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The Best PDF's

Started by Joe, October 23, 2007, 10:27:46 AM

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Joe

I think this might have been posted at PPF previously but I think it's worth a sticky here. Send it to your customers too. ;D

The best PDF's
by Julie Shaffer
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

ninjaPB_43

YES!!   Thanks again to _Vee for the original post..  my customers have loved it.  and so have I  ;)


and Thanks Joe, for moving it over...   It certainly deserves a pinned!!   :) 
People will notice the change in your attitude towards them, but won't notice their behavior that made you change.  -Bob Marley

EyeTech

Fantastic and well written piece (the article on dealing with irate customers - is handy too).

It's good to have backed up all we have tried to say to clients over the years about using the right tool for the job.

Just today we had a 4pp Newsletter, PDF'd by the client from Word. Fonts not embedded and colours that are the client house colours varying thru'out because he'd selected a nearly right swatch for each element.

Gonna email that link straightaway!





'I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out'" Bill Hicks

Self-indulgent Flickr page

born2print

Thanks Joe, I went to a Julie Shaffer speak (through PIA) years ago when PDF was a 4 letter word. I've never met anyone since that is more knowledgeable about PDFs and related. But she USED to say she was against font embedding, I notice she finally gave that up.

Also note, she seems to agree that it is not legal to "borrow" a font to "use once for print repro"...
quote from article/font section:
"the typical agreement allows fonts to be sent along with a job for print output, but the output provider also must have a license to use that font."

for the font license debate, see here:
http://forums.b4print.com/index.php?topic=373.0
How will I laugh tomorrow...
when I can't even smile today?

Laurens

Quote from: born2print on November 08, 2007, 03:11:45 PMThanks Joe, I went to a Julie Shaffer speak (through PIA) years ago when PDF was a 4 letter word. I've never met anyone since that is more knowledgeable about PDFs and related. ......

You obviously haven't met Dov Isaacs or Leonard Rosenthal (http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/) yet   ;)
Having fun writing about prepress & printing for my Prepressure site

jezza

Printing for fun, you have a broken link  ;)

The URL under your name is not resolving properly, the one in your signature is OK though
one sick prepress mofo

Sparky

Great article Joe, and very usefull.

Jezza, Printing4fun's URL links just fine, either he fixed it or you may have an issue. ::)
"No well engineered plan survives contact with reality"

jezza

He fixed it thanks Saprky
one sick prepress mofo

frailer

Do Isaacs and Rosenthal work for Adobe? I'm assuming Shaffer doesn't. Just chasing an FYI, is all.   :-\
Forgotten good guys: Dennis Ritchie, Burrell Smith, Bill Atkinson, Richard Stallman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now just an honorary member.

jezza

one sick prepress mofo

frailer

Thanks jez. After reading Isaacs' potted biog.; you can see how Adobe edged Quack out of the way. Seems they were being eyed off and got onto doing something about it. Having people like Isaacs seems to have at least given them some customer input to feed back into what must be a  humungous enterprise to try and steer. His occasional posts on PP are usually well worth reading.
Thanks for the links.
Forgotten good guys: Dennis Ritchie, Burrell Smith, Bill Atkinson, Richard Stallman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now just an honorary member.

Cool Hand Luke

My only real beef with that involves the mention of JPEG compression.

No.

No, no, no.

JPEG compression -- "high quality" or not -- should not be allowed in any prepress dept. ;)

frailer

Funny you should mention it, this has come up here in the last few days here:


https://www.b4print.com/forums/index.php?topic=1917.msg32544#new


I'm quietly going over my settings.     :shhh:    Just testing, mind...


...and welcome, Cool Hand.     :smiley:


Forgotten good guys: Dennis Ritchie, Burrell Smith, Bill Atkinson, Richard Stallman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now just an honorary member.

Tim

In the article Julie Shaffer states "Subset fonts in PDF files are not without problems, either. Merging multiple PDF files with subset fonts can, on rare occasions, result in missing characters in the merged PDF file. Subsetting a font will rename it, as shown above, with a random generation of six alpha characters plus the base font name. Unfortunately, Acrobat will use the first version of a particular font name that it detects, creating a problem when two PDF files that happen to have the same six-character prefix are merged within Acrobat — only the glyphs used in the first merged file will be available for all of the other sections of the file. So if a new glyph is used in the subsequent PDF file merged into the first, it will not display or print, and a blank space will appear instead."
This article was written in 2006. Does this statement hold true with the newer versions of Acrobat? We are currently using Acrobat 8 Professional. My workflow is combine PDF's into one document/preflight with acrobat/place in InDesign using the "PlaceMultipagePDF.applescript"/PS single pages/RIP. I have not had an issue with missing characters thus far. Have I been lucky and should I change my workflow or has the issue been resolved?

Joe

I think this issue was resolved in either 7 or 8. I use it too and haven't had any issues. Maybe someone from Adobe can comment on this as well. That article is getting a bit dated.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.