type the lengths in mm, JOB A first, each 210–370 mm, such as 300, 357; one length sets JOB A and JOB B takes the rest. When the JOB numbers come from the table, a size keeps to one cut-sheet length, so its stored DC-746 JOB always fits. Set each length as its own B2 cut position on the DC-20000; the job sheet lists them. Each cut sheet then turns 90° onto the DC-746: the B2’s left edge becomes its lead edge and the DC-20000’s cut its right-side reference, so every cut sheet is laid out as a DC-746 sheet of its own, with its own L-shaped REG mark (12 mm in from the cut and the left edge, inside the 3–23 mm area the DC-746 B2 reads), its own JOB barcode and QR code. Across the B2’s lead the press PDF prints the DC-20000’s REG line, 1.5 mm wide and 13 mm from the lead, 10–425 mm in from the right edge so both sensors see it; it goes out with the lead strip.

The layout tabs show each B2 layout (which cut-sheet layout is on JOB A, B and C, and how many B2 sheets to print) and then each cut-sheet layout, the DC-746 JOB. Cut sheets of different sizes can share a B2 sheet; each carries its own barcode, so set the DC-746 barcode to Every sheet. The job XML is one file per DC-746 JOB, in folders such as 4x6 on B2, and the job sheet lists the DC-20000 cut positions. The bleed defaults to 1/8″ (0.125″) on every sheet; with Twice the bleed gutters that leaves a quarter-inch between prints.

In a Workflow

The Workflow steps Photo preflight and Photo layout do all of this from a hot folder. The example Photo lab — photo + order file to 13x19 DC sheets, JOB by size watches C:\ImposeIQ\Hot\Photo Layout 13x19\In: drop a photograph and its order file together, or a .zip with them in it (folders inside the zip are fine, and the extra files Windows and macOS add are left out; a zip that will not open goes to Problem with the reason); the photo is checked (it opens, and has the resolution for its biggest print), a failed job goes to Problem, and a good one is laid out with the lab template — the press PDF with the REG mark, job barcode and QR code on every sheet and the job sheet go to Ready, and the DC job XML (this job's and the whole library) to DC Job XML, a folder per size and sheet.

Business Card Creator

Business Card Creator designs a card on the card itself, shows it in 3D with its foil and gloss catching the light, and writes the print PDF, a proof and the imposed press sheets. Any element can print as a foil, a hologram, Spot UV or a blind emboss; those are written the way Gilder reads them, so Open in Gilder shows the finished card and makes the embellisher's files. Open it from Home and pick a card type or a sample; Cards… brings the start screen back.

Cards and sizes

• Standard card: US 3.5 × 2″, Europe 85 × 55, credit card (CR80), Japan, Australia, slim, square and mini, or any size; landscape or portrait (Turn); square or rounded corners. Front only or both sides.
• Die-cut card: circle, oval, leaf, arch, ticket (scooped corners), clipped corners, hexagon or a rounded tab. The bleed is the cut grown by the bleed all the way round, and the safe area follows the shape. The die line goes out as a CutContour spot colour.
• Fold-over card: twice the size, scored and folded along the top (a tent) or the side (a book), with a front, a back and two inside faces. Folding along the top, the back prints upside down above the front so both read once folded, and the inside is laid out as opened and backs up turned 180°.

Designing on the card

• Pick a face at the top left of the preview. + Text, + Image, + Box, + Rule, + Circle and + QR code add an element; click one on the card to select it and drag to move it. Eight handles resize it: the corners both ways, the sides one way, with the opposite edge staying put; Shift on a corner keeps the proportions (an image always does). On text the side handles change the wrap width and the top, bottom and corners scale the type. Arrow keys nudge (Shift = 5 mm) and Delete removes it.
• Text takes any of the bundled fonts, a size in points, bold, italic, capitals and left, centre or right alignment, wrapped to its width. Copy to other side puts an element on every face.
• Classic, Centred and Bold lay every face out again with the usual fields; the images stay.
• Images: the logo and any pictures, PNG, JPEG, SVG or PDF (a PDF stays vector). A face can also have a background colour and a background image, with bleed.
• The guides show the cut (red), the bleed (dotted), the safe area (blue, following a die shape) and the fold (green). The checks warn about type outside the safe area, type under 5.5 pt, foil on type under 7 pt and a QR code under 15 mm.

Foil, Spot UV and Gilder

• Prints as sets what an element is: ink; ink with Spot UV over it; Spot UV alone (clear); gold, silver, rose gold, blue, red or green foil; a rainbow, prism, sparkle or pinstripe hologram; or a blind emboss or deboss. A foil or emboss takes the place of the ink.
• Background pattern (on the Face card): dots, scattered dots, stripes, pinstripes, chevrons, waves, grid, crosshatch, checkerboard, diamonds, honeycomb, scales, ripples, triangles, repeating text (with «fields») or the repeating logo, over the whole face and its bleed, under the elements. Set the repeat, the dot or line size and the angle; it prints as Spot UV alone to start with, and can be any finish or ink. The presets give a starting point. The checks warn when a line or dot is under 0.4 mm, which a Spot UV or foil may not hold, or so heavy it closes up.
• An image or a QR code in a finish uses its dark (or, for a transparent PNG, its opaque) parts, so a black logo becomes a gold one.
• Every finish is written into the PDFs in its own overprinting spot colour, named so Gilder reads it back as that finish (“Gold foil”, “Spot UV gloss”, “Rainbow hologram”…). The Finishes card lists them.
• Open in Gilder hands the card over: Gilder opens it with the finishes already picked, shows them in the light and writes the CMYK file and the plates for the embellisher. Press sheets in Gilder does the same for the imposed sheets.
• The 3D view shows the card with its thickness, the foils as metal, holograms with their rainbow, Spot UV as gloss and emboss raised; move the mouse to swing the light across it.

Variable data and vCards

• Open a .csv or Excel file whose first row names the columns, or try Use the sample staff list. Type «Name» (or click a column) in any text and it fills from each row; an empty field drops its line.
• A QR code can hold a vCard made from the fields — name, title, company, phones, email, website and address — so every card carries its own contact; or a web address or any text, with fields.
• Print only when… prints an element only for records where a column matches (equals, contains, is empty…).
• ◀ ▶ at the bottom step through the records. The print PDF writes a card per person in the range.

Printing, press sheets and cutters

• Print PDF: a page per printed side of each card, with bleed, trim and bleed boxes, crop marks and a slug; the die line can go in as CutContour. Proof PDF shows every face flat with its cut, for approval.
• Press sheet: the sheet (12 × 18 takes 21 US cards), gap, margin and turning; One card, repeated for one person's run, or A different person in each place for a staff list. The backs back up work-and-turn at the mirrored place.
• Cutter marks: pick the machine the sheets go to. The sheet carries only that cutter's marks, only its options show, and the margins move so no mark lands on a card (the checks say so if one does, or if the machine does not take the sheet).
  • Crop marks — guillotine: crop ticks round the grid, one pair per cut.
  • Duplo DC card cutter: the REG mark at the top-right of the lead edge and the job barcode for the DC job number (DC-618, DC-648, DC-746). The DC cuts straight lines, so the checks stop a die shape going to it. With the DC-648 chosen, two more options appear, drawn as the OMR Generator draws them: Skew Mark — a 10 mm bar at the lead edge, 50–60 mm in from the right, that the DC-648 uses to check the sheet fed square; and Shrink Mark — a second L like the REG mark, its corner 9 mm in from the right edge and 370 mm down from the lead edge by default (Shrink mark from the lead edge), from which the DC-648 measures how much the print has shrunk or stretched. On a short sheet the shrink mark moves up to stay 25 mm clear of the trail edge; the cards move in from the right edge to keep clear of it.
  • Duplo UD-320 rotary die cutter: the X / Y register marks the Cover Builder and the Folder and Envelope Creators use — a 3 × 100 mm Y bar centred 5 mm from the lead edge, and a 3 × 25 mm X mark 100 mm from centre on the front and 76 mm on the other side on the back (both faces are marked). Y mark only moves the Y bar to 10 mm and drops the X mark; X mark (front) chooses its side. Turn the artwork 1° clockwise turns the cards (not the marks or slug) about the sheet centre to match a die that cuts a touch out of square. Sheets 210–390 × 297–520 mm.
  • DSM-1000 platen die cutter: the Digital Die Cut registration bars — 3 mm bars 12 mm in from both side edges, 198 mm from the lead, and the conveyance bar at the trail on the reference side. Reference (belt) edge picks the side that runs on the conveyance belt; nothing is cut within the Reference margin (28 mm or more) of it. Sheets 279–530 × 279–750 mm.
  • Digital die cutter: only the locator marks the cutter's camera reads — black circles or crosses (Locator mark, Mark size 3–20 mm) round the sheet, placed as the Digital Die Cut engine places them, with no crop ticks or DC marks.
  With a UD-320, DSM-1000 or digital die cutter (or a die-cut card) Cut file PDF writes the die lines of each card on the sheet in CutContour.
• Slug: every press sheet, in the preview and the PDF, carries a line along its bottom edge naming the job, the card size, the number up, the sheet, the cutter (with the DC model and job number), the face (front or back, and sheet n of N) and the date.
• Templates keep the card, every face and the press settings — and the images under 4 MB — on this PC; Export writes an .iqcard file with every image. Output from an unlicensed copy is marked DEMO.
• Samples: Ridgeline Print Co., a leaf die-cut florist card, a circle kraft coffee card with a blind emboss, a black card in silver foil and hologram, and a fold-over salon appointment card. The names are made up.

Calendar Creator

Calendar Creator lays out a calendar from a start month, a language and a picture per month, shows it flat and in 3D, and writes the print PDF with the pages in the order and the way up the binding needs. It looks and works like the Envelope Creator: open it from Home, pick a calendar type or a sample on the start screen, and change everything on the right; Calendars… in the top bar brings the start screen back.

Calendar types

Each type has its standard sizes, and Custom size takes any page; Turn swaps the width and height. For the tent card the size is one face.

Months, language and holidays

• Start month, year and months: 12 months, 13 for a lead-in month (a wall calendar then has 14 sheets), or any count up to 24, rolling into the next year.
• Week starts on Sunday or Monday; Language sets the month and day names (17 languages). Names the standard PDF fonts cannot spell, such as Polish, Czech, Greek or Russian, print in the bundled Roboto.
• US holidays: the federal list is the MIS planner's. A holiday prints on its own date, and when the planner observes it on another weekday (July 4 on a Sunday is off on the Monday) that day says “(observed)”. Popular observances adds Easter, Mother's Day, Halloween and the like.
• Your own dates: one a line — 2027-03-14 Open house for one day, 7/1 Fiscal year for that date in every year shown.

Photos and design

• Add photos / PDF takes several images, or one PDF with a page per month, and fills the slots in order from the first empty one — the cover first. Drop files on a slot to start there, or on the flat view to fill the month on screen. A PDF stays vector in the print PDF. The checks warn when a photo will print under 150 ppi.
• Captions print small in the corner of a month's photo.
• Themes set the colours and fonts in one click; every colour and the title and text fonts can then be changed.
• Date grid: ruled boxes, shaded boxes, a rule under each week, or no lines. Rows: as the month needs, always six, or always five with 23/30 and 24/31 sharing a split box.
• Photo area sets how much of a one-page month, easel page or poster the photo takes, above or beside the grid. The wall calendar's photos fill their own page.
• Last and next month small in a wall calendar's heading, neighbouring months' dates greyed, ISO week numbers and capitals are options.

Flat, print and 3D views

• Flat — as read: each spread as the customer sees it, a wall calendar's photo above its grid with the wire between. Guides shows the bleed, the safe area, the wire-o holes and hanger notch, and the creases.
• Print pages: each page of the print PDF in order, as it lies on the press, with the backs turned the way they print.
• 3D: drag to turn, wheel to zoom, double-click to reframe. The slider and ▶ flip through the year: the wall calendar's sheets go up over the wire, the one-page calendar's go over and behind, the easel's go over the stand, and the tent card folds up from flat.
• ◀ ▶ and Page Up / Page Down step through the spreads, the print pages or the months.

Printing and binding

• Print PDF: every page in sheet order, front then back, with bleed, a trim and bleed box, crop marks and a slug line. A press backing up work-and-turn needs a wall calendar's photo backs turned 180° (they are read flipped up over the wire), which is how they are written; the easel's backs read head to head and are not turned. Untick Backs work-and-turn for a press that tumbles head over head.
• Wire-o: 3:1 or 2:1 pitch. The holes are centred along the bound edge and kept clear of the hanger notch, and the safe area grows on the bound edge so no type is punched. Punch guide puts the holes and notch in the PDF as non-printing, overprinting WireO and CutContour spot outlines. The Output card gives the wire size for the stack and the number of holes.
• Creases on the tent card and easel stand go out as an overprinting Crease spot colour, the stand's outline as CutContour.
• Proof PDF: one page per spread, as it is read, for the customer to approve.
• Output from an unlicensed copy is marked DEMO, as in every ImposeIQ tool.
• Samples: a seasons wire-o wall calendar, a double-sided studio desk easel, a year planner poster, a Spanish tent card and a French kitchen calendar. The pictures are painted in code; the company names are made up.

Staples and the hanging hole

• Wall calendar that opens up, Binding: Staples — saddle-stitched. The calendar becomes a booklet bound along the fold: cover, then each month's photo and grid, blank pages to make a multiple of four, and the back cover (28 pages on 7 sheets for 12 months; 13 months fill 28 pages with no blanks). The print PDF is in printer spreads, the fold across the middle, outside then inside of each sheet, the inside turned 180° for work-and-turn. Two staples go through the fold (three on pages over 14″ wide).
• A 1/4″ hanging hole is drilled 3/8″ in from the edge away from the fold, through the whole book; opened, the calendar hangs by the hole in its top leaves. The grid pages keep their type clear of it.
• One page a month, Binding: Staples — staples 1/4″ down from the top, and the hanging hole 0.6″ down between them; the type starts below the hole.
• With Punch and drill guide ticked, the holes go into the print PDF as a non-printing, overprinting Drill spot outline (wire-o holes as WireO).

