Parts & score are due in a couple of days (3 to be exact), so I thought it would be nice to procrastinate a little bit and proclaim my hatred toward Adobe and Kinkos.
Yes, I know these are fightin' words, but I'm sticking with them.
About a month ago I was at my friendly neighborhood FedEx Office (Kinkos) asking one of the employees to convert my letter-sized composition into a letter-sized booklet. I thought I would save money this way because I wouldn't have to pay for the spiral binding, plus I wouldn't have to worry about squeezing a spiral-bound score in a packaging envelope if I were to submit my scores someplace.
She was quite nice and helpful; due to her assistance she pointed out a new charge that would be added.
If you are to ask Kinkos to rearrange the order of the pages to create a magazine or booklet (known as imposition in the printing world), they tag on a $5 fee (?!). The woman asked if I still wanted to go ahead with the project, and I said, yes, well, I don't have the Adobe plugin, which I think costs $400.
I was wrong; the plugin (called Quite Imposing) doesn't cost $400; it costs $475, which is about the same price as Adobe Acrobat Pro.
So, I know what you're thinking - $5 doesn't sound as bad as $475, right? Except Kinkos tags on this fee FOR EACH DOCUMENT.
Let's do some math, shall we?
My upcoming printing project (which is printing parts for Xavier University):
PARTS ONLY
- 1 Picc. 1
- 1 Picc. 2
- 4 Fl. 1
- 4 Fl. 2
- 1 Ob. 1
- 1 Ob. 2
- 3 Cl. 1
- 3 Cl. 2
- 3 Cl. 3
- 2 B. Cl.
- 2 Alto Sax 1
- 2 Alto Sax 2
- 2 Tenor
- 1 Bari
- 1 Bsn. 1
- 1 Bsn. 2
- 1 Hn. 1
- 1 Hn. 2
- 1 Hn. 3
- 1 Hn. 4
- 2 Tpt. 1
- 2 Tpt. 2
- 2 Tpt. 3
- 2 Cor. 1
- 2 Cor. 2
- 2 Tbn. 1
- 2 Tbn. 2
- 1 Euph. 1
- 1 Euph. 2
- 2 Tuba 1
- 1 Tuba 2
- 1 S. Bass
- 1 Harp
- 1 Piano
- 1 Perc. 1
- 1 Perc. 2
- 1 Perc. 3
37 different documents x $5 = $185. Yikes. We're not mentioning printing on double-sided 11x17, which is $0.40/copy. Or tax.
$170 is a lot of money (for me), and I have to pay this fee every time I am to print a new set of parts. What's a girl to do?
Scour the internet for alternatives.
Imposition Wizard seems to be a good alternative. Imposition Wizard is imposition software for Mac OS X. It reads a PDF file, applies some transformations to its pages and saves the result to another PDF file. Most importantly, I can create booklets using this program. It only costs $200. (Well, less than $475.)
I downloaded the program to test it out. Works great! I tried creating a test PDF (of the 11x17). Warning: (it said) Until you register the software (it is shareware), you will have a watermark. This is what the watermark looks like:
Some watermark, eh? Unfortunately, I don't have $200 lying around either.
To be continued...(back to editing parts)