Print Buying Direct

Variable Data Printing – New PDF Formats – PDF + VT = VDP – Part 3 – 19th May 2009

What happened to XPS?
Two years ago an article like this would have discussed the potential of Microsoft’s XPS technology, a comprehensive XML based document file format and printing architecture developed for the Vista operating system. XPS, standing for XML Paper Specification, is in some ways technically superior to current PDF. Global Graphics worked on its development and has built hybrid PDF/XPS capable printer drivers and workflows. It’s supported by a fair number of digital print vendors, including Canon, Epson, Konica Minolta, HP, Sharp and Xerox. Vista has suffered a fairly unenthusiastic response from the corporate market since its introduction in 2007. Despite its potential, XPS has made virtually no impact on professional print, even though Windows XP systems can access it through the XPS Essentials Pack.
It’s not going away though: it’s built into millions of PCs that shipped with Vista and it’s going reappear in Windows 7, the next-generation operating system due to ship within the next year or so.

To be continued…

See Part one of this Blog on Variable Data Printing

Print Buying Direct and School Prospectus Made Easy are both brands of parent company – The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK. Keep visiting both websites for details of our latest offers and promotions.

Variable Data Printing – New PDF Formats – PDF + VT = VDP – Part 2 – 18th May 2009

An improved APPE 2, announced at drupa, is filtering through to the latest DFEs and workflow upgrades. One of the first is Fujifilm’s XMF 2.0, which shipped in October, but it will be appearing within the offerings from Agfa, Creo, EFI, Heidelberg, Screen and Xerox, among others.

With the announcement of APPE 2, Adobe started talking about its plan for variable data. APPE 2 has support for variable data processing, such as detecting repeated elements automatically and only processing them once then caching them, to cut processing load.

APPE 2 is designed to run on highly scalable server hardware, which will be needed to provide the horsepower for full-colour variable data runs.

The full benefit of this will start to appear once the next generation PDF/VT appears which will have variable data handling built in and active within layers, transparency and other goodies. It can also be controlled by JDF job tickets. PDF/VT will be viewable through the free Adobe Reader and it will apparently be possible to preview variable data within this.

Last year PDF 1.7 was published as an ISO standard (32000), addressing a long-standing complaint that Adobe exercised a de facto monopoly and third party developers didn’t always know what was going on inside. Now they do.

PDF/VT will be an ISO standard (16612-2) from the start and its currently wending its way through the committee stage, which is possibly why it’s taking so long to appear.

Something might hit the desktops later this year, which might just tie in with the 18 month upgrade cycle for Acrobat, Adobe’s chief PDF creation and editing application. If this follows previous practices, Acrobat 10 will appear at the end of this year, followed by a Creative Suite 5 around March or April 2010. This is quite exciting. Nobody’s saying anything officially, but there seems to be potential for a version of InDesign, possibly an extra-cost ‘Extended’ edition, to handle variable data internally. Third party variable data programs like Kodak Darwin and HP SmartStream Designer already plug into InDesign and Xpress of course, but having it built in may shake up the design market a bit.

To be continued…

See Part one of this Blog on Variable Data Printing

Print Buying Direct and School Prospectus Made Easy are both brands of parent company – The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK. Keep visiting both websites for details of our latest offes and promotions.

Variable Data Printing – New PDF Formats – PDF + VT = VDP – Part 1

The PDF file format can’t directly support variable data printing. This should start to change with the introduction of PDF/VT input and APPE 2 output.

Digital print pre-press workflows need to have some provision for handling variable data, even if it’s only for outputting pages in collated order. The weak point of the platesetter workflows discussed on previous pages is that they were built for static images and don’t understand variable data.

This is starting to change as their developers address digital print as a serious part of their potential business, although most of the links so far on the market will simply ‘pass through’ any variable components to the dedicated DPE components and hope that they know what to do with it.

You can create and print documents in variable data friendly formats such as PPML, VIPP or AFP, but these were largely invented for the needs of high volume transactional print and don’t support the aesthetic bells and whistles of modern design programs, notably transparency. PDF and its predecessor, PostScript, which have dominated commercial print pre-press for 20 years, were never designed for variable data. Something better is needed to marry up the creative design and variable requirements more happily. The forthcoming PDF/VT (for Variable Transactional) may well be the answer.

