PDF Workflows
The benefits are tangible: PDF preserves file integrity, allows for more predictable final output and facilitates smooth, cross-platform publishing. Is PDF right for you? For your customers? Six commercial printers tell their tales.
BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO
(Editor's Note: This article is the first in a two-part series focused on PDF workflows in place at a range of commercial printing operations.)
It can, if created correctly, embed images and fonts within a single file, eliminating the problem of missing elements. It can be used for remote proof routing between designer and prepress provider. It can act as the digital master throughout an entire CTP workflow. It can facilitate true, cross-platform flexibility. It can produce predictable final output.
It is PDF—and it is anything but simplistic. Adobe's Portable Document Format is in full force at some commercial printing locations, moderately becoming vital at others and, for some, not yet a relied upon technology.
Some of the greatest attributes of PDF attracting some—not all—commercial printers is its flexibility. PDF is ideal for cross-platform operations and it offers excellent file compression, which facilitates faster publishing across a variety of channels. Recently, Printing Impressions went inside six commercial printing facilities to ask company executives and prepress managers what role PDF is playing in their day-to-day operations.
DeHart Printing Embraces PDF
Don DeHart, president of the $11.5 million, Santa, Clara, CA-based general commercial printing operation that bears his name, is not intim-idated by new technologies. Most recently, DeHart has been experimenting with PDF—the file format of choice for 25 percent of DeHart Printing Services' black-and-white, on-demand digital printing, and 10 percent of the company's color work.
The appeal of the file format for DeHart and his prepress team is PDF's true device independence, page independence and cross-platform support for a more streamlined, time-efficient CTP environment.
While PostScript had been the format of record for many of the prepress tasks executed at DeHart Printing, DeHart and Mark Huiskens, preflight manager, and Mike Strauss, preflight engineer, discovered that incorporating PDF into their existing workflow resulted in time savings and an increase in overall efficiency—predominantly for the company's black-and-white, on-demand digital printing applications done through the Xerox DigiPath workflow.
DeHart and his team were equally intrigued with the predictability of PDF and its ability to preserve layouts, with all text and graphics exactly where the designer placed them originally. Earlier this year, the company also invested in and implemented a series of Adobe plug-ins to assist them in bolstering their PDF workflow, including PitStop by Enfocus.
"For a high percentage of the black-and-white technical documents we produce for our corporate clients, PDF is the dominant workflow. It increased production times by more than 25 percent," DeHart reports. "Although our use of PDF on the color side of our business is lower, we anticipate PDF eventually maturing to be the dominant file format for that aspect of our business as well. PDF allows us to deal with a more efficient file size, reducing RIP time. We see this as an immeasurable benefit to our black-and-white work presently and, in the future, our color applications."
Lake County Press Goes Extreme
For Waukegan, IL-based Lake County Press (LCP), a $38 million, high-end commercial printer, the answer to its search for a more effective, streamlined digital workflow in 1999 took an extreme form—Adobe Extreme. This was leveraged within the page-based PDF workflow, Prinergy, brought to market last year by Creo/Heidelberg.
Extreme uses not only PDF, but also Adobe Extreme architecture, to automate the prepress process, allow a distributed digital workflow and enable late-stage editing while providing multi-RIP support to ensure consistent output. Prinergy leverages Adobe's Extreme technology to provide job tickets and job ticket processors that control and perform tasks initiated by users. This gives prepress departments a single product for automating preflighting, trapping, imposition and color conversion.
By implementing the full Adobe Extreme architecture, Prinergy automates the prepress process, keeping machines running at full capacity to avoid errors and reduce lost production time. Integral to the Adobe Extreme architecture was the concept of separating job control from job content—the Portable Job Ticket Format (PJTF), which is embedded in the PDF files and used to hold job control information while the PDF itself holds the job content. By employing Adobe's PJTF—an integral part of the Prinergy workflow—prepress operators are able to suspend, correct and rerun pages based on job ticket information without having to rework an entire print job.
Richard Mathews, electronic prepress network supervisor, shares his assessment of Adobe technology within Prinergy. "Prinergy uses Adobe Extreme to create customized job tickets and process plans, which control and perform user-designed tasks," he reports. "The system accepts industry standard file formats and refines them to small, page-independent PDF files —saving network transfer time, processing time and storage space for archiving. The smaller size of the PDF gives us speed increases that have boosted our efficiency overall."
Master Graphics Streamlines CTP via PDF
Master Graphics, a $4 million, family owned and operated commercial printer founded more than 50 years ago, currently bases 20 percent of its digital prepress workflow around PDF. Master Graphics relies on PDF for true device and page independence, as well as cross-platform support for a more streamlined, CTP environment, which, company officials report, operates 50 percent faster when PDF is utilized.
