Pages to be printed in offset

The short answer: Yes, it is possible.

The long answer: Yes, but you need to know what you are doing, and in particular you need to prepare the document properly using a PDF/X-3 workflow with the OutputIntent set to the ICC profile for the intended printing condition. Apple's default is the Generic CMYK Profile for low gamut US SWOP. Most people prefer a high gamut process on art paper when at all possible while US SWOP is low gamut for gray magazine paper. No point in throwing away colours that could have been printed if the right ICC profile had been picked.

Help in 10.5 says something to the following effect on PDF workflows -

Setting up workflows for creating PDF files
From the Print dialog, you can create a PDF file and then immediately process that file with a PDF
workflow. A PDF workflow is any AppleScript script, Automator action, or application that can open
a PDF file.
To use a PDF workflow you have set up, open a document and choose File > Print. Then choose
your workflow from the PDF pop-up menu. Your document is converted to a PDF file, and then the
PDF file is immediately opened by your workflow.
For example, you can create a script that applies a Quartz filter to a PDF file, or you can specify
that the PDF file be opened by Adobe Acrobat immediately after it's created.
Open a document to print, and choose File > Print.
Choose Edit Menu from the PDF pop-up menu.
Click the Add ➕ button and select the workflow.
For example, if you want to open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat, select Adobe Acrobat. If you've
created a script that applies a Quartz filter to the document, choose that script.

The question when going to an offset printer is:

How do you control resolution within Pages and set spot colors and bleeds?

How do you control resolution within Pages and set spot colors and bleeds?

This came up at the turn of 2008. For instance, premixed (spot) colour is not intended to be colour managed. Either it is laid down solid - on the same specific substrate and with the same specific tone value increase as the swatch - or it is laid down as a tint in which case it turns into a process simulation. Premixed (spot) colour is not necessary, or rather, it is an unnecessary complication for portability.

Just my ten cents,

Henrik

Reference :

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5808948#5808948

How do you control resolution within Pages and set spot colors and bleeds?

A bit more depth -

The idea in preparing a device independent printing master is to permit portability and at the same time to permit predictability.

Portability is permitted by preserving photographs in the RGB colour space used in colour correction or in CIELab D50 colour space, with source ICC profiles included in the photographs.

Predictability is permitted by including not only the source colour spaces but the simulation colour space for proofing and printing, properly tagged as the ICC profile for the OutputIntent.

The destination ICC profiles for the colour desktop display and the colour deskside printer are not included in the printing master as they are solely used for softcopy proofing and hardcopy proofing.

The resolution, the ruling and much more are products of configuration and calibration. These are not known to the ICC colour management system that only knows the product of these prior processes in the form of the colour characterisation.

Apple Pages understands the format of the ICC colour management system. Before placing photographs from Apple Aperture or Adobe Photoshop, set the right resolution in the colour correction software.

Do not, however, set the ruling in the colour correction software. This is possible in Adobe Photoshop that permits photographs in Encapsulated PostScript format to include ruling information and transfer curve information that changes the state of the imaging system.

Apple ColorSync 2.5 introduced the idea of a faceless scriptable application. This idea is implemented in the predefined PDF filters in the Apple ColorSync Utility and in the possibility of defining filters for particular purposes, including PDF filters for PDF/X-3.

The PDF/X-3 filter includes input dialogues for Trimbox information and Bleedbox information. The filter defaults to the predefined Generic CMYK Profile which is for US SWOP. Default ICC OutputIntent profiles for ISO 12647 printing conditions are at www.eci.org.

Just my ten cents,

Henrik

80% of the printing around here and I suspect elsewhere as well is 2 color spot printing for obvious reasons. Cost, strong uniform colors and speed. The industry is well equiped to produce it as well.

Digital color may have improved but is still no match for offset printing and its cost is way out of the ball park once you start printing even moderate runs. Process colors are the worst way to reproduce colors, we only tolerate it to reproduce photographic images. It is particularly bad when required to print to uncoated stock.

Why design software that makes this so difficult?

Why ignore bleeds, spot colors and issues like resolution management and slugs?.

These are basics after all.

There is also the issue of carrying consistent colors from one job to the next. Pages really misses the mark on this.

To quote Bette Midler +"I've been kidnapped by KMart!"+

There is also the issue of carrying consistent colors from one job to the next.

Consistent colour is a product both of the calibration of the printing condition and of the correct use of the ICC profile that characterises the printing condition.

If you cannot run your press to a consistent target, then no test chart you print is representative, and no ICC profile I build from your test charts is representative either.

Colour management is (1) process control and (2) people control.

Why ignore bleeds, spot colors and issues like resolution management and slugs?

Print houses that have not invested in up-to-date plant are a problem, but then they were also a problem in the past.

To quote Bette Midler "I've been kidnapped by KMart!"

Well, ICC colour management has first and foremost been driven by professional photographers. The problem for professional photographers was that they could not add value by colour correction in past processes that scanned direct to CMYK with EPS DCS. For the professional photographer to add value, it is necessary that the colours she creates on the colour desktop display can be correlated to the colours that are possible in the intended printing condition, and that the printing condition behaves in a repeatable and predictable manner.