As Adobe migrated its page – print strategy from PostScript to PDF, so the pre-press developers followed, moving from the CPSI PostScript Rips and adopting the Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE) from 2006 onward. Global Graphics beat it to the punch, moving its Harlequin server to native PDF processing long before APPE appeared.
Native PDF processing allows very late changes to impositions, meaning that jobs can be switched fairly easily between presses at a very late stage if needed. This also allows easier switching between offset and digital output, or mixed jobs that start on digital for fast delivery or market and then move to offset for bulk long runs. However, that lack of variable data support is the Achilles heel, meaning that variable elements are passed through separately to the DPE.

On the creative side, native PDF processing allows direct output of transparency within design created on Adobe’s InDesign layout program. APPE can handle transparency without flattening, which means less potential for errors such as banding, or sharp edges on drop shadows. It also helps with the late changes aspect: if you flatten a file you are rendering it and freezing its resolution. Digital presses and offset platesetter work to different resolutions so flattening for one may not work for the other.

To be continued…

Print Buying Direct and School Prospectus Made Easy are both brands of parent company – The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK. Keep visiting both websites for details of our latest offes and promotions.

In flight, preflight, and post flight – part 4 – 8th May 2009

Keep on checking
Once the packaged job for PDF are sent to the print shop or publishers (normally next in the workflow), the post production person does a final check, or post flight of the PDF file. Some of these checks include page set up, transparency usage, that fonts are embedded and that images are there and in the proper high resolution. Enfocus’ PitStop excels at the final PDF check, which must be done to prevent against any unforeseen errors up to this point in the workflow. What is more, PitStop can be used to fix any remaining problems. Some will opt for FlightCheck at this post flight staged as well, for is can also fully flight a PDF print job.
Generally, there cannot be enough checks in the workflow. This is because there are various disciplines and mindsets needed to produce the final printed product. Using a myriad of known and reliable software solutions is all important, and in some cases the solutions may straddle both the creative and the pre-production aspects, or even the creative and post production aspects. Yes, with the proper software tools used to preflight documents before printing, the pilot is able to keep an eagle eye on those gauges and a steady hand on the tiller during the light. It is just plain simple logic to understand flight checks must take place before take off, and after landing as well!

To be continued…

See Part one of – The magic circle – print, paper and recycling – also part one of this blog – in Flight, preflight and post flight

Print Buying Direct is the online facility for buying print of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK

The Printing House are specialists and experts in Prospectus of all kinds – see our dedicated prospectus Website www.schoolprospectus.info – New on our Schools site – have a look at our new turn page technology (also known as digital editions)- have your prospectus or brochure online (digital prospectus or digital brochure) – but turn the pages as if it was paper.

Don’t forget to see our new offer – Budget Black and white leaflets – 10,000 Leaflets designed, printed and delivered for only £199

Best of all – don’t forget that our Banner Stands (pull up banners) are still only £99 plus delivery!

Business Cards (Business Card Printing) – £10 for 100 Full Colour Business Cards.

We’re still running our very popular Lettterheads Campaign. 2000 letterheads for only £125 in full colour, printed onto a quality 100gsm laser guaranteed paper. see our letterheads webpage for more info.

At The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we are experts at helping you with the production of your newsletter, whether it be for your employees, customers or fellow club members. See our Newsletters web page for help and advice.

Keep an eye out for our new website for The Printing House Ltd, due for relaunch in May.

Our superb Wallet Folders are still on offer – see http://www.printbuyingdirect.co.uk/wallet-folders.html

In flight, preflight, and post flight – part 2 – 6th May 2009

For years, workhouse preflight applications such as FlightCheck Professional and PitStop Professional added, and continue to add, value in the preflight process. Where Adobe Live Preflighting stops or is limited both FlightCheck and Pitstop taker over. For instance, the ‘Sharing the Preflight profile with Acrobat’ point is easily remedied with FlightCheck because is examines both native files formats as well as PDF files. Another example, the ‘Allowing Custom profiles to be shared and downloaded’ point is remedied with Ground Control sets. Ground Controls can easily be set up and shard with other.