Advertising strip

For a wall calendar, tick Make the last page longer and set its depth (2″ to start with). The last leaf then hangs that much below the others, so its foot shows under every month all year — the classic promotional calendar. Type the advertiser's text (the first line prints larger) and, if you have one, put the ad artwork in the Advertising strip slot under Photos: it fills the strip with bleed, and the text prints white over it.

• Wire-o: the strip is on the sheet with the last month's grid; the back cover behind it is longer too.
• Saddle-stitched: the strip is on the inside back page, so the outer sheet prints that much longer than the rest (the checks say by how much).
• One page a month: the last page.

The flat view, the proof and the 3D view all show the strip below the months.

Press sheet — multiple up

• Choose a sheet (11 × 17 up to 25 × 38, SRA3, B2 or custom), the gap between trims (twice the bleed to start with, so every piece keeps its full bleed) and the margin from the sheet edge to the outermost trim, where the gripper and crop marks go.
• The same page, repeated fills each sheet with one leaf as many up as fit, so a run needs calendars ÷ up copies of each sheet. Different pages, ganged puts consecutive leaves side by side, to be cut apart and collated. Pieces of a different size (a longer advertising leaf, the easel stand) get their own sheets; a piece too big for the sheet is reported in the checks.
• Pieces may be turned 90° when that fits more. The back of each sheet carries every piece's back at the mirrored place — across the sheet for a work-and-turn press, up and down it when the press tumbles — turned to match.
• Crop marks, and dashed fold marks for stapled spreads, sit outside the block of pieces. Press sheet in the view tabs shows each side; Imposed sheets PDF writes them, front then back. The card gives the pieces a sheet and the press sheets the run needs.

Templates

• Save as template keeps every setting on the panel — type, size, months, language, holidays, titles, design, advertising strip, binding, output and press sheet — and the photos when they come to under 4 MB, on this PC. Open, Update and Delete work on the chosen one.
• Export writes what is on screen as an .iqcalendar file with every photo in it (a PDF's pages are stored once); Import opens one and keeps a copy in the list.

ImposeIQ ROI

What a Duplo embellishment or finishing machine is worth to a shop, built from the numbers the rest of the Suite already keeps. Pick the equipment and the page shows the payback, and every line of arithmetic behind it.

Each machine starts from the Duplo USA list price, accessory set, install & training fee and optional annual maintenance on a real quote - the quote number and date show under Investment. Discount off list takes a dealer, partner or franchise discount off the equipment (not the install).

Sales and Shop

The switch in the header keeps two separate scenarios, so flipping it in front of a customer never loses what was typed into the other one.

The page only reads. It cannot change a rate, a job, a workflow or a run, and it is never handed artwork paths, customer contacts or workflow folders.

How the number is built

Where the MIS and workflows come in

The five cards under the charts follow one job through the machine being edited: the MIS cost center that prices it, the workflow that preps it, the machine reading the barcode instead of being set up by hand, the floor posting real minutes back to the job, and the payback. Proof from the MIS lists jobs that route through the selected machines, with estimated and actual minutes, what the work cost in house, and what a trade finisher would have charged.

Cash, lease & what-if

Money switches between a cash purchase (payback, NPV and IRR) and a lease (monthly payment against monthly benefit, and the month the lease turns cash positive). What if volume changes? scales every job, sheet and quote; the sensitivity table shows payback at 50% to 150%, and the note under it gives the volume a cash purchase needs to hit your target payback.

Scenarios, CSV & print

Scenarios saves the current mode under a name on this PC; the Suite backup carries them. Export CSV writes the summary, the annual bridge, each machine and every input. Print / PDF prints a clean, light proposal with an assumptions table - choose Microsoft Print to PDF to send it.

ImposeIQ Maintenance

Keeps the finishing kit running, and shows what it costs to. Every machine on the floor has a plan of scheduled tasks, a history of what was done to it, its service calls and downtime, its meter, and the consumables it uses. Open it from Home → ImposeIQ Maintenance or the tray menu.

Getting started

On a new install the Overview offers Add Duplo machines…. The machines switched on in Settings → Machines come ticked. Each one can be added with a starter plan (cleaning, blade and cutting-stick checks, feeder wear parts, lubrication, inspections, the annual service visit) and starter consumables with zero stock and no price.

Anything else - a press, a laminator, a folder - is added with + Machine. Set Duplo model on a Duplo machine so its sheets can be counted from the MIS.

Tasks & the schedule

A task has a kind (lubrication, blade / knife, feeder wear, preventive service, inspection, cleaning, other), an interval of days, a meter count, or both - whichever comes first, who usually does it, written instructions, and the parts it uses.

• Overdue - the date has passed or the meter has reached the count.
• Due soon - within the days set in Maintenance → Settings (7 by default), within 10% of the meter interval, or projected to reach the count within those days at the machine's recent usage.
• A meter task is projected onto the calendar from the machine's readings over the last 90 days, so "every 100,000 sheets" on a machine doing 5,000 a day shows as about 20 days out. If the projection says the count has probably been reached, the task shows Due soon and asks for a reading rather than calling it overdue.

Done… records the date, the meter, who did it, the time taken, any other cost and notes. For a blade task it also records whether the blade or knife was replaced with new, replaced with a sharpened one, turned, or inspected; blade and feeder tasks can record how worn the old part was. The parts listed come out of stock at their current unit cost.

+ Log work records unscheduled work - a repair, a part swapped - and can be tied to an open service call. Removing a log entry puts its parts back into stock.

Meter readings

Enter the count the machine shows - sheets, cuts (guillotines), clicks, books or hours. A meter figure given when a task is marked done also counts as a reading. A reading lower than the last one is refused unless Meter was reset or the counter replaced is ticked; then every task on that machine keeps the same distance to go.

From MIS… counts good plus waste on the machine's finished MIS operations since the last reading and offers the result as a reading. It is an estimate of the meter - operations booked with no count use the estimated quantity - so check it against the machine's own counter before saving.

Service calls & downtime

A call has a severity - Machine down, Running, degraded or Routine - a status (open, tech scheduled, waiting on parts, closed), the ticket number, who was called, the tech visit date, the resolution, and labor and parts cost.

• An open Machine down call marks the machine DOWN everywhere and raises the Machine down alert straight away.
• Downtime is worked out from opened to closed for a Machine down call, or typed in for any call.
• Tick Covered by the service contract / warranty and the call costs the shop nothing in the totals.

Consumables

Each item has a type, unit, part number, vendor, shelf, unit cost, the machines it is used on, a reorder at level and an order quantity. Receive adds a delivery (and can update the unit cost), Use takes some out, Count sets the on-hand figure from a shelf count. Every change is listed under Recent stock movements.

Downtime & the MIS Schedule

The MIS Schedule plans around machines Maintenance says are out, so work is not booked onto a machine that cannot run it:

The planner moves work that needed that time to earlier days; a job that cannot fit before its due date shows at risk and raises the at-risk alert as usual. The grid marks those days DOWN or Svc, a banner above it lists what Maintenance has out and when, and the 1-day view says so on the machine's lane. Move to machine… marks a machine that is down that day.

A machine reaches the Schedule through its Duplo model (every cost center with that machine) or the MIS cost centers ticked on the machine - use those for presses and other non-Duplo kit. The Downtime screen shows the next four weeks and names any machine not linked yet. Nothing is written into the MIS work calendar: close the call or remove the booking and the time is back.

Alerts & backup

While the Suite is running, Maintenance checks every 30 minutes and raises four events, each routed in Settings → Notifications like every other event:

The records are kept on this PC in maintenance\maintenance.json in the Suite's data folder and are included in the Suite backup (Settings → Backup, ImposeIQ Maintenance). Export CSV saves the table on the current screen; Print prints it.

Maskwork

The production mask studio for spot UV and foil (the app calls the foil process sleeking). Where Embellishment Studio is the sales tool — a 3D render for showing a customer what a job could look like — Maskwork is the shop-floor tool: it opens the real print-ready PDF, page by page, and builds the actual coverage masks the DuSense coater and the DFL foiler run from.

The window

Three panels around a canvas. The left rail lists the PDF's pages as thumbnails and, for the current page, every element Maskwork's own analysis found — text runs and images, each with its size, so you can click one straight onto the mask instead of drawing around it. The right inspector holds Finish (which channel and mode you are on), Tools, Records, Preview and Output. The canvas in the middle shows the page, the mask and an adjustable overlay together, or any one of them alone.

Mode at the top switches between Spot UV and Sleeking (foil) — everything below acts on whichever mode and channel button is lit, the same idea as Embellishment Studio's per-side channels.

Finish — how the mask keys the plate

The Finish panel is where the mask stops being a shape and becomes a plate. Which controls appear depends on the mode, because spot UV and foil key completely differently.

Pages & elements

Open any PDF and every page gets a thumbnail; a filled dot marks a page that already carries a mask. Click a page to work on it. Its detected elements list underneath — All text and All images buttons mask every element of that kind on the page in one click, or pick individual rows from the element list to build the coverage up piece by piece.

Tools

Undo and Redo step through every change; Clear page empties the current page's mask on the current channel and starts again.

Importing a mask

Rather than build a mask from nothing, Import Mask brings one in from either a plate or mask PDF someone already made, or a spot color already in this artwork — the same idea as Embellishment Studio picking up a file's own named spot plate. Ignore below (default 6%) drops faint noise on the way in, so a scanned or anti-aliased plate does not key the whole sheet. A file that already carries a proper separation for the varnish or foil comes in correctly masked with no manual work at all, which is how a properly prepared job should arrive.

Records — N-up sheets & VDP

A mask is usually built once and needs to repeat: an N-up sheet has the same card several times, and a VDP merge has the same layout on every record with only the variable text changing. Maskwork detects that layout and shows it under Records; with Sync edits to every record checked (on by default), masking one card stamps the identical edit onto every other record on the sheet. Turn it off only when one specific record genuinely needs different coverage from the rest.

Concepts — the AI advisor

Before it asks, the advisor takes a short brief so the concepts come back buildable rather than generic: Stock (“16pt C2S, silk laminated”), Lamination (“matte, on the DFL-700”), Foil available (“brushed gold, rose”), Brand tone (“restrained, luxury”), and a free-text Anything the advisor must respect box for the constraints that actually decide a job — the customer will not pay for foil on the reverse, keep the coating off the QR code.

The Concepts… button sends the current page to the AI and asks for three fully-described embellishment concepts: Spot UV only, Foil only, and Raised Spot UV + foil. Each concept comes back with a customer-facing description, the regions it proposes for each channel, a recommended foil color where one applies, the percentage of the page it covers in varnish and in foil, a suggested production route, and any operator notes worth knowing before it goes further.

Nothing the AI proposes is trusted blindly: the software checks every proposed region against the page's real elements first, and shows you what it had to correct before showing you the concepts themselves — the corrections come first on purpose, because they are the part an operator actually needs to read. Apply replaces the page's current mask with a concept; Add layers it on top of what is already there. Either way the result is an ordinary mask selection once it lands — it undoes, previews and exports exactly like anything drawn by hand, because there is no separate "AI mask" path.

Preview

Preview in Gilder › opens the artwork with its Spot UV and foil plates in Gilder — every page, the plates added as layers in the inks SpotUV and Foil, the same file Impose › sends — so the finish can be checked catching the light before it goes to the coater, rather than trusted as a flat gray shape, and Gilder can write the embellisher's files.

Output — coverage, DPI & export

The canvas can show the Original artwork, an Overlay of the mask on top of it in an adjustable color and opacity, or the Mask only — the same three-way check Embellishment Studio's channel overlay gives you, here against the real production file.

Export Mask writes the current channel; Both Plates writes the spot UV and foil plates one after the other in a single pass. Save and Open on a mask project (.mwk) keep work in progress separate from an exported plate, so a job can be picked back up without redoing the masking.

Spot Layers

For a customer file that arrives with no finish layers. Open the PDF and click the type, shapes, logos and pictures that should be coated or foiled: a copy of each goes onto a Spot UV or Foil layer, as the object itself, in a spot ink. Where Maskwork builds plates — including finish that is not on the artwork, like patterns and frames — Spot Layers only ever copies what is printed, and keeps it as vectors.

Picking objects

The two buttons in the header choose the layer a click puts objects on (keys 1 and 2). Hovering shows the object under the pointer and what it is.

An object can be on both layers — foil with a raised varnish over it. Each layer's list in the side panel shows what is on it for the page, with × to take one off. Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y) step through every change.

What goes on a layer

An object is one painting operation in the PDF: a text run, a filled or stroked shape, a picture, a placed graphic or a gradient. Its copy is drawn exactly where the original is, under the same clipping, at 100% of a SpotUV or Foil spot ink, set to overprint so the print underneath is not knocked out.

• Type stays live type in the same font, and a shape keeps its exact outline.
• A picture with a transparent background — a cut-out logo — is coated through its own transparency, so the coating follows its shape. Any other picture is coated as its rectangle.
• A placed graphic (an embedded PDF or EPS) goes on whole.

The customer's artwork is not changed: with both layers turned off, the page is the page that came in. The layer and ink names are the ones the Imposer carries through imposition and Embellishment Studio reads.

Result & saving

Result renders the file as it will be saved, with checkboxes to show the artwork and each layer. On screen Spot UV shows as magenta and Foil as gold; on press each is a plate of its own. Save PDF… writes a copy named … - spot layers.pdf.

