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 (http://americanprinter.com/mag/printing_best_pdfs/)
by Julie Shaffer
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!! :)
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!
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
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/ (http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/)) yet ;)
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
Great article Joe, and very usefull.
Jezza, Printing4fun's URL links just fine, either he fixed it or you may have an issue. ::)
He fixed it thanks Saprky
Do Isaacs and Rosenthal work for Adobe? I'm assuming Shaffer doesn't. Just chasing an FYI, is all. :-\
Rosenthal does
http://www.acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr/
and so does Isaacs
http://www.planetpdf.com/enterprise/article.asp?ContentID=6569
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.
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. ;)
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:
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?
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.
Quote from: Tim on August 07, 2008, 09:29:18 AMIn 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.
That article was out of date when it was written!
The problem(s) described there reflect known bugs in Adobe Acrobat versions 4 & 5 (NOT the PDF file format) - all of which were resolved by version 6. So you quite fine with Acrobat 8 or later...
Leonard
Some good information, but as you said it's dated...
Although it doesn't address the specific issue cited above, we did revisit the "Better PDFs" topics:
http://americanprinter.com/work-flow/designing-printable-files-0708/
All the best
KOB
AP
Even if it is a bit dated, it has alot of useful information in it, so I've sent a couple of our customers who seem to struggle with PDF's there, as well as the excellent pages on "prepressure.com".
damn, two year old post!
The link from KOB is actually updated for today, July 2, 2010.
Everyone who has ever crafted a PDF in their life should read this. Well-written, informative, and practical. This almost makes me what to read the book.
Bravo!
and even better, two years later...
again
Quote from: Joe on October 23, 2007, 10:27:46 AMI 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 (http://americanprinter.com/mag/printing_best_pdfs/)
by Julie Shaffer
Thank you for pinning this helpful post here, definitely going to help all.
Anyone have an updated link?
Sounds like there was some useful information in there.
This might be it.
While it had good info, a link to a 2006 article shouldn't me taken as gospel. Things have changed since it was written.
http://americanprinter.com/industry-content/hvto-industry-news/the-best-pdfs
Ms. Shaffer is on Linked-in too, if you are looking to keep in touch with her articles, etc
Friday I had a customer send a PDF asking me about the quality, fonts and such. It was fine on my end, all fonts were outlined, vector was still there.
I get the assembled file and it's one big image. I have a question in to her how just how a perfectly good PDF got so screwed up.
Quote from: Farabomb on May 09, 2016, 12:09:14 PMFriday I had a customer send a PDF asking me about the quality, fonts and such. It was fine on my end, all fonts were outlined, vector was still there.
I get the assembled file and it's one big image. I have a question in to her how just how a perfectly good PDF got so screwed up.
Answer: She 'fixed' it for you!
I have an idea what she did, I just want to hear her answer. I mean, the file was good, why did you touch it?
Trying to show you she knows more than you do. :sarcasm:
Well, it's because she's still using Quark and saving all PDFs to TIFFs.
I've explained how bad of an idea that is but since they are doing a redesign in a few months...
I swear I've heard that before.
Oh yeah, we have a client that "bought as was learning InDD and would stop using Pooplisher, this will be the last one"...
that was 4 years ago. Now we are the only one's that will take their job :rotf: >:(
Ran into a strange pdf today, it looks normal but it's almost choking the rip.
Made by a packaging company that would normally not do offset. They insisted on doing their own trapping so the traps are built in. Therefore I am using no trapping at the rip. The label is 9x12 inches, it's running 4up. One image, 300dpi, the rest vector.
It was generated by ESKO Automation Engine.
Can't figure out why it's taxing the rip so bad but am thinking it must be the built in traps or something.
:drunk3:
What does it look like in wireframe? Is it a overly complex design?
They don't do offset work but are insisting on their trap settings.... ::)
does not look overly complex in wireframe mode. Seen a lot worse.
Quote from: pspdfppdfxhd on October 24, 2016, 08:32:57 AMRan into a strange pdf today, it looks normal but it's almost choking the rip.
Made by a packaging company that would normally not do offset. They insisted on doing their own trapping so the traps are built in. Therefore I am using no trapping at the rip. The label is 9x12 inches, it's running 4up. One image, 300dpi, the rest vector.
It was generated by ESKO Automation Engine.
Can't figure out why it's taxing the rip so bad but am thinking it must be the built in traps or something.
:drunk3:
If it's Esko, the trap areas could be/probably are embedded tifs, made to emulate transparency. Works ok in the Esko workflow, but maybe doesn't play well with others.
Right, but it ripped ok, looks ok on preview.
The printed sample and proof supplied both had schoastic screening. We dont have that option on our rip but our proof visually looked about 98 percent matched to theirs. I was suprised it was so close.
I had posted about this on another post regarding reflex blue.
Strange thing is, with this pdf to proof, the reflex blue proof on the 8 color HP proofer we have really DOES look like reflex blue, not muddy or purpley like I have seen before. I had to pinch myself and wonder why I had never seen a good reflex blue on. proof before.
I think I see why it took so long to rip.
There are billions of nodes on the trap strokes. I am assuming that's it however we did NO trapping and that's what usually eats up the time.
Still has to process all that crap though.
Yeah, a whole load of crap nodes.
More is better, right?
Why make it simple?