Complete control
FlightCheck Professional is an all encompassing preflight technology, developed by the founders and US patent holders of the preflight process, Markzware. This standalone application provides time tested software to both preflight and post flight digital files destined for print. For more than 13 years, the system has embodied an innovative method of checking more than 50 files format. These include Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress and the resulting PDF. This application gives printers and layout artist alike, a quick, easy and standardised way of checking numerous disparate files in and out of a work flow.

Yet another technology is the Enfocus PitStop product. This tool is also highly regarded by printers at the post fight stage and excellent for checking PDFs. Further, it can also edit PDFs, which is often a necessary evil.
The question is: why use Adobes Live Preflight, Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional and Enfocus’ Pitstop together?
The answer is simple: For complete quality control.

To be continued…

See Part one of – The magic circle – print, paper and recycling

Print Buying Direct is the online facility for buying print of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK

The Printing House are specialists and experts in Prospectus of all kinds – see our dedicated prospectus Website www.schoolprospectus.info – New on our Schools site – have a look at our new turn page technology (also known as digital editions)- have your prospectus or brochure online (digital prospectus or digital brochure) – but turn the pages as if it was paper.

Don’t forget to see our new offer – Budget Black and white leaflets – 10,000 Leaflets designed, printed and delivered for only £199

Best of all – don’t forget that our Banner Stands (pull up banners) are still only £99 plus delivery!

Business Cards (Business Card Printing) – £10 for 100 Full Colour Business Cards.

We’re still running our very popular Lettterheads Campaign. 2000 letterheads for only £125 in full colour, printed onto a quality 100gsm laser guaranteed paper. see our letterheads webpage for more info.

At The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we are experts at helping you with the production of your newsletter, whether it be for your employees, customers or fellow club members. See our Newsletters web page for help and advice.

Keep an eye out for our new website for The Printing House Ltd, due for relaunch in May.

Our superb Wallet Folders are still on offer – see http://www.printbuyingdirect.co.uk/wallet-folders.html

Pre-press – 20 years of change – part 6 – 24th March 2009

Multi-channel promise

The considerable common interest between print and electronic page delivery was already obvious when in 1996 Adobe introduced Acrobat 3. This was the first version to display PDF files in a browser, and for the first time Adobe offered the Adobe Reader technology for free. Web technologies and digital communications dominated every area of the news, within and beyond the graphic arts. US president Bill Clinton even gave a speech describing the transition from an industrial to information based economy, and the importance of the digital superhighway. And, we saw the world’s first Java based authoring system: Texture from Future Tense. But some of the industry’s early pioneers were facing serious difficulties. Apple was under a particularly dark cloud following too many bad quarters. A new CEO was brought in to turn the company around. He brought back Steve Jobs and streamlined the Apple product line, but his time at Apple was short.

It was 1996 that marked the true beginning of thermal CTP with Creo announcing its thermal imaging Trendsetter technology. Prior to 1996, CTP systems used visible light lasers to digitally image metal plates. Digital presses were getting quicker and more accurate and no output advance had been overlooked by workflow and RIP developers. Introduced in 1996, Harlequin’s EP2000 adaptive workflow management system was designed to manage all aspects of production from concept to output and beyond. Its ambition rather outstripped reality, but it demonstrated that RIPs are the heart of workflow and an increasingly powerful tool for optimising pre-press production efficiency.

But, digital data management was still not a top priority in a world where most origination was still analogue. Kodak was heading sort of in the right direction when it introduced APS (Advanced Photo Systems) for conventional camera, but offering three output format options: conventional, HDTV or panoramic. In the same year Kodak introduced Photo CD, to serve a digital market that had yet to emerge. Digital imaging was till too nascent, even though the first low end digital cameras under $1000 had come to market. And Scitex Darwin, the world’s first true variable data application was being readied for market.

The high end scanner and repro markets were still extremely vibrant with a mass of technologies from Agfa, Creo, Dupont, Epson, Howtec, Imacon, Scanview, Linotype-hell and Umax, plus others testifying to the still vital need for image digitising tools. But the signs were there that the future was digital imaging. In 1996, there was an explosion in the number of digital text and image library technologies, which reflected the stampede to colour digital production based on standard tolls in the graphic arts. These systems also reflected a growing awareness of the importance of databases and of data tagging. Much of the technology innovation was still ahead of applications. Despite the power of SGML for complex documents, developers from Arbortext to Xyvision largely failed to get mainstream publishers to embrace it. The standardised General Mark-up Language had a much more important role to play though: SGML was the forerunner of XML, the specification for which was introduced in 1997.