Workflow Automation

The part of the suite that runs jobs without you. A workflow is a trigger — how work arrives — followed by a list of steps that run in order on every job. Drop a file in a hot folder, or let a customer post one in over the web, and the job is checked, imposed, numbered, approved, delivered and logged while you are doing something else.

How it works

A job is a set of files traveling through the step list together. Each step can change the files, add job variables, or decide the job should stop. Nothing is destructive: the engine works on copies in a temp folder and only writes where an Output, Upload or Send step tells it to.

Job variables are the glue. A step that learns something — preflight pass/fail, the AI's answer, a database column, a job number read off the artwork, the Fiery's status — writes it as [var.NAME], and any later step can use it in a filename, an email, or a Route decision.

Triggers — how jobs arrive

The step library

Steps are grouped by what they do. Add them in any order — the list runs top to bottom.

Using your real apps

The three ImposeIQ apps steps run the actual Imposer, VDP and preflight engines — the same code paths, the same templates, the same Duplo OMR marks — not a copy. Point Impose + OMR at one of your saved Imposer templates and the workflow produces exactly what the app produces, including the cutter XML.

Book step (ImposeIQ Book)

Runs a template saved in ImposeIQ Book in a hidden Book window, so a hot folder produces exactly what the Book app does. Anything left on Same as the template comes from the template; the step only overrides what you set.

• Saddle stitch — nested (sheets per signature 0) or gathered signatures, creep and DC marks. With Separate cover the cover sheet comes out as name_book_Cover.pdf and the text as name_book_Text.pdf, so each can run on its own stock. Outside only prints the inside covers blank and leaves pages 2 and second-to-last in the text.
• Perfect bound — the gathered text block, plus name_Cover.pdf with the spine worked out from the page count and the body stock (a measured caliper beats PPI, which beats the table), and the cover crease job(s) for the PC Controller — two files when there is no up-crease module.
• Cover file — drop the text and the cover together (turn on Group files on the trigger). The PDF with cover in its name becomes the artwork: one wide page is used as the whole flat wrap, otherwise page 1 is the front and the last page the back.
• Job variables for later steps: [var.bookPages], [var.bookSheets], [var.spineIn], [var.spineMm], [var.coverWidthIn], [var.coverHeightIn], [var.coverPasses].

Image Rescue step

Finds the pictures in a PDF that are under the target dpi at the size they are placed, rebuilds them in place and writes name_rescued.pdf. Text, vectors and boxes are untouched. Images too small to rescue well are refused and counted in [var.rescueRefused] — follow it with a Route step to send those jobs back for new art.

Preflight templates

The Preflight (ImposeIQ app) step does not carry a long list of tick-boxes. It takes one template — a saved, named set of rules — from the Preflight profile dropdown, so the same standard can be reused across every workflow and changed in one place. Three templates are built in and always present:

Your own templates. Anything you save appears in the same dropdown underneath the three built-ins, and is stored in preflight-profiles.json alongside the rest of the automation settings — so it travels with a Backup & Restore file. A custom template can draw on any rule the engine implements:

Color policy sits on the step, not the template. Three settings are layered on top of whichever template you pick, so one template can serve accounts with different color standards:

• Required rendering intent — relative colorimetric, perceptual, saturation or absolute colorimetric. A file that declares no intent passes; the RIP then applies its own default.
• Flag files that mix rendering intents — one intent on the images and another in the graphics state is a common reason a proof does not match press.
• Flag absolute colorimetric — it simulates the source paper white and usually prints with an unexpected cast.

Whatever the file declares is written to [var.renderingIntents] and logged, enforced or not.

When a file fails, the step either flags it and keeps going — the normal choice, so a Route step can divert it to a hold folder or an email — or stops the job outright. Either way it sets [var.preflightPassed], [var.preflightErrors] and [var.preflightErrorCount]. Carry forward any repaired files the app returns lets Preflight Repair's corrected file continue down the step list in place of the original.

Reading the job — preflight, AI, tickets & databases

Before a job can be routed it has to be understood. These steps are how a workflow finds out what it is holding.

Route / decide is what acts on all of it. Look at the filename, the page count, the file size or any job variable; test it with is / is not / contains / starts with / ends with / greater than / less than / matches a pattern; then continue, stop, or divert the files to a folder with an optional .txt report explaining why.

Decision tree → route to workflow is the one-hot-folder version: one workflow takes everything in, and hands each file to the workflow that should process it. The step measures the file itself — the trim size name (Business card, Postcard 4x6, Letter, A4, Tabloid, 13x19…), width and height, orientation, page count, mixed page sizes, the spot colour names in the PDF, the file name, type and size — and can also look at any job variable, such as the AI's answer or the customer.

• Questions and branches. Each question looks at one thing; its branches test it (is, is about ± tolerance, at least, between 4 - 8, one of, contains, matches a pattern…). Branches are tried top to bottom and the first match wins; Otherwise catches the rest.
• What a branch does. Hand it to workflow, Ask another question (a nested question — e.g. Letter size → How many pages? → 8 or more → Booklets), Move it to a folder, Carry on with this workflow or Stop.
• Test with a file… under the tree measures a sample file and shows the route it would take, without moving or running anything.
• The target workflow gets its own copy of the file and runs straight away, even if it is switched off — a target usually has a Manual trigger and is only ever fed by the router. The route taken is stored as [var.route], with [var.sizeName], [var.pageCount] and [var.routedFrom] passed along. The router's own Remove the original setting decides what happens to the incoming file.
• A branch that hands the file back to the same workflow, or a chain of more than five hand-offs, fails the job rather than looping. A branch with no workflow or folder chosen, or pointing at a deleted workflow, stops the router being switched on or run until it is fixed.

Imposition, marks & press compensation

DC-746 and DC-746 B2 JDF workflows

Two examples in the library drop a PDF in a hot folder and leave the imposed PDF and its JDF in Ready, ready for the JDF Console:

Both take the piece size from each PDF. Both are saved switched off, so check the folders and turn them on.

• Your own B2 template: in the Imposer pick DC-746 B2, the sheet and the cut sheets, tick the QR, QR job ID and White space boxes, save it, and choose it in the Impose + OMR step. Cut sheet count and lengths are saved with it.
• Unequal cut sheets are one DC-746 JOB each, so the step returns one XML each, and Convert JDF ↔ DC job XML writes one JDF each with [jobname] ending in JOB A, JOB B. Set each cut position on the DC-20000 yourself.
• Convert JDF ↔ DC job XML: [jobname] in Name it is the job name inside the file, which is the JobID the QR holds. The job finishes on a DC-ST100 stacker names it in the ticket. Write the converted file to keeps the JDF in that folder, out of the way of a later Send to folder step. Leave it empty to carry the JDF on with the job.
• Finishing check: put it after the Impose step and before Send to folder, because nothing runs after the job has been sent on. On a B2 job it judges JOB A’s cut sheet as the DC-746 sees it. List DC-746 as the finisher.
• One folder, one workflow: two switched-on workflows watching the same folder each take the file, so a drop makes two PDFs. Saving a workflow warns you when another one watches its folder.
• Jobs run one at a time through the hidden Imposer window, so overlapping drops cannot mix their settings. A big batch queues rather than running side by side.

Reading a PDF's own metadata

Three steps read a job, and it is worth being clear about which reads what, because they sound alike:

The last one exists because the useful metadata is usually somebody else's. A customer's MIS writes the order number into a custom Info key. The designer's Title carries the product name. The Producer tells you which RIP has already been through it. The trim box tells you the finished size without anyone typing it. None of that is in our vocabulary, so none of the other steps will find it. It never modifies the file.

What it sets

Everything lands as job variables under a prefix you choose — meta_ by default:

Fail this step unless these are set is the guard rail. Name the variables a later step depends on — info_OrderID, say — and a file that does not carry one stops here with a clear message, rather than being filed into a folder called [var.meta_info_OrderID] that does not exist.

Job tickets & filename tagging

Two steps bring the File Name Tagger's vocabulary into a workflow. They use the same encoder the File Name Tagger utility uses, byte for byte, so a name a workflow writes decodes in the mark applier, in a DC hot folder and in another workflow — and the other way round.

Keeping them apart is deliberate: a workflow can collect ticket data without renaming anything, or rename using ticket data that came from a database lookup rather than from the step.

Where the ticket comes from

Job ticket information reads any ticket the incoming filename already carries first, then lets your typed fields override it. So a file the File Name Tagger stamped in the shop arrives with customer and rep already set and the workflow only has to top up what it knows. Turn that off if you want the step's own fields to be the only source.

Once set, the values are available to every later step as tokens:

There is one token per ticket field, named [var.ticket_ plus the field name from the job ticket table. Rename files and Send to folder accept them like any other token.

Tagging the name

Tag filename builds the name from three parts: a job name pattern ([name] is the incoming name with any existing groups already stripped, so re-tagging replaces rather than stacks), the mark codes, and the job ticket — which it takes from the job by default, or from its own fields, or leaves off entirely.

• A blank value field leaves that code out of the name, which tells the machine to keep whatever it is already set to. It does not write a zero.
• Keep codes the file already carries starts from the incoming tag and changes only what you fill in — useful when the workflow only needs to add an end mark to a file the shop tagged.
• A value outside the range the machine accepts is reported in the log and left out, rather than sent on to a cutter that will reject the sheet.

Approvals, notifications & the customer

Wait for approval parks the job until a human says yes. The files stay put and survive closing the app. It can raise the request on any combination of channels at once:

A rejected job can be moved straight to a folder you nominate. The other three people-facing steps are Notify the shop (your own team), Tell the customer (received, proofing or ready — the address looked up from the filename with a fallback so nothing goes unsent), and Send to Zapier, which pushes the job on to Sheets, Slack, QuickBooks, an MIS, or anything else Zapier reaches.

Delivery — folders, FTP, cloud & Fiery

Sending from the Imposer. After Generate Imposed PDF, Send to Fiery… sends that PDF to any Fiery set up here. It starts on the hold list; Print now asks first. When the Imposer is linked to an MIS job, the job’s history records where it went.

Connections & settings

Everything a step needs to reach the outside world is set up once under ⚙ Settings and referenced by name afterwards — so an exported workflow never carries a password.

The example library

Twenty-seven complete workflows ship with the app — Settings → Import an example…. They are the fastest way to learn the editor: import one, look at how it is built, and change it into what you actually need.

Worked example: business cards, 21-up

The shape of a typical production workflow, start to finish:

Worked example: filing a job from what the PDF already says

Example 27 in the library. A customer's system exports PDFs with the order number already inside them, and nobody in your shop should have to retype it:

Paper Dummy

The sheet of paper you fold and number by hand to work out an imposition, done on screen. Say how the sheet is cut, folded and stacked, and the page on every panel follows. Open an imposed PDF and the same fold shows whether its pages land in the right order and the right way up.

Folding the sheet

Point at the sheet in the Fold view. A line shows the nearest fold position (1/2, 1/3, 2/3, 1/4 or 3/4 of the paper as it now lies) and the side you are on is tinted: that side moves.

The buttons do the same at a position you choose, including a position in inches for a short panel. The slider under the view runs the folds back and forward, and Unfold all, Undo and the × on a step take steps away. Schemes you use often can be named and kept on this PC.

How the pages are numbered

Going through the folded stack from the outside, each panel gives two faces in a row, and those are the pages in order. Under The finished piece set which edge is the head and which is the spine: together they decide which face is page 1. The last fold's crease is offered as the spine.

The Flat sheet view shows both sides with the page each panel should carry. The number has a chevron pointing at the head of the page. The back is drawn as the file shows it: after the sheet has gone over its turn or tumble edge.

For a job on several sheets, choose whether each follows the last (gathered) or they go inside each other (saddle stitch, or sections). Cut pieces can carry on the sequence or be copies of the same pages.

The card also says which edges still have folds to trim open and whether the spine fold holds every leaf.

Checking an imposed PDF

Open imposed PDF takes pages in pairs, front then back, and shows one sheet at a time, so a large file is not read further than the sheet on screen. Set the fold area when the sheet has marks outside the folded area: the whole page, the file's TrimBox, or a size centred on the page.

Each panel's text is read for its direction and for a page number: a number alone on its line near an edge, or set very large. A green number is the right page the right way up. A red one has its reason in the side panel.

Text in a picture, outlined type and pages with no number cannot be read. Those panels say so rather than pass, and Read through is how to check them by eye.

What it does not do

Paper Dummy does not make press sheets: use the Imposer or Book, and check the result here. It folds through every layer of the paper, so a fold that takes only the top flap is not possible, and it does not allow for paper thickness or creep. Each side of a sheet has to be its own page in the PDF.

Unlicensed, the saved dummy PDF is marked DEMO like the output of any other tool.

ImposeIQ Book

Books. Two binding styles that impose differently, the paper maths behind a perfect-bound spine, the cover creases that decide whether a book opens flat or cracks along the glue line, and the artwork that goes on those three panels.

What it is for

A book is not a stack of N-up sheets. The page order depends on how the sheets end up bound, the spine width depends on the paper, and the cover depends on the spine — get any one wrong and the job collates perfectly and reads in the wrong order, or the cover misses the spine by an eighth of an inch. Book works those three out from what you already know: the page count, the stock, and the machine you are running on.

The window

It is ImposeIQ, held to book work. Book is built on the Imposer’s own engine — the same source-PDF loader, the same live sheet preview, the same signature nesting, creep, DC marks, cutter XML, HC cut export, templates and PDF output — so anyone who can drive the Imposer can drive this. Drop a PDF on Source PDF, set the piece and the press sheet, and the preview redraws as you go. The header carries the same unit switch, AI Workflow, Job… and Settings buttons.

