FILE FORMATS & STANDARDS -- Practices Make Perfect

BY MARK SMITH

Technology Editor

Since the earliest days of the digital revolution in prepress, choosing a data format has brought trade-offs in file flexibility, portability and processing consistency. For almost as long, the unique requirements of the print advertising workflow have driven a quest to achieve a universal workflow. Now, more than 10 years after its introduction, Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) is finally providing a foundation for realizing that goal in advertising applications and beyond.