To be continued…

School Prospectus Made Easy and Print Buying Direct are trading names of The Printing House Ltd. The Print Buying Direct brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. We hope that School Prospectus Made Easy will follow in the same fashion and become a popular brand in its own right.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Pre-press – 20 years of change – part 5 – 24th March 2009

Acrobat and PDF

Acrobat was designed to provide tools for sharing documents, independent of a computer’s operating system, and of the applications an fonts installed on that system. It was a revolutionary concept that used a new data format, the Portable Document Format (PDF), to provide system independence for electronic document delivery. Although it wasn’t originally designed for graphic arts applications, the pre-press industry was quick to see the potentials of PDF as a universal output format, combined with standard computing platforms and software.

Leading developers, printers, publishers and service providers had their eyes on standard platforms. People were intrigued by what a common approach to colour management based on Apple’s ColorSync technology, might bring. The possibilities were especially intriguing in view of the new digital output devices demonstrated for on-demand print. Groundbreaking presses from Indigo and Xeikon first shown publicly in 1993 put digital printing into new focus, and gave use a glimpse at what might be possible with digital pre-press and presses.

The development community was quick to see the potential of variable data. Several understood that the digital front ends would need to be more than press servers rastering and rendering data, handing image streaming and controlling output. The need for digital colour management was obvious and in 1993 the International Colour Consortium (ICC) started developing standard technologies for managing colour data in pre-press workflows. Objectif Lune started to provide software for on-demand print in that year, introducing PlanetPress in 1994. This transactional and output management solution was one of the first to eliminate printing on pre-printed forms, by managing output to print complex personalised transactional documents at high speed.

See Part one, two, three and four of this blog – Pre-press – 20 years of change

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of our blogs on Direct Mail and Transactional Print

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. Take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

10 Tips for Creatives in a Digital World – 11th February 2009

In the last 20 years, the creative process has undergone a nearly total digital transformation, giving creatives the power to eliminate steps in the workflow, deliver new value and change the way clients are served. Here are some helpful hints for managing this expanded creative latitude.

Discuss your job with your print provider.
Before you begin your design, contact your print provider for requirements that can help you do the job right the first time.

Follow the standards.
Standards like SNAP, GRACOL, SWOP, PDF and PDF/X help enable today’s ever-faster turnarounds, ensuring smooth handoffs from creatives to pre-press and printer.

Simplify the workflow.
By moving to a total digital, standards-based workflow, many creative agencies and production operations move at much faster paces, with fewer people.

Explore elegant digital typography.
Much like offset, high-end digital presses are excellent for reproducing solid text with fine lines and serifs as small as four point.

Specify Pantone colours as spot colours.
This allows most digital printing systems to achieve the best match to the original spot ink by using an optimized Pantone matching table.

Mix paper stocks.
Digital presses allow automated intermixing of different insert and cover stocks within the job, with no waiting for ink to dry. And they retain vivid colour across all papers, even uncoated stocks.

The basics still apply.
Many of the same rules apply in digital printing as in offset and gravure. It’s not enough for the pages to look spectacular; the designer still has to pay close attention to details, such as type readability.

Use On-Press Proofs.
Digital presses can switch between jobs on the fly, permitting printers to easily produce on-press proofs that are the exact output of the job, on the same paper. This eliminates the need for simulated proofs produced by offline proofing devices.

Make final tweaks.
With the all-digital workflow of a digital press, late revisions and many color and image quality adjustments are more easily accepted and applied – a major advantage for digital printing.

Explore new applications.
Cross-media, variable information and on demand communications programs are all ideally suited to digital printing, and they provide a valuable service to clients who want to provide the most timely, accurate relevant, and persuasive information.

Bonus tip:
Study the craft of being digital. Tap into the growing number of educational initiatives from trade associations and universities to help sort out the constant flow of new digital design technologies.

