PDF Pre-Flighting?

[paddyhasneeds]

Does anyone know anything about this, and if so, at a low volume "desktop" level what software is suggested other than Adobe Acrobat Professional please?

[mically]

http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/preflight

All the what's/ why's/ how's and where's.

Let google be your friend

[paddyhasneeds]

dibbers006 said:

What exactly are you trying to achieve?

We produce and print ad-hoc (i.e. we didn't think about it quick enough to get it printed externally) marketing material in-house.

We have a brand new Xerox 7655 which is a very nice piece of kit, however we found that some of our PDF's when printed, came out with funny colour casts, blues wouldn't be blue, reds wouldn't be red, but photocopies look spot on barring a little generational loss.

Someone suggested "pre-flighting" the PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Professional, which I did, and hey presto they then printed correctly.

That leaves me where either our folks need to be sure they are pre-flighting their material before sending it to me (I work in the same office as the 7655), or it would be good for me to have "something" that I can check the PDF's with prior to printing them.

However, it's an area I know little about. I can happily Google it but most of those Google articles use terms that assume some knowledge of how the print industry works.

[The_Jackal]

Sounds like you need the colour calibrated or people to use colour profiles. That way blue is blue and you all see the same blue etc.

[paddyhasneeds]

Thanks. I'm pretty sure that in our case monitor calibration isn't the issue as the colour difference is so distinct and can be fixed with different printer profiles for Adobe RGB, SRGB, CMYK SWOP etc. on a PDF by PDF basis.

The problem is determining the correct combination whereas a "pre-flighted" PDF would appear to have all the correct information in it already.

I think it's related to whether the PDF has been generated "cleanly" or if it's a mix of SRGB and CMYK and things that go a little over my head but that I'm slowly getting to grips with.

[davepoth]

http://www.scribus.net/

Is what Ubuntu has in the repository for DTP. As a bonus it's free.

[Junior Bianno]

Do you have a RIP - Fiery, Creo etc, or do you send the PDF direct to the machine using a xerox printer drivers? If you have a RIP, import the PDF directly into it, rather than sending the file to the machine via the print drivers. Print drivers can wrap the clean PDF up produce unpredictable results. You should also be able to adjust the colour and detail within the RIP to balance out any PDF inconsistencies. That's how we do it with our digital machines and we get very consistent results...and our PDFs come from god knows where. These are higher end machines than the Xerox but the principle should be the same.