What changed is the scope. Sheet layout offers only the two book layouts — one signature stack per sheet (a 2×1 spread), or two-up signatures per sheet (2×2, slit the Gutter Y apart afterwards) — because a book cannot be a repeat or a gang layout. Above it, Binding is the choice that actually matters, and two more sections appear when you pick perfect bound: Perfect-Bound Cover for the spine and creases, and Cover Artwork for what is printed on it. Both hide again on saddle stitch, since a stitched book has no spine to crease and no cover panels to lay out — a saddle-stitched cover is a sheet of the nest, set with the Cover box in Binding instead.

Fit PDF to press sheet

A booklet spread that is a shade too wide for the press sheet used to be rejected outright, leaving the operator to work out by hand what trim size would have fitted and retype it — losing the real one in the process. Fit PDF to press sheet does that sum instead. It shrinks the piece, and the pages in it, just enough that the whole grid fits inside the sheet’s margins.

Three things about it are deliberate. It only ever shrinks, never enlarges. It applies one factor to both axes — scaling width and height separately would also fit, and would print a booklet with stretched pages, which is worse than not fitting at all because it looks nearly right. And it is non-destructive: your typed Trim W/H stay exactly as they are and only the layout sees the reduced size, so unticking the box puts everything back. The note underneath reports what it did, for example Shrunk to 50% — piece 4.25 in × 5.5 in, from the 8.5 in × 11 in you typed.

Two settings ride with it, and both apply only while Fit is on:

Saddle stitch

Saddle-stitch sheets nest: they sit inside one another, so the outermost sheet carries the first and last pages and the innermost carries the middle spread. A book of S sheets folds to 4S pages, and the whole book is normally one signature.

Because they nest, creep runs across the whole book. The inner pages push outward as the stack thickens, so they shift toward the spine to survive the face trim. Leave Sheets per signature at 0 and the whole document nests as one book. Creep is set per sheet, or calculated from the paper weight, exactly as it is in the Imposer — only the live art moves, never the trim marks or the fold line.

Cut data on a folded signature

A signature spread is one finished piece with a fold down the middle, not two pieces side by side. Cut it like a normal 2-up grid and the machine slits straight down the spine and halves the book. The Cut data box in the booklet options says what to cut instead:

The setting drives the DC job XML (one CutBlock per spread instead of one per page), the HC guillotine CSV and the Copy Cut Data list together, so nothing can disagree about what gets cut. Booklet ×2 still keeps one block per row, so the Gutter Y cut that slits the two signature stacks apart survives either way.

Self cover or a separate cover

The outermost sheet of a saddle-stitched nest is the cover. The Cover box in Binding says how it is run, and four checkboxes say what is printed on its four panels. Both only show on saddle stitch in a booklet layout — perfect bound has its own cover panels further down.

Self cover leaves that sheet in the nest, on the same stock as the text, and the job stays one file. Separate cover sheet pulls it out and writes it as …_Cover.pdf, one sheet front and back, to run on the cover stock; the text nests behind it as …_Text.pdf.

Untick a panel and it prints blank, and that page stays in the text block instead, which pads out with blanks to whole sheets as always. All four ticked is the ordinary book, self-covered or plus-covered; none ticked wraps the file in a blank cover, for one printed elsewhere or left plain.

The outer sheet takes no creep — it is the fold creep is measured from — and the sheets behind it creep from one sheet in.

Perfect bound

A perfect-bound book does not nest. It is a stack of separate signatures, each folded on its own and milled off at the spine, so pages run straight through: signature 1 holds pages 1–16, signature 2 holds 17–32. Set the sheets per signature and the book pads out to whole signatures.

Body stock & spine width

Everything about a perfect-bound cover comes back to one number — how thick the body is:

spine = body pages ÷ PPI

Pages, not sheets. PPI is pages per inch, how the mill sells book paper; a caliper is what a micrometer reads on one sheet. They are the same fact — PPI = 2 ÷ caliper — because one sheet is two pages. Book takes whichever you have, in this order:

Whichever was used is named on the right, next to the PPI, because “where did this spine width come from” is the first question anyone asks when a cover comes back wrong.

A glue allowance is available and defaults to zero. Most shops quote the spine without one; a shop that has measured its own glue line adds it here rather than fudging the PPI to compensate, which is what hides the real number.

Perfect-bound covers

A perfect-bound cover is one flat sheet that becomes three panels — back cover, spine, front cover — and wraps the block:

The relief offset is measured centre-to-centre from each spine crease to its strain-relief crease. It defaults to 6 mm and is editable per job — a heavier cover wants a wider hinge. Book refuses an offset wider than the cover panel rather than quietly clipping it, and warns when the relief is a large fraction of the panel.

Cover stock is entered the same way as the body. Point stock is exact — 12 pt is 0.012 in — while the # cover weights (65#, 80#, 100#, 120# on the 20 × 26 basis) are typical values and are labeled as such. Heavy board earns a warning to score before folding.

A Perfect binder can be named — DB-300 or DPB-500 — and this is where Book is deliberately honest about what it does not know. No binder ships with a book-block thickness range, a minimum spine or a maximum cover size built in. Those numbers are on Duplo’s spec sheets, but a wrong limit is worse than no limit: it either passes a job the machine will jam on, or refuses one it would have run. Until you enter your own machine’s figures, Book says plainly that no check was made rather than showing a tick you have not earned. Fill the limits in once and every job is checked automatically from then on.

Crease direction & passes

This is the part that decides how many times the cover goes through the machine. Spine creases fold down. Strain-relief creases fold up. They oppose each other — that is what makes the hinge work — and a DC creasing wheel drives the stock one way only.

A shop that has the module can still tick Run the cover through twice anyway — some operators prefer it on heavy board — and Book plans the two passes properly rather than pretending.

Cover design — in Cover Builder

Book does not design the printed cover itself any more. When Binding is Perfect bound, the Cover Design section under the Perfect-Bound Cover settings has one button, Open in Cover Builder. It opens Cover Builder with this book already loaded:

• From Book, one way: the body PDF, the trim size and the bleed. The text block is Book's, so these always follow Book. Load a different PDF or change the trim and Cover Builder updates on its own. A body PDF with no bleed leaves Book's bleed at 0; the cover still needs one, so in that case Cover Builder keeps its own (1/8" to start).
• Both ways: body stock (grade and weight, PPI or caliper), glue allowance, cover stock, creasing (fold only or fold + strain relief), relief offset, the up-crease module and the perfect binder. Change any of them in either window and the other follows, so Book's spine and DC crease job always match the cover being designed.
• Back to Book: Cover Builder's spine width, its flat cover size and the path of the last cover PDF it saved. Book shows them under the button, next to its own spine. If the two spines differ — a spine typed in by hand in Cover Builder, the cover wrap added, or blank pages added there — Book says by how much and why.

Untick Keep Cover Builder in sync to pause the link while you try something out; tick it again and Book sends the book across once more. Closing Cover Builder ends the link. Open in Cover Builder sets it up again.

Feeder & collator marks

These are the Imposer’s own OMR controls, carried across unchanged and drawn onto the imposed sheets — Booklet maker barcode and Booklet maker end mark in the DC Marks section. Three machines, and they do not read the same thing:

The barcode value is built the way the controller builds it, so a sheet printed here and a job keyed in there agree without anyone retyping a number. The end mark goes on the last sheet of every set — that is what separates one book from the next — including a short final set.

DC marks & HC cuts

The whole DC Marks section comes across from the Imposer — registration, skew, shrinkage, end and bold marks, the Code 39 barcode and QR code, creases and perforations, and the DC job XML that goes with them. The device follows the machines ticked in Settings, so the body job and the cover job always agree about which machine they are for. Only the DC-648 has the registration hardware for skew and shrink marks — the other models use a CCD reader and cannot see them — so the suite hides marks no ticked machine can read rather than printing something that will never be looked at.

The HC-550 and HC-680 guillotines cut the body sheets. A guillotine has one blade and cuts sequentially — each step feeds the stack forward and cuts, re-measuring from the new leading edge — so the plan slits the sheet into strips first, rotates the stack, then cuts each strip. Waste strips are flagged for auto-eject; kept pieces are not.

What it exports

Job Data Matrix & Send to Fiery

Two things the Imposer does with a job that is linked to the MIS, now in Book too, and held to the same code so a fix to one reaches the other.

Job Data Matrix. A small 2D code carrying the MIS job number (for example J-260003), so the Shop floor scanner — a USB 2D scanner, or the phone scanner — finds the job straight off the press sheet. It is in Marks, with its size in millimetres, and is on by default. It prints on fronts only, and only when the sheet is linked to an MIS job: an unlinked sheet prints nothing rather than a code that would scan as somebody else’s job. It goes where no finisher reads — clear of every mark and barcode, out of every mark’s reader lane, out of the QR reading range, and off the artwork and the slug lines — and the notes panel says so if there is nowhere for it to go. The preview and the PDF use the same placement, so they cannot disagree.

Send to Fiery. After Generate Imposed PDF, Send to Fiery… sends the PDF to a Fiery print server, from the servers set up under Automation Workflows → Settings → Fiery servers. Choose the hold list (the default, so nothing prints until the operator says so), process and hold, or print now — print now asks you to confirm first. You can set the copies and the job title, which starts with the MIS job number when one is linked, and the send is noted on that job’s history. A saddle-stitched job with a separate cover makes two files, so the panel has a File choice — the text block is preselected, and you send the cover as its own job.

ImposeIQ Storefront

A white-label ordering front end for your customers. You build a branded catalog for an account, price each product, and either demonstrate it from inside the suite or publish it as a real website. Orders and quote requests land in a queue you work through — and can be handed straight to a Workflow Automation workflow, so a customer order becomes an imposed, marked, delivered job without re-keying anything.

What it is for

Most shops have a handful of accounts that reorder the same short list of products. Storefront turns that into a catalog with the account's own logo, colors and pricing: the customer picks a product, sets the quantity and options, sees a live estimate, uploads artwork, and submits. You get a structured order with the job name, PO, due date and artwork attached instead of an email thread.

Each account gets its own storefront. Products belong to exactly one storefront, so pricing can differ per account without one customer ever seeing another's catalog.

The window

A storefront picker sits in the header — everything below it applies to the storefront selected there — with a mode indicator showing whether you are in Admin mode or previewing as a customer. The left rail holds the views:

Storefronts & branding

Storefronts → New storefront asks for the things that make the catalog look like the customer's:

• Store name and short description.
• Logo text / mark, primary and secondary color, and a background style.
• Logo image and banner image — wide artwork works best for the banner, around 1200 × 300.
• Contact phone and email, and a display-only custom domain that appears in the site's own chrome.
• Welcome message, shown at the top of the customer catalog.

Duplicate copies a storefront with its whole catalog — the fast way to stand up a second account that buys much the same list. Archive takes a storefront out of circulation without deleting its order history; Restore brings it back.

The access gate

Require an access code to view this storefront puts a shared code in front of the catalog, so an account's pricing is not simply on the open web.

Categories

Products are filed under print categories, and a new storefront is seeded with the full library: business cards, flyers, postcards, brochures, booklets, posters, banners, labels & stickers, menus, mounted boards, packaging and custom quote. Add or remove categories per storefront in the storefront's edit dialog — a category with no products in that storefront simply does not render for the customer, so pruning is tidiness rather than necessity.

Products

Products → New product defines one line in the catalog:

• Name, category and description.
• Base unit price — the per-unit price below the lowest quantity tier.
• Card artwork — a locally drawn icon (card, sheet, brochure, booklet, poster and so on), with no external images fetched. Optionally upload custom card artwork — PNG, JPEG, WEBP or SVG up to 700 KB — which replaces the icon on the catalog card. Removing it falls back to the icon.
• Delivery fee, and whether the product allows pickup, delivery or both.
• Active — inactive products stay in your list but disappear from the customer catalog.

Duplicate a product to build a family (same options, different stock) quickly, and drag the list into the order you want customers to see it in.

Pricing — breaks, options, turnaround

The estimate a customer sees is built from four things, in this order:

The customer sees the same breakdown line by line under the live estimate, so a price is never a single unexplained number.

Preview — the customer's path

Preview storefront walks the whole customer journey inside the app, exactly as the published site behaves: access gate (if enabled) → catalog, with search and category filtering → configure, where options, quantity, turnaround, pickup/delivery, job name, PO number, notes and an artwork upload come together against a live estimate → basket → checkout details — name, email, phone, company, and a delivery address when delivery is chosen → confirmation.

A Custom Quote product takes the same details but no price, and arrives in the queue as a quote request rather than an order. Exit preview in the header returns you to admin mode.

Orders & quote requests

The queue is tabbed by status with a live count on each tab, plus a search across order number, customer and company. Orders move through a fixed sequence:

Opening an order shows the customer, the configured lines, the estimate, delivery method and address, job name, PO, due date and uploaded artwork. You can add a note at any point — notes stay with the order — and every status change is recorded against it. Quote requests use the same vocabulary and sit on their own tab.

An order that has been handed to a workflow also carries an Automation workflow panel showing that run's state and letting you send it again. See Sending orders into a workflow.

All products & all orders

Every product belongs to one storefront, which is what keeps per-account pricing honest — but it makes "which storefront was that on?" a real question. All products lists the lot, and can assign a copy of any product to another storefront: the copy is independent from that moment, so repricing it for the new account changes nothing for the old one. All orders is the same idea for the queue — one list of everything outstanding, whoever it belongs to.

Publishing the storefront

Publishing generates a self-contained static site — one index.html, the product images, and the pricing logic — reproducing the customer preview with no build step and nothing to install. Two targets, set up per storefront in its edit dialog:

Tokens are saved once for the app, not per storefront, and can be replaced at any time. After a successful publish the dialog keeps the live URL with the date it went out, ready to open or copy. Publishing again overwrites the site with the current catalog — that is how you push a price change.