For more information please see our websites

The Printing House

Print Buying Direct (Print Buying Direct is a brand of The Printing House Ltd, Crewe, Cheshire, UK)

Adobe’s Portable Document Format, was never designed for high-end graphics art production. Back in the early nineties, when it was first introduced, it was intended for cross platform office document sharing. But the graphic arts industry embraced PDF as a means of transporting content files from point to point, and PDF’s role as the foundation for print media workflows was rapidly confirmed throughout the industry. We should bare this in mind when considering PDF as the preferred file format for print production. There are good reasons for using PDF, but not all PDF files are suitable for output for quality printing.

PDF has become a de facto standard for graphic arts workflows because of its convenience, ubiquity and flexibility. The alternative to using PDF files as the basis for print production is to use either native files, meaning documents saved in the internal file format for the layout software, such as InDesign, Quark Xpress or perhaps Illustrator. We could also export the page content as postscript. But neither approach is ideal and there are benefits and drawbacks with both.

Application files

The problem with sending native files from a designer to a printer or prepress department is that the receiver needs to have the same software installed on their computer in order to be able to open the file. And that software needs to be the exact same version, and ideally running on the same type of computer platform, with the same version of the operating system. As if this want irritating and costly enough, all fonts and possible hyphenation and language modules need also to be in place and of the exact same version, as on the designer’s workstation.

Most layout software doesn’t embed images inside the page document, which is yet another source of possible errors. Instead they have pointers to the high resolution versions of images, which are generally stored somewhere else. This could be on the computer used to originate the file, or on an image server. Working with native files requires all of these variables to be taken into account, for the files to flow through production without mishap. Missing images or missing fonts, or both, are among the most frequent errors in prepress troubleshooting. These are all reason to work with PDF, where all file components from images to colours can be contained within a single file. It’s clear that PDF has mostly replaced Postscript as the preferred page description language. PDF files are easier to work with and less cumbersome to handle in print production than native layout document files from InDesign or Quark X Press. Preparing documents for print will perhaps never be childsplay, but using PDF files in general, preflighted and well prepared PDF/X files in particular, is the path to better, more secure file processing.

For more information on providing us with PDF files please don’t hesitate to contact us at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct)

PREPARING TO PRINT

Once the layout and design of a job is complete, you’ll need to decide how to hand over your files. At The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we usually prefer a single PDF but can work with all of the source files.

Either way, you’ll want to run though a preflight checklist. For more information see our artwork guidlines webpage.
PREFLIGHT CHECKLIST… ARE YOU READY?

• Ensure that all graphics and images are in their final size and correct resolution, 100% at 300 dpi.
• Rotate, scale and edit images and graphics prior to placing them in page layout applications.
• Image file formats should be EPS or TIFF (not JPEG) and verify that all source files are linked properly.
• All spot colours should be designated as spot colors and not as CMYK recipes.
• Spell check your document.
• Remove any trapping (allow the printer to apply trapping).
• Check for transparency and either flatten or notify the printer so they can flatten the file. All bleeds should generally be set to 3 mm.
• Gather all source files: fonts, graphics, images and layout documents, if requested. Use the [Package] feature in InDesign or the [Collect for Output] in QuarkXPress.
• Perform a visual preflight using overprint preview, colour separations preview and transparency flattener preview.
• Prepare a mock-up to give the printer as a finished sample.

TRAPPING

• For best results, trapping should be applied by The Printing House and not the yourself. Trapping settings made in the application are not included in the PostScript when printing with the Composite mode.
• Avoid instances where trapping to gradients or images is required (the change in color may not reproduce well).

BLEEDS

Include 3 mm bleed for all areas that extend off the page when trimming is required.

IMPOSITION

If you plan to use binding, leave ample room for the gutter. Aside from that, we will do all imposition work.

INDESIGN CS2 PREPARE TO PRINT

PREFLIGHTING

• Use the [Preflight] feature under the File menu to make sure all fonts, graphics and image links are present.

PACKAGING

• Use the [Package] feature under the File menu to collect all fonts, graphics and images used in the job. This will ensure that all elements are collected when the job is delivered to The Printing House. Instructions and contact information can also be included by the designer for us.

QUARKXPRESS 6.5 PREPARE TO PRINT
USAGE…

• Use the [Usage...] feature in the Utilities menu of QuarkXPress to review that all fonts, graphics and images are linked correctly in the file.