Why the adoption of PDF? While PostScript had been the format used for many of the prepress tasks executed at Master Graphics, two years ago the company's owner, Mark Sferas, and his prepress team discovered that incorporating PDF into their existing workflow resulted in time savings and efficiency upgrades.
Master Graphics originally implemented PDF into its Scitex Brisque workflow, feeding the Scitex Dolev 400 imagesetter, to satisfy the production needs of a specific client who, at the time, was working on an IBM platform. For Master Graphics and its IBM-dependent client, PDF proved the ideal file format to deliver flexible, high integrity print production. Master Graphics was intrigued with the promise of PDF and its ability to enhance the company's prepress workflow.
While working in PDF, Master Graphics discovered that layout was preserved, with all text and graphics exactly where the designer placed them originally. And final output was more predictable because the PDF file, when utilized correctly by the originator, had already been interpreted into a reliable format—resulting in a streamlined workflow that proved more secure and reliable than Master Graphics' existing workflows.
"We liked PDF almost immediately, although there was a learning curve," Sferas reports. "PDF allowed the file to be mobile and still hold its integrity. We didn't lose fonts, photos weren't an issue, receiving files became easier and, overall, when the PDF files were done properly, it was clearly easier on our end to expedite the project for output on our Dolev. The same work, done in PostScript, then done in PDF, shows a 50 percent faster, more streamlined result in PDF."
At present, Master Graphics' digital prepress department, which operates a Scitex Brisque workflow, feeds PDF files to its Scitex Dolev imagesetter, as well as a Scitex Lotem 400 thermal platesetter. The company also operates six Mac workstations, two IBM servers, a dedicated server for PDF file submission and the Internet, and IRIS digital proofing technologies.
Photo Comp's Decisive Factor
Mary-Nell Bockman and the 34-employee team at Photo Comp Press can now produce a 300-plus page book, from receipt of the job file to the delivery of the digital contract proof, in three hours—not two weeks, as was once the norm for the small, Manhattan-based commercial printer. They are also optimizing file output efficiency to the company's imagesetting and platesetting systems, resulting in time savings across the board for its prepress department.
How are Bockman and team accomplishing these production improvements? The answer: PDF. Photo Comp began as a typesetting shop in Manhattan more than 30 years ago and evolved into a general commercial web printer, specializing in financial and legal reports, catalogs, brochures, newspapers, books and advertising collateral.
During 1998, it became clear that it was time for Photo Comp to evolve to new levels of prepress performance—combining PDF with CTP. During 1998, Photo Comp implemented an Agfa Avantra 30 imagesetter, an Agfa Galileo digital platesetter and Agfa Apogee PDF-based workflow. Photo Comp executives wanted to introduce and maximize a PDF-based workflow and use that PDF workflow to improve turnaround times and streamline prepress production at the $3 million operation.
"Up until 1998, we were a completely conventional, full-service commercial printer, but we knew we needed to go computer-to-plate. And, more than that, we knew the way we wanted to go CTP was with a PDF workflow," Bockman reports.
According to Bockman, Photo Comp selected the Apogee workflow chiefly because of the Apogee Pilot, which allows Photo Comp to operate its automated Galileo running daylight-loaded Lithostar plates as a fully integrated system. PDF, Bockman notes, was the only bridge Photo Comp wanted to traverse to establish its new CTP environment.
"There are so many attributes of PDF that make it the preferable file format for any commercial printer going CTP," Bockman states. "PDF is the WYSIWYG file format, which allows for more effective communications between printers and their clients, the content creators."
Educating Print Buyers On PDF's Promise
Scholin Brothers Printing, a $15 million, family owned, sheetfed commercial printer, servicing clients the likes of American Express, is moving in PDF directions.
Todd Wellman, director of technology and research and electronic prepress manager, and the entire prepress team at Scholin Brothers are implementing PDF into 10 percent of the company's workflow. They have also been inviting print buyers to attend a series of PDF seminars at their Webster Groves, MO-based printing operation.
Educating its customer base on creating PDF files—and the benefits of utilizing PDF—is a driving mission of Scholin Brothers throughout 2000. To date, the company has drawn more than 120 print buyers to its seminars. "We are excited at the possibilities PDF brings to our production environment, and we want to share those possibilities with our customers," Wellman reports.
The prepress environment at Scholin Brothers relies on Scitex gear, with an eight-up Dolev 800V and a four-up Dolev 400 imagesetter, both fed by the Scitex Brisque DFE. A Heidelberg Prepress Tango vertical drum scanner and IRIS digital proofing technologies are also employed. The department handles files for catalogs, publications, brochures, annual reports and a variety of general commercial work. PDF files are fed to the Dolev imagesetters through the Scitex Brisque DFE.
