Working off a Windows Network Server?

[Scott_Brinkman@adobeforums.com]

My company is switching from Novell to Windows for our server. My IT /IS department is telling me (asking me) to stopping working from my local hard drive and to start working from the "new windows" server. In the past I have always kept my files on my local as well as any graphics / pictures that I use in my documents, etc....

And then the IT / IS department has been tape backing every other day.

Is to safe to start working off the new Windows Server they have switched to?

Thanks
Scott

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

If it is set up correctly, yes.
The general advice is to avoid, but for well configured and managed systems you can do it all right.

This is the way we work here (ID, AI, PsP, InCopy plus a database driven K4 publishing system on an SQL server, plus a 'main' server for images totaling 22 work stations along with the rest of the company - over 150 people on a third server and a mail server) and we have no problem.
Then we still store locally for specific reasons, but the resulting 'public' files are kept on the server.

George

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

If it's set up properly you should be fine. One exception: NEVER work
with graphic images in Photoshop across a network drive.

Bob

[Uwe_Rottkamp@adobeforums.com]

Bob,

> One exception: NEVER work
> with graphic images in Photoshop across a network drive.

what's up with PhShp on a network? I didn't see any problems for many years
working on networks, even with PM. I think that George is right pointing to
"well configured and managed systems". IT's shouldn't try to save money
buying hardware in discounts.

Uwe

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

There's just too much that can go wrong saving large graphics files to a
server. Always work locally with Photoshop.

Bob

[craig hensley]

I agree with Bob (Robert Levine), there are too many benefits in using PShop locally - stability, colour accuracy, personal preferences and actions etc; particularly a no-no in Terminal Server.

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

Talking about servers, a point has to be made on the benefits of OPI servers. It has a clear advantage to use high-res where it belongs - image processing and use low-res proxies for positioning and placement. This is particularly important in large networked operations..

Once upon a time a OPI server was costing much. Today I don't see a reason not to install one.

There are issues on large size files traffic over the network and more issues if such files are kept open on the server, so it's a trade-off of balancing all requirements.
The conclusion should be: if you can't afford for well managing it, don't use it.

thanks
George

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

I could not possibly disagree more about OPI. It's a dated way of doing
things. High res art should be used all of the time. Storage is cheap
and computers are fast. Using OPI just adds one more thing that can
wrong at printing time.

Bob

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

If anything can go wrong, it will! Thus spoken Murphy.

And since this is one of the greatest truths - an extra ordinary discovery, he was bound for the hall of fame dignified. But unfortunately, something went wrong for him and people even disagree that he ever existed. (I believe he did. LOL)

Frankly Bob, I don't see why you need a high res image (I mean really high - say 40, 50 Mb) for positioning in ID, if you can do with a proxy of 500Kb. Then I agree with you that an OPI server among other things can go wrong.

thanks
George

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

That's a condradictory statement, George. First you say use a proxy
image and then you say things can go wrong with OPI.

Bob

[Ken_Grace@adobeforums.com]

Gentlemen.

Add into this the bug in CS (which may have been fixed in 3.0.1, I don't
know) which causes InDesign not to be able to print to Postscript a page
containing a PDF which itself contains OPI comments.

k

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

Not really, Bob.
No one says "don't use a network server" since it can go wrong, which really may and can happen.

What I say is that OPI is just another piece of software. It remains if this is suitable to one's workflow or not. Sometimes it is, sometimes is not, considering the pros and cons.

As for the problem with PDF containing OPI comments, that shouldn't be IMO. After all a PDF doc is by definition a portable document, so what good there is to it refering to another doc residing some place else (like in an OPI).
More reasonably a PDF should contain all the info necessary for portability. (We already have enough problems with subset embedding fonts).

thanks
George

[Ken_Grace@adobeforums.com]

"As for the problem with PDF containing OPI comments, that shouldn't be IMO.
After all a PDF doc is by definition a portable document, so what good there
is to it refering to another doc residing some place else (like in an OPI)."


This is one that Dov Isaacs had hold of. I don't know much about OPI - other
than how it works in basic terms - but I assumed that both the hi res and lo
res images were commented in some way to maintain a relationship, and that
it was the comments in the hi res graphics that were included in the PDF
that was causing the problem.

k