COLLECT FOR OUTPUT

Use the [Collect for Output] feature in QuarkXPress to gather all fonts, graphics and images used in the job. This will ensure that all elements are collected when the job is delivered to the print provider. Note, however, that you will need to gather fonts from imported EPS or PDF pictures manually unless they are already imbedded into the EPS or PDF file.

ACROBAT DISTILLER 7 SETTINGS

• Create PostScript from the source application using the Acrobat Distiller PPD.
• Be sure to use the Binary data format and include all fonts.
• Use the Smooth Shading feature in Acrobat Distiller.
• The Save As features in PDF Writer/Maker or the Mac OS X Save As PDF feature should be used with caution.

The following recommended settings have been optimized for high image quality printing. In some instances, productivity may take priority over image quality and, therefore, require different settings (such as adjustments in compression).

Open Acrobat Distiller and go to the Settings menu. Select [Edit: Adobe PDF Settings...]. Create a custom set choosing the following recommended settings and select [Save As...] using a new fi le name (e.g.,“ artwork for The Printing House”).

Distiller will save the file in the right place so it can be accessed as a new Job Option set.

• Select Acrobat 6.0 ( PDF 1.5) for the best compatibility. Note that since you are working with a PostScript file there is no need to select Acrobat 4.0 compatibility for transparency concerns (writing files to PostScript always flattens any transparency effects).
• To ensure that the orientation of the pages prints correctly, do not select the Auto-Rotate Pages feature.
• Embed Thumbnails is optional. Versions of Acrobat 5 and higher are able to dynamically create thumbnails on the fly.

IMAGES

To preserve the best image quality, compression is generally not recommended.

Distiller 7 contains a new Policy button. You will need to decide the threshold of what level of resolution is appropriate for the quality of the job and if the job should pass, fail or warn the user. Try setting the minimum as 200dpi and the max as 400dpi.

FONTS

• If jobs fail while distilling, check the job for missing fonts. The following settings recommend cancelling the job when fonts are missing to ensure the document prints correctly.
• To guarantee the font information is successfully included in the Adobe PDF file and will view properly on the monitor, the required fonts should reside either in the system folder of the computer or in the PostScript file.
• A higher percentage value is generally recommended for [Subset embedded fonts . . .].

COLOUR

• The Settings File selection under Adobe Colour Settings should usually be set to [None], [Leave Colour Unchanged].

ADVANCED

• The Convert Gradients to Smooth Shades feature can help smooth vignettes/ sweeps/ gradients with Vector-based programs such as Adobe Illustrator or QuarkXPress. Using this feature with Microsoft Office jobs may or may not improve the job due to the way sweeps are generated in those applications.
• As a precautionary measure, use the Save Adobe PDF Settings Inside PDF File feature. The recipient of the PDF may be able to troubleshoot problem files more easily if the settings are included with the job.

EXPORTING PDF FILES

When exporting files from InDesign or QuarkXPress, you can apply many of the same Acrobat Distiller recommendations discussed previously.

INDESIGN CS2—EXPORT PDF

The PDF options for InDesign are fairly similar to those in Acrobat Distiller. If there is a custom set saved from Distiller, it will be selectable from the PDF Export dialog box. Follow the settings previously discussed.

There is one additional group of settings, [Marks and Bleeds], that can be set to your preference.

QUARKXPRESS 6.5—EXPORT PDF

In QuarkXPress be sure to click on the [Options...] button to access all of the available controls over PDF settings.

You will want to check the options under the Job Options and the Output tab. Take special care to ensure the Color [Output Type] is set to [Composite] and that [Print Colors] is set to [As Is].

Note that blends made with PANTONE® colors in Quark 6, will print as RGB when the [Print Colors] selection is set to [As Is]. To preserve PANTONE Blends (gradients), set Print Colors to [Device N]. Using [Device N] will, however, convert any RGB text, objects and images to CMYK.

PREFLIGHTING PDF FILES

In Adobe Acrobat 6 or higher you can use the Preflight tool to create your own custom preflight profile or use one of the default profiles. If you are not familiar with this tool you may want to talk with your print provider first. They may be able to provide you with a customized profile or walk you through the process.
Also refer to the Adobe documentation provided with Acrobat.

For more information or help please call The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) on 0870 950 8444

The Printing House Ltd – Marshfield bank, Crewe, Cheshire, UK