In April, Scholin Brothers purchased Scitex's Brisque Extreme, a powerful DFE with Adobe Extreme technology for editable PDF workflows from creation to print. The unique capabilities created by the Brisque Extreme solution now allows the company to view and edit the same data files pre- and post-RIP, locally and remotely, using non-proprietary, off-the-shelf hardware and software on Macintosh and PC platforms. With Brisque Extreme, PDF process control can be shared between Scholin Brothers and its clients, leveraging Enfocus PitStop, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat and Scitex Remake, as well as specialized Brisque DFE features such as PDF preflight check for catching and automatically correcting errors at inception.
Wellman reports Scitex Brisque Extreme will further empower Scholin Brothers to utilize PDF—a good thing, as Wellman and team are interested in expanding their other core technologies to increase PDF efficiency.
"PDF is an incredible time savings," Wellman reports. "The fact that PDF will allow me to take a PC job, run it through my Mac, and just put it directly onto my RIP is beautiful. It saves a tremendous amount of time. I see a strong, and logical, future for PDF in our workflow."
Maximizing PostScript And Projecting PDF
Offset Paperback relies on Adobe PostScript 3 to produce 1.3 million paperback books daily—but PDF is not far off in the company's future. Based in Dallas, PA, Offset Paperback uses PostScript as its standard file format, enabling the 700-plus employee printing operation to produce 95 percent of its work each day.
Still, Steve Talacka, project manager at Offset Paperback, sees a change on the horizon for the way the company handles files.
The change: PDF. Talacka and team see PDF as a more predictable way for Offset Paperback to receive and manage job files. Missing fonts, graphics in the wrong color space and poor resolution images are problems that Offset Paperback will eliminate, Talacka reports, once the company moves in more PDF directions.
"Presently, we wrap a PostScript or, in some instances, PDF shell around files before the files are imposed with ImpoStrip by Ultimate Technographics, then processed on our Xerox DigiPath workflow. We need to maintain and optimize a workflow that is as streamlined and effective as possible," he adds. "PostScript, used primarily with our Xerox DigiPath workflow, has been—and will for some time continue to be—our mainstay workflow. But our publishers are starting to tell us they want to supply us with PDF files."
At present, the book manufacturer requests PostScript files, but is gearing up for a full PDF workflow, with new software and hardware additions on the company's checklist for this year.
"We find PostScript to be the most stable format out there, but we can see that PDF will be the major format of our future—and it would not surprise me if PDF eventually becomes the dominant files we work with each day," Talacka says. "Publishers like the PDF format because it is easily repurposed into other formats, and allows the layout to be preserved, with all text and graphics exactly where the designer originally placed them. Overall, PDF documents can be multi-purposed much easier."
For publishers, Adobe PDF files can be cataloged to expedite the search process, allowing users to attach notes to the file containing comments, without altering the document. PDF takes PostScript and, essentially, distills it into PDF: an object-oriented file that is device, resolution and page independent. PDF will display and output the data the same way, whether the user is viewing the file on a PC or Mac, allowing for streamlined, cross-platform publishing.
All of this, Talacka reports, has great appeal to the majority of his customer base. "Most publishers are much more familiar with PDF than the industry might realize," he states. "Publishers are ready to embrace PDF, and so we must be ready as well."
Inside InProduction
Acrobat InProduction is the latest offering from Adobe in its quest to deliver true end-to-end PDF performance for the commercial printer. Based on Adobe Acrobat 4.0, InProduction enables PDF files to be processed easily and efficiently through a color printing workflow, giving rise to new levels of PDF integration.
How does InProduction work?
InProduction enhances the inherent reliability of PDF files with its set of InProduction tools, which are designed specifically to improve control and PDF workflow performance. The tools—Preflight, Separator, Trim/Bleed, Color Converter and Adobe in-RIP Trapping—create a more natural bridge for PDF, from design to output:
Preflight compares PDF files against a set of user-defined profiles in order to check for time-consuming errors. Preflight scans for problems in the document structure, pages, images, fonts, colors and output settings. The user can define profiles to search for all the detailed problems that commonly appear in print production files.
The Separator tool allows users to specify and perform conversions of spot colors to process colors and specify printer's marks. This function is said to be ideal for previewing and creating color separations, mapping spot colors to spot colors, outputting files for color separating and converting spot colors to process colors.
InProduction's Trim/Bleed functionality allows users to create production-ready PDF files. Trim/Bleed also permits art boxes to be altered for accurate page positioning or impositioning. The inclusion of an art box in a PDF is a requirement of PDF/X-1.
Color Conversion enables CMYK conversions from L*a*b*, RGB or CMYK color modes using ICC profiles. Users can tag and untag PDF files with ICC profiles one at a time, or via batch processing.
Adobe in-RIP Trapping enables commercial printers to specify page and regional zone-based trapping parameters for later execution in an Adobe PostScript 3 RIP licensing Adobe in-RIP Trapping.