Payments

None (email request) is the default: the customer submits, the order lands in the queue, and money is handled the way you handle it now. Selecting Stripe instead collects payment at checkout, and needs three things:

Taking real orders online

By default a published storefront collects quote requests only — an order is an email in to you, and money is handled the way you already handle it. Turn on Take real orders on the published site in the storefront's edit dialog and the site itself takes the order (and payment, if Stripe is set up) — but it can only do that on a Netlify publish, because taking an order needs somewhere to run code and GitHub Pages serves static files only.

Two more checkboxes sit next to it: Let customers send an order for a quote instead of paying now, and Let customers upload artwork with an order, with a Largest upload limit in MB — anything bigger is refused with a message asking the customer to email it instead.

Collecting orders — the pull key

Orders placed on the live site do not push themselves onto this PC — nothing on this machine is exposed to the internet. Instead the site holds them, and ImposeIQ collects them from the site every few minutes, or on demand with Check for orders now. An order placed while your computer is off is simply waiting there when it comes back on.

The connection is a key, not a password you type in: Create the key (or Show the key once one exists) reveals it once so you can paste it into the Netlify site as an environment variable named IMPOSEIQ_PULL_SECRET (Site configuration → Environment variables), then redeploy. Until that variable is set, the site refuses every collection attempt and no order can reach the shop.

If Stripe is selected as the payment provider but no secret key is saved yet, online orders are still taken — the customer is told the shop will arrange payment rather than being shown a broken checkout.

Publishing to Netlify now sets the key (and the Stripe and email keys below) on the site for you, so there is normally nothing to paste. The manual steps above are only needed if the publish log says a value could not be set.

Going live: test mode, email & accounts

Test or live

Every storefront has a Site mode. Test puts a yellow TEST MODE banner on every page, numbers orders T- instead of W-, tags every email [TEST], and brings orders into ImposeIQ and the MIS with a TEST job name and a note not to produce or invoice them. No real money moves. Live takes real orders and real payments. New storefronts start in Test; switch to Live and press Publish again when you are ready.

Card payments

Choose Card payments (Stripe). In Test mode you pick how cards are tested:

• Built-in test checkout — no Stripe account needed. The customer lands on a clearly marked test payment page: 4242 4242 4242 4242 approves, 4000 0000 0000 0002 declines, 4000 0000 0000 9995 is insufficient funds. This page only exists on a Test publish.
• Stripe test mode — the real Stripe Checkout, run on your sk_test_ key.

Save a Test secret key and a Live secret key separately. ImposeIQ keeps both encrypted on this PC and sends only the matching one to the site: a test site never gets the live key and a live site never gets the test key. If a paid customer closes the tab before Stripe sends them back, the payment is still picked up at the next order collection.

Email

Under Email, pick Resend or SendGrid, save its API key, and set a From address on a domain you verified with that service. The site then sends the customer an order confirmation, sends you a new-order alert (to Send new-order alerts to, or the contact email), and sends the account emails below. Use Send a test email to check it works before publishing. A failed email never loses an order.

Customer accounts and purchase orders

Tick Let customers register an account on the site (under Ordering on account). Customers get a Sign in / Register button; they are signed in right away and their details fill in at checkout. Paying by purchase order is unlocked only when:

• you Approve them under Show registered customers (you get an email when someone registers, and they get one when you approve them), or
• their email is on the Approved accounts list and they have confirmed it with the emailed link.

With accounts on, a PO always needs a signed-in, approved account — typing an address is not enough. Reject or Revoke closes an account and signs it out. PO orders arrive in ImposeIQ and the MIS unpaid, marked to invoice on the account's terms. Passwords are stored hashed; customers can reset theirs by email.

Sending orders into a workflow

In the storefront's edit dialog, Send new orders to an Automation Workflow picks one of your published workflows and hands every new order and quote request to it the moment it is placed. This is a real round trip: the order goes out as a workflow job, and the run reports back onto the order.

What the workflow receives

The job is the customer's artwork itself — the files they attached, exactly as uploaded — so preflight, imposition and delivery steps have something real to work on. Alongside them comes the commercial half of the ticket as job variables, ready for a Route, Rename, Tag filename or Notify step:

Quote requests carry [var.projectName], [var.description], [var.desiredQuantity], [var.dimensions] and [var.finishingNotes] as well. The job's trigger is reported as storefront-order, so a workflow that also watches a hot folder can tell where a job came from.

What comes back

The run reports its progress onto the order — no switching to the Workflows window to find out what happened. Every order that has been sent carries an Automation workflow panel showing the workflow, the run state, how many files went with it, and the last thing the run said; each change is also written to the order's timeline.

Sending by hand

The same panel has a workflow picker and a Send to workflow button. Use it to re-run an order after the customer sends corrected artwork, to send an order placed before automation was switched on, or to run a different workflow than the storefront's usual one. Each send starts a fresh run and files the previous one under Earlier runs, so the record of why an order needed re-sending survives.

Email Campaigns

Email Campaigns sends newsletters, offers and automated email series to your customers and prospects from this PC. It keeps your lists and subscribers, builds the emails, sends them at a pace your mail server accepts, and records who opened, clicked, unsubscribed or bounced. Sign-up forms, landing pages, a preference page, A/B tests, automations, reports, deliverability checks, an API and webhooks are all built in. Open it from Home › Utilities › Email Campaigns; the Help button in its title bar brings you back to this page.

Quick start: your first campaign

Examples to start from

Both the Campaigns and the Automations pages have an Examples… button with ready-made emails written for a print shop. Use this adds one as a draft and opens it: nothing is ever sent, and no automation is switched on, until you have read it and done so yourself. Change the wording, offers, codes, pictures and links (they point at example.com until you do), send yourself a test, then send it or turn it on. Use the same example as often as you like.

Example campaigns: Monthly newsletter, Holiday cards promotion (with an A/B test of two subject lines), New product launch (product cards — pick your own from the Storefront), Open house / trade show invitation, Customer feedback survey (one-click answers you read off the click map; customers only), Re-engagement campaign (people tagged Inactive only) and a plain, personal Seasonal deadline reminder.

The window

The menu on the left has one page per job:

A pill at the top right shows how many campaigns are sending right now, and Demo when the copy is unlicensed.

Setting up: sender and footer

• From name / From email: what recipients see. Use an address on your own domain (news@yourshop.com), never a Gmail or Outlook.com address — those are rejected or sent to spam by the big providers when they come from another server. A campaign can override both for itself.
• Reply-to: where replies go, if not the From address.
• Organisation and Postal address: shown in the footer of every email. A real postal address is required on commercial email in the US (CAN-SPAM) and most other countries; the review before sending warns when it is missing.
• Footer HTML: added to every campaign. It understands [UNSUBSCRIBE] (the unsubscribe link), [PREFERENCES] (the preference page link), [ORGANISATION], [ADDRESS] and [LISTS] (the list names the person is receiving this through). The template decides where it goes with [FOOTER]; otherwise it goes at the very end.
• Unsubscribe mailbox (optional): added to the email’s List-Unsubscribe header as a mailto, and used as the unsubscribe link when there is no public link address. Requests that arrive there have to be handled by hand — add the address to Suppression.

Setting up: the mail server

• Use the suite’s mail server: the SMTP server in the suite’s own Settings › Email (the one quotes and alerts use). Fine for a few hundred recipients.
• Use a separate server for campaigns: recommended for any real list. Office 365 and Gmail accounts cap a day at a few hundred to two thousand recipients and will lock an account that sends a newsletter. A sending service — SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark, Brevo, SMTP2GO — gives you an SMTP host, port, user and password; enter them here. Port 587 without the TLS box (STARTTLS) or 465 with it.
• Test connection logs in to the server without sending anything. The password is stored encrypted on this PC and never shown again.

Setting up: SPF, DKIM and DMARC

Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft reject or junk bulk mail from domains that have not published these three DNS records. They are set at whoever hosts your domain’s DNS (GoDaddy, Cloudflare, your web host), with the values your sending service gives you:

Then open Deliverability, type your domain (and the DKIM selector if it is not a common one) and press Check. Each record shows green when it is right, amber when it works but could be better (DMARC p=none only monitors), red when it is missing or wrong — for example two SPF records, or an SPF record ending in +all. DNS changes can take an hour to show.

Setting up: public link address and the link server

The unsubscribe, preference, view-online, open-tracking and click-tracking links in each email, and the sign-up forms, confirmation links and landing pages, are answered by a small web server inside the suite: the link server. For those links to work for your recipients, it has to be reachable from the internet at an https address — the Public link address.

• Track opens adds an invisible 1-pixel image. Opens are under-counted: Apple Mail’s privacy protection and image blocking hide them, so compare open rates between your own campaigns rather than with other people’s.
• Track clicks sends each link through the link server, which records the click and passes the reader straight on. Clicks are exact.
• Every link carries a signed token, so a link cannot be edited into someone else’s unsubscribe, and the server reveals nothing about your list.
• With an https address, each email also carries the one-click unsubscribe header Gmail and Yahoo require from bulk senders, and they show their own Unsubscribe button next to your name.

Setting up: sending speed and time zone

• Messages per batch and Batch period: at most this many emails in each period. 60 per 60 seconds is 3,600 an hour. Set it inside your provider’s limit; 0 means no limit.
• Pause between messages: a short gap between emails, which some servers prefer.
• Automations share the same speed limit as campaigns.
• Default time zone (for example America/Chicago): used for same local time delivery when a subscriber has no Timezone attribute, and for the day a date automation (a birthday) fires.

Setting up: bounces and complaints

When your mail server refuses an address outright, Campaigns counts that bounce itself. Bounces that come back later as emails, and spam complaints, need a mailbox to read:

• Make a mailbox that only receives bounces (e.g. bounces@yourshop.com) and set it as the Return-Path or bounce address at your sending service. Sign up for the feedback loops your service offers so spam complaints come there too.
• In Settings › Bounces, tick Read bounces from a POP3 mailbox and fill in its POP3 host, port (995 with TLS), user and password. Check now reads it straight away; afterwards it is read every Check every minutes.
• A hard bounce (address does not exist) counts against the address; after Disable after this many hard bounces it becomes bounced and gets no more mail. Soft bounces (mailbox full) are recorded but not counted.
• A spam complaint (someone pressing “This is spam”) unsubscribes the address and puts it on the suppression list for good.
• Messages in the mailbox that are not bounces or complaints are left alone. Delete bounce messages once read keeps the mailbox small.

Lists and subscribers

• Lists are the mailing lists people are on (Newsletter, Trade customers…). A person can be on several and still gets one copy of a campaign sent to more than one of them. Public lists appear on the default sign-up form and the preference page.
• A subscriber’s status decides whether they get mail: active (yes), unconfirmed (waiting for double opt-in — no), unsubscribed, bounced and blacklisted (no). Only active subscribers are ever sent to, and the status is checked again at the moment of sending.
• Attributes are any other facts about a person — City, Birthday, Account manager. Each one becomes a placeholder: a City attribute is [CITY]. Two are special: Timezone (America/Denver) for local-time delivery, and any date such as Birthday for date automations.
• Click a subscriber to edit them, see their tags, groups, automations and every email they received with its opens and clicks.
• With selected… (tick the boxes first) adds or removes a tag, adds to or removes from a list, unsubscribes, blacklists or deletes. To stop mailing someone, unsubscribe or blacklist them rather than delete them — a deleted address can be imported again by mistake.

Importing and exporting

• Import CSV… takes a CSV or text export from Excel, Outlook, Mailchimp, phpList or your MIS. The first row should name the columns. Email, first name, last name, company and tags columns are recognised automatically (check the choices under the file); every other column becomes an attribute. A Tags column can hold several tags separated by ;.
• Choose the lists to add them to, and optionally a tag for everyone in the file (“Trade show 2026”).
• Tick These people have agreed to receive email only when they have; otherwise they come in as unconfirmed and get nothing.
• An address already on file is updated, never duplicated. Someone who unsubscribed, bounced or is blacklisted stays that way — an import never re-subscribes a person who left.
• Import from CRM… brings in every contact with an email address from the MIS customers and prospects, tagged Customer or Prospect, with the company, customer code and job title as attributes. Only import people who expect to hear from you.
• Imports do not start automations — a welcome series is for people who have just joined, not for a list you already had.
• Export CSV writes the subscribers currently shown (respecting the list, status, tag and segment filters), with their lists, tags, groups and attributes.

Tags

Tags are your own labels: VIP, Banner buyer, Trade show 2026. They are not case-sensitive. Add them from the subscriber list, a subscriber’s card, a CSV import, a sign-up form, an automation step or the API. Audience › Tags shows every tag with its count, and can rename one everywhere (segments follow the new name) or take it off everyone. Adding a tag can start an automation.

Groups

Groups are questions subscribers answer themselves — “What do you print?” with the options Banners, Business cards, Signs. Make them under Audience › Groups with one option per line. They appear as tick boxes on sign-up forms that include them and on the preference page (untick Show on the default sign-up form and the preference page to keep a group internal). Use them in a segment (Group interest has Banners) or in the email itself with [IF INTERESTED:Banners].

Segments

A segment is a saved set of conditions — “VIP customers in Texas who clicked in the last 60 days” — worked out again every time you send, so it is always up to date. Make one under Audience › Segments › New segment; the count underneath updates as you build it. Choose whether all or any of the conditions must match.

To send to a segment, pick it under Segment in the campaign editor: the campaign goes to the people on the chosen lists who match it. Conditions… next to it adds one-off conditions just for that campaign, without saving a segment.

Lead scoring

Every subscriber has a lead score: points for what they do, so you can see who is warm right now — the way ActiveCampaign and HubSpot score contacts. Set it up under Settings › Lead scoring:

• Points for opening an email, clicking a link and signing up on a form. Each email counts once for its open and once for a click, however many times it is opened.
• Points for tags, one per line as Tag: points — Requested quote: 25, Visited the showroom: 15, or negative (Competitor: -100).
• Points fade after a number of days (90 by default), so a burst of interest last spring does not keep someone hot for ever. 0 keeps them for good.
• Automations can add or take points with the Lead score ± step.

