OK, projecting ahead at our in-house stuff...would love some thoughts on which way to advise on this. We have 3 people on Macs; can't give more detail for fear of losing anonymity. All resistant to change, to one degree or another. One a particularly difficult personality. They currently supply Quack 6.52 files/links/fonts...well, "fonts" used loosely.  :rolleyes:
Because we are in-house we have tended to mollycoddle them...replace screen-only fonts, improve colour and mono images, fix overprints etc.  usual crap.
What I would love to see happen is for them to supply PDFs so that we could check 'em/ impose 'em/ RIP 'em/proof 'em. I can see some aggro trying to get them to think about "getting things right" at their end, and it may yet be impossible, but...my question is: what would people advise as a "as-no-brainer-as-possible" path here? The obvious one is Certified PDF creation from Distiller. [They all have Acro Pro].
Or is there another product around that might make it easier to implement. It irks me considerably to see hours spent "fixing" their files when they could be supplied impo-ready.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

x1a might be the way to go, at least they'll get a list showing how truly awful they are. First step on a long road. Best of luck

Seriously, I deal with this daily with Out-house (ha ha) PDF creation and one thing I've learned is that it's really, really hard to teach someone something that they don't want to learn. I've tried the x1a method and then I get a phone call.

Them: It won't let me make a PDF.

Me: What is the error?

Them: Something about fonts.

Me: You must be missing, at the very least, the printer font. Or the font might have a restrictive license that doesn't allow for embedding the fo......Hello?

Them: ZZZZzzzzzzz

Me: HELLO???!!!

Them: Umph, snort, yaaaaawn...oh hi...oh it also says something about RGB. That's not right because there is no red, green, or blue in this job. It's just black and white and everything looks black and white on the screen.

Me: Start explaining the theory of the color spectrum and the concept of color spaces...

Them: ZZZZzzzzzzzz

Me: Inserts barrel of above 357-Magnum in mouth. (kidding)

Conclusion: No matter what solution you find the old saying will apply: Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.

Since I've gone over to a full PDF workflow I've had to deal with this on a daily basis. My best results have been to walk people through PDF creation over the phone. For the most part this is a one time deal as I always tell them to save the preset after I'm done telling them what settings to use. The sad thing is even this isn't 100% foolproof. I did find a great online PDF creation site tho. Only problem with it is file size as it has a 1 meg limit. I just used it for an ad book we just worked on for The St. Patrick's Day parade and I have to admit it did a great job and I only had to do minor edits on a few PDF's. Here is a link to the site. Unlike most of these services you can even wait while it's being made and then download the finished PDF.

Link? What Link is that then?  :tongue:

I don't see almainks link either but here is one with a 2 MB limit.

PDF Online

Shall follow up on that stuff. One thing I do see as a trip-up is the "complimentary" colour adjutment/ RGB fixes etc. which I see as ideally done prior to the PDF happening. They're so used to just throwing in whatever they get as source images, without any regard as to what they are; quality.res...whatever...that easy path would be the big wrench for them.  :rolleyes:  We can spend 2-3 hours on a larger job, [say 52 pp o'szed A4 with lotsa images/logos etc.] I dream of a PDF workflow.

No idea WTF the link didn't post. But here it is. Most of the online PDF creators DOn't embed fonts, this one does and you can also set the Resolution, set it to 2400 DPI and crap from say word comes out great.
http://convert.neevia.com/