PIA/GATF issues the 3rd edition of The PDF Print Production
Guide, and the authors dish about the latest efforts to get better PDFs to
press. This month, PIA/GATF Press published the third edition of its PDF Print Production Guide for printers and the creatives who make the PDF files they print. The Adobe-agnostic book is invaluable to many readers because it's not loaded with sugar-coated info-bites from the San Jose mother ship — instead, it features real-world advice based on solutions to the most common problems recorded by the association's members.
It also offers vendor-agnostic guidance on how to use third-party plug-ins and applications to process PDFs destined for print.
PDFZone caught up with authors Joe Marin and Julie Shaffer, who respectively serve as the printing association's senior prepress technologist and director of its Digital Printing Council, to chat about Acrobat 8's reception in the printing world.
Typically, after a new rev of Acrobat and the accompanying new PDF spec—Acrobat 8 came with PDF 1.7—it takes a while for printers to catch up and work out all the kinks. This time, around, the transition was smooth, Marin and Shaffer say in an email interview signed jointly.
"We have not heard of many RIP issues with regards to Acrobat 8 and the 1.7 PDF specification," Marin and Shaffer say, attributing the smooth transition to the new version in part to the Adobe Print Engine. "In previous releases, there were many features added to the specification that directly impacted high-end printing. With this latest release, most of the features added to PDF 1.7 are not directly related to print production and generally do not affect print output."
The new book delves into new print-centric features in Acrobat 8, such as JDF tools that give creatives a space to pass on information and instructions to printers about a print job—and how to utilize them regardless of whether or not the printer has JDF-enabled hardware. In fact, the authors emphasize that using JDF in conjunction with preflight software can eliminate some of the most common errors that plague PDF files en route to the printer.
The book also covers XML and other emerging technologies, as well as upcoming print standards. Speaking of which, do the authors believe PDF/X4 will be come the prevailing standard for print?
"Absolutely," say Marin and Shaffer. "The PDF/X4 standard allows for the inclusion of transparent objects and layers and the Adobe PDF Print Engine is capable of processing PDF files containing layers and live transparency. We believe that he adoption rate will be ultimately be dictated by how quickly the RIP vendors (and print service providers) upgrade their systems."
While the book updates content to cover the latest and greatest in PDF, the authors say that it also reviews some of the "greatest hits" of print snafus that have occurred steadily over the last decade since PDF took over the market space, and which continue to be to most commonly reported problems by print service providers.
That includes fonts not getting embedded, low-resolution images where high-res are needed, images in the PDF in a mixed color space (the common example is failing to convert to CMYK from RGB), and missing bleeds.
"What we’ve learned," Marin and Shaffer say, "is that not much has changed in the last 10 years, only the file formats that we use for print production have!"