The score shows on the Subscribers page (15+ warm, 50+ hot) — choose Highest score first to put the hottest at the top — and on each subscriber’s card with the points behind it. The Dashboard counts the hot leads. Use it in a segment (Lead score greater than 40), and to start an automation with the Reaches a lead score trigger — for example notify the rep the moment a prospect passes 50.

Suppression

Addresses on the suppression list are never emailed, whatever list they are on or are imported into. Use it for people who asked by phone or letter, competitors, and role addresses you must not mail. Paste one or many with a reason. Blacklisting a subscriber and spam complaints add to it automatically. Removing an address from the list does not re-activate the subscriber; change their status yourself if they really have opted back in.

Sign-up forms

Every public list can be joined at <public address>/subscribe — the default form. Under Forms › Sign-up forms › New form you can build your own, each at its own address <public address>/f/<name>:

• Heading, Introduction, an optional Image (an https address), the Button text and the Thank-you message.
• Fields: email is always first. Add first name, last name, company, or any attribute (Other — City, Phone, Birthday as a date…), and mark any as required.
• Sign-ups join: the lists a sign-up is added to. A form can add people to a private list (a trade-only list, say); tick Let them choose among these lists to show the lists as tick boxes.
• Groups to ask about, and Tag sign-ups with (“Website”, “Trade show”).
• Embed code gives HTML to paste into your own website or Storefront page. It is a plain form with no script, so it works in any site builder; it posts to your public address. Open shows the hosted form in your browser.
• Forms include a hidden trap field that catches most spam bots.

Double opt-in, confirmation and welcome emails

• With double opt-in on (recommended, and expected in Europe and Canada), someone who signs up gets a confirmation email and is only added once they click its link. Until then they are unconfirmed and get nothing.
• Edit that email under Forms › Sign-up emails. It must contain [CONFIRMURL] — the link they click.
• The optional welcome email goes once they are confirmed (or straight away with double opt-in off). For more than one email, use an automation instead.
• Both understand placeholders and [IF] blocks. Someone already active who signs up again just joins the new lists — no second welcome.

Landing pages

A landing page is a page of your own with a sign-up form on it, for a trade show, a QR code on a flyer or an ad. Under Forms › Landing pages give it a title, an address (/l/<name>), choose its form and write the page in HTML; put [FORM] where the form goes, or it goes at the end. Scripts are switched off on landing pages for safety, so use plain HTML and CSS. The list shows how many times each page has been viewed.

The preference page

[PREFERENCES] in the footer links each person to their own page where they can correct their name and company, choose which public lists they get and tick their group interests. Unticking every list unsubscribes them. The unsubscribe page also offers it as “Rather get less?” — many people would sooner get one list than none.

Pop-up form

Any sign-up form can also appear as a pop-up on your website, as MailerLite and Sender offer. Under Forms › Sign-up forms press Pop-up code, choose how many seconds after the page opens it appears and how many days before it shows again to the same visitor, then Copy and paste the code just before </body> on your website. The form opens in a frame over the page; visitors close it with × or by clicking outside it. The form itself still runs on your link server, so your website never handles anyone’s address. Only the sign-up forms can be shown in a frame — every other page the link server answers refuses it.

Writing a campaign

The editor has three columns: the campaign’s settings on the left, the content in the middle, and a live preview on the right (switch between Desktop and Mobile). The preview is personalised for the first person who would receive it.

• Campaign name is for you; Subject and Preview text (the grey line after the subject in the inbox) are what recipients see.
• Send to: tick one or more lists. Segment narrows it (see Segments).
• Template: the frame round the content. None sends the content as written.
• Send at: leave empty to send when you press Send, or set a date and time to schedule it.
• Delivery time: see Send times.
• Save draft keeps your work; leaving with unsaved changes asks first.

The block builder

New campaigns open in Blocks: the email is a stack of blocks you add, drag and edit, written out as email-safe HTML that works in Outlook and Gmail and stacks columns on phones.

• Add a block from the row under the blocks, or drag one from there into place. Layouts… starts from a ready-made layout — Newsletter, Promotion, Announcement, Event invitation — replacing the current blocks.
• Click a block to open its settings; click again to close them. Drag the ⠿ handle to move a block, or use ↑ ↓. ⧉ duplicates, ✕ removes, ☆ saves it to reuse in other campaigns (Saved blocks…).

Visual and HTML are the other ways to write. Switching from Blocks to either turns the blocks into HTML you can edit freely — but it cannot be turned back into blocks (you are asked first). Plain text lets you write the text-only version yourself; left empty, it is made from the HTML.

Placeholders (merge tags)

Placeholders in square brackets are replaced for each person. Click one under Insert a placeholder to put it where the cursor is.

The review before sending lists any placeholder no subscriber has a value for — usually a typo.

Conditional content

Show some of the text to some people only. A block starts with [IF …] or [IFNOT …], may have [ELSEIF …] and [ELSE] parts, and ends with [ENDIF]. Blocks can sit inside each other, and work in the subject, the body, the plain text and the footer.

Brand kit and product blocks

Under Settings › Brand kit set your logo (an https address of a PNG or JPG on your website), brand colour, button text colour and font. In the block builder the Logo block shows the logo, and buttons and product cards use the brand colour unless the block sets its own — so changing the brand kit restyles every new campaign at once. The Newsletter, Promotion and Product showcase layouts start with the logo.

The Product block shows one product with an order button. Pick from the Storefront… lists the products in your storefronts; choosing one fills in the name, description and a “From $… each” price, and — once the storefront is published to the web — its picture and a link to the store. Edit any of it afterwards. The Product showcase layout is a ready-made product email.

Templates

A template is the HTML frame around every campaign that uses it: your logo, colours, width and footer area. Put [CONTENT] where the campaign goes and [FOOTER] where the footer goes. Edit them under Templates, with a preview beside the code. The Simple branded template shows your organisation name in a header. Images in templates must be on the web (https). A template used by a campaign that is still sending cannot be deleted.

Testing and the content check

• Send test… sends the email to one or more addresses with [TEST] in the subject. If an address belongs to a subscriber, it is personalised for them. Test links are not tracked and the unsubscribe link does nothing. With an A/B test you choose which version.
• Check content scores the email out of 100 and lists what spam filters dislike: a subject in capitals, !!!, spammy phrases, an email that is mostly images, images without alt text, link shorteners (bit.ly), links whose text shows one website and go to another, scripts or forms, and HTML over 102 KB (Gmail cuts it off, hiding the unsubscribe link). It is a guide; the receiving server decides.

Sending and scheduling

Review & send… saves the campaign and checks it. It shows how many people it will go to (active, on the lists and segment, not suppressed, one copy per address), the content score, and:

• Red — must be fixed first: no subject, empty message, no list, nobody to send to, no mail server or From address, no way to unsubscribe, broken [IF] blocks, scripts in the email.
• Amber — worth reading: no tracking, link server off, no postal address, unknown placeholders, a small A/B test pool.

Send now starts at once; with a future Send at the button is Schedule and it waits as scheduled. Either way it sends in the background, at your sending speed, while the suite is open. From the report you can Pause, Resume and Cancel (emails already sent stay sent; a scheduled campaign that has not started goes back to a draft). A campaign that has started cannot be edited — Duplicate it instead.

• If the mail server stops answering or refuses the login, the campaign pauses itself with the reason, so you can fix it and press Resume.
• Retry N failed tries again the emails the server refused for a temporary reason.
• Send to new subscribers sends a finished campaign to people who joined its lists since.
• Resend to non-openers… makes a new draft — optionally with a new subject — for the people who got this campaign and did not open it. Give it a day or two first, and do not resend more than once.

Send times

Delivery time in the editor:

• Everyone at once: as fast as the sending speed allows, from the start time.
• Each person’s best hour: each person gets it within 24 hours of the start, at the hour of day they have usually opened past emails. People with no history get the hour the whole list opens most.
• Same local time in each time zone: everyone gets it at, say, 9:00 in their own time zone, on the Send at date. It uses each subscriber’s Timezone attribute (America/Chicago, Europe/London — import it as a column), or the default time zone from Settings. People whose 9:00 has already passed get it straight away, so set Send at a day ahead.

A/B and multivariate tests

Tick A/B test in the editor to try different versions on part of the list and send the best one to the rest.

• Give two or more subject lines, from names or send times (one per line), and/or a second version of the content (HTML). Testing more than one thing at once makes every combination — a multivariate test — up to 8 versions, labelled A–H.
• Test on: the share of the audience that gets the test, split evenly between the versions (20% is typical; give each version at least a few hundred people for a reliable result).
• Winner by open rate or click rate, picked automatically after the hours you set — or I will pick.
• While it waits the campaign shows as testing. The report’s A/B test tab compares the versions, and Send this one picks a winner early. The winner goes to everyone held back.
• A test of send times only goes to the whole list, split across the times — there is nothing left to send a winner to; use the result next time.
• The preview has a Version menu to see each one.

Automations

An automation sends a series of emails by itself, person by person, as things happen — a welcome series for new subscribers, a birthday offer, a follow-up to people who clicked. Each person goes through the steps at their own pace.

• Each person goes through an automation once, unless you tick Let people go through it again. Date automations run once a year by their nature.
• Someone who unsubscribes, bounces or is suppressed leaves the automation at their next step.
• The list shows how many people are in each automation now, how many finished and how many emails it has sent; the editor shows each email’s numbers.

The campaign report

Click a sent campaign. The top shows progress and the totals: delivered to the server, opened, clicked, unsubscribed, bounced and spam complaints. The tabs:

• Overview: every link with its clicks and the number of people who clicked it, and the reasons people gave when they unsubscribed.
• A/B test (test campaigns only): each version’s results, and Send this one while it is waiting for a winner.
• Click map: the email itself with each link outlined and labelled with its clicks and share of all clicks — so you can see whether the button or the picture got the clicks.
• Activity: first opens and first clicks, hour by hour, for 48 hours after sending started — useful for choosing a send time.
• Domains: results by the recipients’ email provider (gmail.com, outlook.com, your customers’ own domains). One provider opening far less than the others, or bouncing more, often means it is filtering you.
• Recipients: everyone it went to with their status, version, opens and clicks, searchable.

Export CSV saves every recipient’s results for Excel. Reports in the menu puts all campaigns side by side — open, click, click-to-open, unsubscribe, bounce and complaint rates — with your averages; green is better than average, amber worse. Click a column to sort.

List health

Sending again and again to people who never open tells the big providers your mail is unwanted. Under Deliverability › List health, enter a number of campaigns and press Count to find active subscribers who ignored all of them. Then Tag them “Inactive” — and send them a win-back campaign using a segment Tag has Inactive — or Unsubscribe them.

Public archive and RSS

Like Kit and beehiiv, Campaigns can publish past issues on the web, so new subscribers can read back and your newsletter is findable. Switch it on under Settings › Public archive and give it a title. Then tick Show in the public archive once sent in each campaign you want there.

• <public address>/archive lists them, newest first, with a Subscribe link; each opens at /archive/<id>.
• /archive/rss.xml is an RSS feed of the same, for feed readers and website widgets.
• Archived issues are shown to an anonymous reader: no names (use [FIRSTNAME%%friend] fallbacks and [IF FIRSTNAME]…[ELSE]…[ENDIF] so they read well), no tracking and no unsubscribe link. For an A/B test, the winning version is shown.
• Only sent campaigns appear, and only while the archive is switched on.

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are one email to one person, sent the moment something happens — order confirmed, proof ready, job shipped, quote sent — like Mailjet’s and Brevo’s transactional email. Your website or MIS asks for them through the API; Campaigns fills them in and sends them at once.

• Transactional emails go to people who unsubscribed from your newsletters (a receipt is not marketing) but never to a suppressed or bounced address — the API answers 422 and says so.
• They carry no unsubscribe link or bulk-mail headers, no tracking, and the footer is just your organisation and address.
• The page lists how many of each have been sent or failed, and the most recent sends.

The API

The API lets your website, an online form service, Zapier or the MIS add contacts, tag them and start automations, without the Campaigns window.

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8791/api/v1/contacts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email":"pat@example.com","firstName":"Pat","lists":["Newsletter"],"tags":["Website"]}'

• Answers are JSON; errors come back as {"error": "…"} with status 400 (bad input), 401 (wrong key), 403 (refused), or 404.
• A contact who unsubscribed or is suppressed is not re-subscribed by the API.

Webhooks

Webhooks are the other direction: Campaigns tells another system when something happens. In Settings › Webhooks › Add webhook, give the https address that should receive them and tick the events:

Each one is a POST of JSON — {"type": "unsubscribe", "firedAt": "…", "data": {…}} — with the headers X-ImposeIQ-Event and X-ImposeIQ-Signature: sha256=<hex>, the HMAC-SHA256 of the body with the webhook’s secret (shown when you add it and on Edit). Check the signature on the receiving end to be sure the request came from you. A delivery that fails is tried again after 5 and 30 seconds; the list shows the last result, and Test sends a test event.

Troubleshooting

ImposeIQ MIS

The management system the rest of the suite feeds. An MIS — Management Information System — is what a commercial shop runs its jobs on: the estimate that won the work, the job ticket the floor works to, what each operation really cost, and the invoice that closes it. This one is built around the thing most print MIS packages cannot do — the floor reporting for itself. A DC-618 that finishes a job says so, and the board moves.

Cost centers, stock & routings

Nothing can be priced until the shop exists in the software, so a new install comes up as a plausible small commercial printer in Texas: fourteen customers (retail, trade, broker and house pricing, a franchise shop, a dealer partner, a school-district in-plant, two Storefront customers and one prospect) and thirty jobs that between them come in by every route the MIS takes — typed in, converted from a quote, a Storefront web order (paid by card, or on a PO), a JDF ticket from a dealer's MIS by hot folder or JMF (one waiting for review, one released, one released over a finishing-check block, one rejected), and an Automation Workflows hot folder. Their artwork carries preflight results from Preflight PRO, callas pdfToolbox and PitStop (passed, failed, and fixed); most are imposed, one is blocked by the finishing check, and several are routed to a POLAR N 115, one of them cut from a saved cutter program. Invoices are there in every state — out, overdue, part paid and paid — plus a toner press, a B2 inkjet, a 20 × 26 offset, three guillotines, the Duplo finishing line this suite already knows about, a booklet line and a perfect binder — with paper at real-ish money. Every one of those numbers is a starting point, not a claim about your shop. Replace them in Cost centers & setup before you quote anything real.

A cost center is a machine or a bench with a burdened hourly rate, a run rate, and a setup time. The run rate is counted in whatever that center actually measures:

A routing is a list of cost centers a job walks through in order — "digital business cards", "saddle-stitched booklet", "spot UV + foil cover". Picking one on an estimate drops the whole operation list in already ordered.

Estimating

The estimator prices the way an estimator does, and shows its working:

• The imposition — how many up the piece runs on the press sheet, worked out with the same geometry the Imposer uses, both ways round, best yield kept. An estimate built on 8-up that imposes 6-up is how a shop loses money without ever finding out where.
• The paper — net sheets, plus makeready sheets burned getting to color, plus running spoilage. All three are real stock the job pays for.
• The time — setup and run for every operation, at that center's own rate and basis, with minimum charges applied where they bite.
• The money — cost, markup, sell, margin, unit price and price per thousand. Markup and margin are both shown, because confusing the two is a classic way to quote a job at a loss.
• Quantity breaks — the same job at 250 / 500 / 1,000, each one a full estimate, because the answer is never linear: setup spreads over more pieces and the unit price falls in a curve.

Outside services — a cutting die, trade foiling — are entered separately and marked up on their own, so the shop's press markup is not applied to something a trade house made.

Laid out for the finisher. When an estimate's operations include a Duplo DC (DC-618, DC-648 or DC-746), the imposition is the best one that DC can actually slit and cut, not just the best paper yield. Each column gutter uses two slitters, and the DC-618 has six, so 25-up business cards turned (five across) are out. A slit gutter must be 0 or 5–15 mm, so a 1/8″ gutter between columns is widened to 1/4″, and the cut gutter between rows is left as you set it. On 13 × 19 this gives the usual 24-up (3 × 8). How it runs shows which machine the layout was made for, and when it gave up yield it shows the best-yield layout and the reason. The paper, the press time and the job's finishing check all use this layout.

Will the sheet run? The press sheet is checked against every machine on the estimate. Presses are checked against their press-library limits; a press with no library record is read from its name, so "(SRA3)" means 13 × 19.2. Finishers are checked against their feeders, such as the DC-618's 330.5 mm across and the DFL-700's 385 × 660 mm. When the sheet does not fit, a red This sheet will not run card says which machines refuse it. It also offers the cut of the stock that goes through all of them, for example 12.5 × 19, 2 out of each 19 × 25, with one click to use it. A press sheet cut from a bigger stock sheet is costed and stocked in stock sheets. When the press operator books 40 sheets used, 20 stock sheets come off the shelf.

Custom dies: steel rule (DSM-1000) & flexible (UD-320)

A new die layout means a new die from a die maker, and the die is often the longest lead time on the job. There are two kinds, and the kind is a field on the die:

• Steel-rule die for the DSM-1000 platen die cutter. It takes one die-board size whatever the sheet: 20.47 × 32.28 in (B2).
• Flexible (magnetic) die for the UD-320 rotary die cutter. A thin etched plate that wraps the magnetic cylinder.

Add one with Add a steel-rule die (DSM-1000) or Add a flexible die (UD-320) on the estimate, or on a job's Routing & time tab. You can switch the kind on the die afterwards. Each kind has its own budget tiers, turnaround and rush in Setup.

• What it is — the kind, new die or a die already on the shelf, a budget tier, number up, the operations on the die (cut, crease, perf, kiss-cut), the substrate, the rule height (steel rule only) and the die maker.
• What it costs — the tier's budget, or the die maker's own figure when you have one. The tiers are budget allowances, not supplier quotes. Steel rule, from Duplo's DSM-1000 steel-rule die overview: Simple layout $250–$500, Typical B2 DSM-1000 job about $500 (the default), and Complex or heavily populated layout $800–$1,500+. Flexible dies run about $250 up to close to $2,000, with a median and average around $550: Simple layout $250–$450, Typical UD-320 job about $550 (the default), and Complex or heavily populated layout $650–$2,000. The die maker sizes a flexible plate from the cut-line area, and plate size drives the price. The real price depends on the layout (rule length or etched area, number up, detail), the operations and the substrate. Ask the die maker to itemize the die, any ejection rubber or creasing accessories, freight and rush.
• How it is charged — passed through at cost (the default) or with its own markup, set per kind. It is an outside line, so the shop's press markup is never applied to it. Reusing a die costs nothing and waits for nothing.
• Turnaround — the die maker's working days, editable per die. Steel rule defaults to 5 (rush 2); the overview gives no figure, so set it from your die maker. Flexible defaults to 5 (rush 2), because a die usually takes 4–5 production days. Rush uses the rush lead time and adds the rush surcharge (default +50%) to a budget figure. Neither source gives a rush figure, so those are guesses to edit.
• Die maker file. On a new flexible die on a job, or in a die’s own form, Die maker file… saves a UD-320 drawing for Kocher & Beck as DXF or PDF. The MIS knows the die’s size and number up, so it draws a rectangle, rounded rectangle or oval and lists any crease or perf lines as not drawn. It can also tilt each piece 1° to the right (the printed artwork then has to be tilted to match) and add recommended nicks / ties, as in Digital Die Cut; a die with nicks can no longer be used with the waste separator. For any other shape, or to draw those lines, use Digital Die Cut, which writes the same file. Saving from a die’s form attaches the file to that die. Nothing is sent. The UD-310 is discontinued, so new flexible dies now default to the UD-320; dies already recorded against a UD-310 keep that, and its routing steps still count.

Die and artwork checklist. The estimate and the job card show a checklist for the kind of die. For a flexible die on the UD-320 it comes from the UD-310 product guide and Operation Manual:

• Sheet 8.27 × 11.69 in to 15.35 × 20.47 in (210 × 297 to 390 × 520 mm), 106–400 gsm; 200 gsm minimum to use the separator. The largest workable cut area is 14.33 × 20.275 in (364 × 515 mm).
• First cut at least 10 mm from the lead edge, because that cut feeds the sheet (12–15 mm on thin paper). 15 mm margins top and bottom, gutters at least 10 mm horizontal and 6 mm vertical. Turn each piece 1° on its own when it has straight cuts across the feed.
• Register marks. Y mark: 3 mm wide, 100 mm long, centred on the sheet width, 5 mm from the edge. X mark (when reading X and Y): 3 mm wide, 25 mm or longer, 100 mm from the sheet centre face up (76 mm face down), 5 mm from the edge.
• Dieline colours for the die maker: cut red, score green, kiss cut blue. Creases are a three-knife score.
• A flexible die lasts about 100,000–200,000 impressions, depending on the die lines and stock. The Dies list counts it against 100,000.

The estimate shows the die line, the date the die would arrive if the quote were approved today, and the earliest delivery: the die's turnaround plus the working days from die to delivery (default 2). The quote PDF says Delivery: N working days from approval. Working days follow the shop's work calendar, so weekends and shop holidays are skipped.

On the job. The die card follows the order: To order → Ordered → Received → In use. Mark ordered records the order date and PO, and the die is due that many working days later. Until the die is received the die-cutting step (the DSM-1000 step for a steel-rule die, the UD-320 step for a flexible one) is held. The schedule will not plan it before the die arrives and shows a Die tag on it, and the floor cannot start it. The card warns when the die lands after the press run. When it lands after the job's due date, the job shows At risk. A die not ordered yet is counted from today, so the hold moves later every day nobody orders it. Mark received puts the die on the shelf in Dies, numbered, against the customer, at what it cost, as a steel-rule or flexible die. A repeat job can then pick Reuse a die on the shelf. Only dies of the same kind are offered, and the customer's own are listed first and marked ★.

Setup → Custom cutting dies has a block for each kind. Each block holds the tiers (label, low, high, budget, open-ended, which one is the default), the turnaround, rush turnaround and surcharge, the days from die to delivery, and whether those dies are passed through at cost or marked up. Dies and settings saved before there were kinds count as steel rule.

Quotes and turning one into a job

Save an estimate and it becomes a numbered quote with a validity date; a quote past that date reads as expired without anybody running a nightly job. Accept → create job turns it into a real job in one step, carrying the priced routing across with the estimated setup, run time and cost frozen onto each operation. That frozen number is what the floor's real time is measured against later — recomputing it from today's rates would quietly erase the variance the shop is trying to see.

The job ticket

Every job carries its specification, its routing, its materials, its shipments and a full history. The history is written by the software on every path, not by whichever screen made the change — so when a job ships two days late, the shop can see exactly where the two days went.

A job's status mostly looks after itself. Start the first operation and it is in production; close the last one and it is finished; ship the whole quantity and it is shipped; invoice it and it is invoiced. On hold and cancelled are the two an operator sets on purpose, so they stick — deriving those would fight the person who set them.

Board, schedule and what is late

The production board is the job lifecycle left to right, cards sorted by priority and then by due date, late ones flagged. Drag a card to move it by hand; anything the floor reports moves it on its own.

The schedule plans every open job backward from its due date. The last operation lands on the due date, or the latest working day that still has room on that machine. Each earlier operation lands a set number of working days before the next one (Days between steps, 1 by default). A full day pushes work earlier, and a long operation can be split across days. Work that cannot fit before today goes on today, and the job is marked At risk: it will not make its date as planned. Operations already running are always on today. That is how a shop sees on Tuesday that Thursday is already over-booked, instead of finding out on Thursday.

Each job's Routing & time tab shows the planned day for every operation.

Work calendar

In Cost centers & setup → Work calendar you set how jobs are scheduled (Plan backward from the due date, or Put all work on the due date for the old behaviour), the days between steps, and the shop's working days. Below that, add holidays, overtime and downtime. Pick a date and either the whole shop or one machine, then the hours available that day: 0 for closed, or for example 4 for a Saturday of overtime. Add US holidays adds New Year's, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving (and the day after) and Christmas, moved to the nearest weekday when they fall on a weekend.

Each cost center keeps its own capacity hours per day, and can have its own working days (untick Same as the shop calendar), for example a press that also runs Saturdays. On the Schedule, days a machine does not work are shaded, and the load % is measured against that day's hours.

Pick 1 day or 7 / 14 / 21 / 30 days at the top. Use ‹ / ›, Today or the date box to move around, and the department list to show one department. In the multi-day grid, click a day heading or any cell to open that day.

The 1-day view shows one lane per machine: a shift bar with each job as a block in run order (the dashed red line is the end of the shift; striped blocks run past it), then a card for every operation. On a card you can Start, Pause and Finish the operation, open the job, or move the job's due date one working day with ← Due / Due →. You can also drag a card onto a day in the week strip at the top to make that day the due date. The whole job then re-plans around the new date. Undo move puts the last one back.

Run order. The number on each card is the order that machine runs its waiting work in. Drag a card up or down within its machine, or use ▲ / ▼, to change it. Cards set by hand show a filled number. Work already running (▶) always stays first. The shop-floor queue follows the same order.

Move to another machine. Drag a card onto another machine's lane, or use Move to machine… on the card. Work can only move between machines in the same department, for example DC-648 to DC-618 or HC-550i to HC-680i, and not while it is running. Set-up time becomes the new machine's, and run time is adjusted for the speed difference. The job's quoted cost stays as it was sold. The move is recorded in the job's History.

At risk. The Dashboard shows an At risk count and list: jobs the schedule says will miss their due date but are not late yet. An alert, Job at risk of being late, is sent once per job (Telegram, email or whatever you have set up in Settings → Notifications). It is sent again only if the job gets back on track and then slips again, or its due date changes.

Floor performance: machines, estimates and Duplo ROI

At the top of Reports, pick a period (last 30, 90, 180 or 365 days). Three reports read the time your floor booked on operations finished in that period. Each one exports to PDF.

Machine performance shows, for each machine, hours planned vs hours run and how that compares with the estimate (over 100% means faster than quoted). It also shows make-ready vs running time, utilization (hours run against the hours the work calendar says the machine was available), waste %, real speed against rated speed, and how much of the time came straight from the machine (JMF) rather than being keyed in.

Estimate vs actual by machine tells you where your rates are off. Once a machine has at least 3 finished operations and is 10% or more away from its rated speed or set-up, it suggests the real numbers, for example "Runs 22% faster than your estimate." Apply writes them to the cost center, so new estimates use them. Jobs already sold keep the numbers they were quoted on. Setup must be unlocked to apply.

Duplo automation ROI compares the time your Duplo machines actually took with the same pieces done by hand. For each machine you can set the manual process it replaces, minutes per 1,000 finished pieces (books, for binders), manual set-up per job, and how many people it takes. Enter the shop's loaded labor rate and, if you like, what the machine cost, and it shows hours and dollars saved, a yearly figure at the current pace, and payback. The starting minutes are estimates, so set them to what the shop really did before. The PDF prints every assumption it used. It counts labor only: less waste, work brought in-house and new work won are on top of it.

Press library: adding and removing your presses

Cost centers & setup → Press library lists 68 production presses from Canon, Ricoh, Sharp, Konica Minolta, HP, Xerox, Fujifilm and Kyocera: color and mono toner, HP Indigo, sheetfed and UV inkjet, and roll-fed inkjet. Filter by maker or technology, or search. Add to shop makes the press a cost center. The window shows its speed as press sheets per hour, one-sided and two-sided, plus a starting burdened rate, set-up, makeready sheets and click cost. Change any of them, then save. Add your own model covers a press that is not listed. To take a press out, use Remove on the cost center list. If it is still on an open job, you are offered Deactivate instead.

What the MIS does with it:

• Speed. Makers quote Letter/A4 pages per minute, B2 sheets per hour, or metres per minute. The library turns each into press sheets per hour on the press's own sheet. Letter/A4 ppm runs two-up on a 13 × 19 class sheet, so the sheet rate is half the page rate (the maker's SRA3 figure is used when published). Two-sided work runs at half speed, except on presses that print both sides in one pass. Figures marked ≈ were worked out rather than published, so check them against your own press.
• Two-sided jobs are estimated at the press's two-sided speed and charged two clicks per sheet.
• Sheet size. An estimate warns when the press sheet is bigger than the press takes, or needs its long-sheet option.
• Roll-fed presses are rated in Letter/A4 pages. Estimate them with an 8.5 × 11 sheet.
• The Schedule, machine performance and estimate-vs-actual reports use the press like any other cost center.
• In the Imposer, each press in the shop appears in the sheet-size list (🖨) at its maximum sheet.

Export to QuickBooks

Invoices → Export to QuickBooks writes a file QuickBooks can import. Pick a format and a date range:

• QuickBooks Online: invoices (CSV). In QuickBooks Online go to Settings → Import data → Invoices and choose the file. It has one row per invoice line, with dates as MM/DD/YYYY. You can import up to 100 invoices at a time. Intuit does not allow this import when sales tax is switched on in the company; the window warns you when that applies.
• QuickBooks Desktop: customers, invoices & payments (IIF). In QuickBooks Desktop go to File → Utilities → Import → IIF Files (back up the company file first). New customers are added. Payments arrive un-applied, so apply each one to the invoice named in its memo.
• Payments received (CSV). A plain list for your records or a bookkeeper. QuickBooks Online cannot import payments from a file on its own.

By default only invoices and payments not exported before are included. Once the file is saved they are marked, and a small QB tag appears next to the invoice number. Draft, void and sample invoices are never exported. Under QuickBooks item and account names, enter your product/service item, income, receivable, deposit and sales-tax names exactly as they appear in QuickBooks. They are remembered for next time.

Customer status link

On a job's Job ticket tab, Share a status link publishes a page the customer can open any time. It shows where the job is (Order received, Proof, In production, Finished, Shipped), the production steps with the one on the machine now, the due date, and shipments with tracking links. It shows no prices, costs or internal notes. Copy, Open or Email to customer the link. The page updates by itself a few seconds after anything changes on the job. Stop sharing takes it down, after which the link says it is no longer active.

The page is served from your published Storefront site on Netlify, using the same collection key as online orders, so nothing on this PC is opened to the internet. Publish the storefront once after updating ImposeIQ to add status pages to it. If an update cannot reach the site, the job shows Last update failed and it retries on the next sweep.

Online proof & approval

On a job's Job ticket tab, the Online proof card sends the customer a link to a soft proof. Click Send a proof…, tick the artwork files to show (PDF pages, JPEG or PNG, up to 80 pages; Add another file… for a proof that is not attached to the job), check who it goes to and the message, then Publish proof. ImposeIQ renders each page on this PC, puts it on your Storefront site and marks the job Proof out. Tick Email the link from the website to send it through the storefront's Resend or SendGrid email; if the site has no email set up, your mail app opens instead.

The customer sees every page with a dashed trim line (bleed shaded), can zoom, and clicks anywhere on a page to pin a numbered comment. They type their name as a signature and choose Approve, Approve with the small changes I noted (you can switch this choice off) or Make changes and send me a new proof. Approving needs a tick confirming they checked spelling, wording, numbers, size and layout. Each version can be answered once; the shop gets an email, and the customer gets a copy if they gave an address.

ImposeIQ collects the answer every two minutes (or click Check for an answer):

• Approved ticks Proof approved by the customer with their name, moves the job to Ready and raises the Proof approved notification.
• Approved with changes does the same and adds a note to the job that the changes must be made before it runs.
• Changes requested moves the job back to Prepress and raises Proof changes requested. Fix the art and click Send new version…; the same link shows v2 and the customer can still look at v1.

Every answer is filed in the job's artwork folder under Proofs as an approval record PDF: who answered, when, from what internet address and browser, what they ticked, their notes, and each page with their pins drawn on it. Approval record (PDF) opens it. The pictures the customer saw are kept in the same folder.

When the job also has a customer status link, the status page shows a Review and approve the proof button while a proof is waiting, and the proof page links back to the status page. Withdraw link takes the proof down; the versions and answers stay on the job. Like status pages, proofs are served from your Storefront site with its collection key — publish the storefront once after updating ImposeIQ to add proof pages to it. Shops that still approve by phone or in person can keep using the manual Proof checkboxes.

Use a phone as the barcode scanner

No USB scanner at the machine? On Shop floor, click 📱 Phone scanner, then Turn on phone scanner. Point the phone's camera at the QR code shown and tap the link. The ImposeIQ Scanner page opens on the phone.

• Tap Scan barcode and take a photo of the barcode on the job ticket or press sheet. The page reads it and sends it to the PC. Get close enough that the barcode fills most of the photo, and avoid glare. You can also type a job number and tap Send.
• On the PC, a phone scan works like a USB scanner. On Shop floor it looks the job up. If a text box has the cursor, it types the code there. Anywhere else, it opens the job.
• The phone shows each job it scanned: number, title, customer and where it is. Prices and contacts are never sent to it, and it cannot change anything.
• It reads the MIS job barcode (Code 39) and Code 128 on any phone. Android phones also read QR and other codes.
• The phone must be on the same network as the PC. The first time, Windows may ask to allow ImposeIQ on private networks; allow it. The phone stays paired even after a restart. New pairing code unpairs every phone, and Turn off stops it.
• A live viewfinder, which scans continuously without taking photos, needs a secure (https) page. On the shop network the page uses the photo method instead. If the PC is reached over Tailscale with https, the live camera is used automatically.

The shop-floor station

Sized for somebody standing at a machine with a scanner: big type, big buttons, one input with the cursor already in it. Scan the job barcode off the sheet and the job comes up with its operations; Start, Pause and Finish book real time against the operation, and Finish asks for the good count, the waste and the sheets used.

That is the station on the shop PC itself. To put the same job of work on a tablet at the machine — its own queue, its own operator, and no pricing anywhere on it — see Accounts, terminals & who sees what below.

Accounts, terminals & who sees what

Everything above assumes one PC in the office. A shop with a prepress operator and people on the floor wants more screens than that — and the moment a second screen can change a job, the question stops being "what does this screen show" and becomes "what is this person allowed to do".

Two things on this screen sound alike and are not. Getting them the wrong way round is the single easiest mistake to make here, so they are named differently everywhere in the app:

Three kinds of screen, and they are deliberately different things:

What each kind of account can do

Five kinds, and a shop can hand one person an extra power without inventing a sixth.

Two smaller controls sit alongside the five:

• An extra power for one person — the prepress operator who also does the buying gets purchasing added to their account rather than being promoted to something they should not be.
• Something taken away — and taking away always wins, including over the role. A permission somebody is arguing about is a permission they should not have.

Putting a screen on the shop floor

Five minutes, once per screen. Everything is on Cost centers & setup → Accounts & terminals.

The operator's phone

A terminal stays at one machine. An operator's phone goes with the operator. They pick the machine they are at (or scan the job ticket), see that queue, and start, pause, finish or flag the work. A second tab, Workflows, shows what the Workflows engine is running, what failed, and any approval step waiting for somebody, so the proof check at the press can be answered at the press.

1. Turn on Shop floor access (Cost centers & setup → Accounts & terminals). Shop Wi-Fi works on the floor. Behind tailscale serve also works off-site and gives the phone a live camera viewfinder.
2. Under Shop floor terminals, click Add a phone and name it after whose phone it is.
3. A pairing QR code appears. Point the phone's camera at it and tap the link. The phone pairs itself, and the operator taps their PIN. Use Share → Add to Home Screen to make it an app icon.

Jobs tab: the chips across the top pick the department, then the machine. The phone starts on the operator's own department. Tap a job to see its steps. The likely step is already picked, and the operator can tap another. Start, Pause, Finished (good and waste counts) and Problem work the same way as on a terminal. Work is booked to whoever signed in on the phone.

Scan tab: scans the barcode on the job ticket and opens that job. Over plain http the phone takes a photo and reads the barcode out of it. Over Tailscale https it opens a live viewfinder.

Workflows tab: approvals show the instructions and the held files. Tap a PDF or image to look at it, then Approve (the workflow carries on) or Reject (a reason is required, and it is passed to the workflow's reject action). The decision is logged as "Name (phone)". Operators and prepress can approve, and estimators can only watch. To stop one person approving, deny workflow:approve on their account.

Operators, the number they tap in, and badges

An operator is not an account. They have no password, they cannot sign in to anything else, and they exist for one reason: so the twelve minutes that just went onto a job have a name on them.

At the terminal they tap a four-digit number, or scan their badge if the shop has a wedge scanner — the screen takes either without being told which is coming. It is tried on every digit from the fourth, so a four-digit number needs no Enter key and a longer one still works.

• The obvious numbers are refused — 1234, 4321, 0000, and anything counting up or down. Between a third and a half of all PINs ever chosen are in that handful.
• Nobody is still signed in the next morning. An operator is cleared after about ten hours, so the first job of the day is never booked to whoever closed up last night.
• Removing an operator keeps their work. The hours already booked stay on the jobs they went onto.

Shop floor access and the remote board are two different things

Both put the MIS on another screen, and they are not interchangeable.

Turning one on does not turn the other on, and turning one off does not turn the other off.

Everything the MIS itself already promised still holds. The shop data is still written by this one PC and nothing else, which is what keeps it intact — a terminal asks this PC to do something, it never touches the file. Accounts live in their own file beside the MIS data rather than inside it, so no password, number or key can travel out in a backup. And nothing here can be changed while Cost centers & setup is locked, because deciding who can get into the shop is the same size of decision as changing the rates.

When the floor cannot reach the MIS

The terminal has a coloured dot next to the operator's name, and it is the first thing to look at.

• Nothing is lost when the wifi drops. Each start and finish is queued with a ticket of its own before it is sent, and that ticket is reused on every retry — so however many times the request eventually gets through, and however many times a frustrated operator taps the button, the job is started once and finished once.
• A refusal is not retried. If the shop PC answers and says no — the job moved, the step is already closed — the terminal stops and tells the operator, rather than quietly trying forever and leaving them thinking it worked.
• Check what the shop PC thinks under Signed in now: every terminal and office screen currently signed in, who is standing at each one, and when it was last heard from. Sign every terminal out is the button for a tablet that has gone missing — the office stays signed in.

CRM & sales — the pipeline

The CRM is part of the MIS, not a second program with its own address book. Every account in it is an MIS customer: a prospect a rep adds on the road is a customer record marked Prospect, and the day it buys it becomes a Customer without anyone re-typing it. Open it from MIS → CRM & sales.

• Quotes win deals by themselves. A quote drafted from the CRM is attached to its deal. When that quote is marked Accepted in Quotes & estimates, the deal moves to Won and the prospect becomes a customer.
• Who owns an account is the Sales rep on it. Set it in the account window or with Assign selected. A rep only ever sees the accounts assigned to them.
• Events for Rep drafted a quote, Deal won, New prospect added and Follow-up coming due are in Settings → Notifications under CRM — sales team.

CRM on a salesperson's phone

Reps use a phone app built for the road. It has five buttons along the bottom:

• Check in logs a visit with the phone's location. The first check-in at an account also pins where that account is, which is what makes Nearby and directions work from then on.
• No signal is fine. Everything a rep logs is kept on the phone and sent when it has signal again — the chip at the top right says how many changes are waiting. Each change carries its own ticket, so one sent twice is only saved once.
• When a rep taps Call and comes back to the app, it offers to log the call.
• A rep sees sell prices only — never cost or margin — and never another rep's accounts. That is enforced on the shop PC, not just hidden on the phone.

Pricing a job from the phone

Quote on the phone asks for what a rep can answer in a lobby: the kind of job (one of your routings), the paper, the finished size, the quantity, sides and pages, and optional extra quantities. Price it runs the MIS's own estimator and shows the price, the price each and per thousand, and the price at each extra quantity. Shop default paper picks the stock that gets the most pieces on a sheet.

Send to office creates a draft quote in Quotes & estimates, marked as drafted in the CRM, with the rep's notes, and opens a deal for it at the Quoted stage. Nothing with a price on it goes to the customer until the office checks it and sends it.

Setting reps' phones up

1. Give each rep an MIS account with the role Sales rep — Cost centers & setup → Access. Owners and estimators can use the CRM too, and see every rep.
2. Assign their accounts in CRM & sales → Accounts.
3. For reminders, add each rep to Settings → Notifications → People with the same name as their MIS account and a Telegram, ntfy or email address. They are told before a follow-up is due, and each morning get a list of anything overdue.
4. Choose how phones connect in CRM & sales → Phones & settings:

On either, open the page on the phone and use Share → Add to Home Screen so it opens like an app.

Connecting HubSpot, Salesforce & other CRMs

If the shop already runs its sales in a CRM, connect it in Cost centers & setup → CRM connections and the two stay in step, both ways. One CRM at a time — two CRMs syncing into the same customers would overwrite each other.