In 1985, PostScript version 23 for the Apple LaserWriter did not support CMYK. In 1987, fifty per cent of Macintosh systems had colour displays. In 1990, PostScript level 2 supported CMYK but the colour management system in it did not support softcopy proofing on the colour desktop display, as Seybold noted. In May 1992, Primavera (Italian for 'spring', beta name for ColorSync) was previewed at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference as noted in Jonathan Seybold's review. In May 1995, ColorSync 2 Golden Master was released at the Apple World Wide Developer Conference and at DRUPA in Düsseldorf (at the same time as the first A4 automatic spectrophotomer, the GretagMacbeth SpectroScan). In 1999, a proposal to add the ICC profile for the intended printing condition in Adobe PDF was introduced. When the OutputIntent for PDF was implemented in shipping software from GretagMacbeth, Adobe and others it became possible for the studio photographer to add value by colour correcting on the display with reference to the ICC profile for the display plus the ICC profile for the editing space plus the ICC profile for the intended printing condition, and to hold the printer to a contract proof that has the printer pay if the press deviates by more than dE 3 from the FOGRA control strip on the contract proof.

Since the ColorSync Users List opened in 1999 there have been prepress shops and press shops complaining that colour management does not work. In part their complaint is correct, but not for the reasons they advance. ICC colour management is a format for communicating (a) what colours are achievable for a given configuration and calibration of a colour device and (b) what colourants achieve those colours. In fact, a Heidelberg Speedmaster is a peripheral to the ICC profile for the state of the printing condition that the Speedmaster processes. This is why Heidelberg integrated **** in 1997 and then in 2000 integrated GretagMacbeth holographic grid spectrophotometers with optical fibre scanning across the width of the sheet in the Image Control units.

The difficulty is that there is need of a second communication format. Apple introduced such a second communication format in ColorSync 2.5 that introduced the Video Card Gamma Tag to set the state of your colour display to the state that was characterised when you created your ICC display profile. In other words, you need a calibration/configuration management format that communicates with your colour management format. This is what job jackets, CIP, JDF and more back is about. Again, the printing architecture of QuickDraw GX had some of these ideas, and before that similar ideas about communicating device configuration was implemented in the PDD PostScript Printer Definition format.

But if you want to understand PDF processing, you want to begin by understanding that device dependent attributes do not belong in the format. You need another format for that, a companion process format that carries the information about device states and device attributes.

Just my ten cents,

Henrik

This is why Heidelberg integrated ** in 1997

OK, I forgot that Apple objects to the German word for 'light' and the name of Dr.Ing. Rudolf 'Light' who was awarded the Gutenberg Prize and whose company created seventy-five percent of the code for Apple ColorSync 2.

There are other languages than English.

Henrik

Henrik, you are completely missing the point.

This has nothing to do with ICC color management.

How do you set spot colors at all in Pages?

How do you take named colors from one document to another?

How do you manage resolution when Apple gives S.F.A. idea of what resolution the images are finally scaled to in Pages.

How do you manage bleeds or slugs without a workspace off page?

What has this got to do with print houses not wearing the latest fashion in pot plants on their heads?

How do you set spot colors at all in Pages?

Spot colour is device dependent. People who have a spot colour swatch will not get the colour appearance of the swatch on different paper with a different tone value increase.

Consequenctly, spot colour is dependent on a serious level of sophistication for the page designer, for the page designer's proofing RIP, for the press operator, and for the press operator's RIP.

Spot colour is common - for the wrong reasons - in small offset where colour appearance is not that important, but in high end gravure and high end offset it is an added cost and complication.

How do you print a solid spot colour on a deskside printer that does not support interchangeable colourant sets the way an offset lithographic printing press does?

How do you proof a solid spot colour on a deskside printer in a simulation of the colour appearance of a spot colour in a page to be printed on an offset lithographic printing press?

How do you proof a solid spot colour with a solid spot varnish for added saturation on a deskside printer in a simulation of the colour appearance of a spot colour in a page to be printed offset?

How do you convert umpteen solid spot colours that call for umpteen plates on an offset printing press because the page designer thought specifying with spot colours was professional procedure?

How do you predict the colour appearance of a tint of a spot colour intended to be printed solid when it is in fact not printed solid?

All of these problems presuppose use of colour management which is beyond the level of sophistication in print shops.

Resolution you manage in the colour correction application before you place the image in the pagination application - the way you also did in EPS DCS.

Trimbox and bleedbox you manage as part of the process of building out the PDF through the PDF/X-3 capabilities of the Apple ColorSync Utility - same with transparency flattening.

when Apple gives S.F.A. idea

Not sure what the abbreviation stands for, and not sure it is smart to ask -:).

Best,

Henrik

Again, how do you set spot colors in Pages?

The color palette has no provision for any named colors. Well not quite, if you go by circuitous means through the color palette there is a place where you can add a swatch and put a name to it. What color space it is in, what it actually represents, how to move it to another Pages document and reuse it, or how to import named Pantone colors, how to make tints of it, I have no idea. Nor whether it separates and appears on a printing plate at the end.

Where does the user get any feedback as to the final resolution of any bitmap images used.

I also fail to see how the Apple Color utility does anything to provide bleeds, slugs etc.

All the rest is irrelevant to the printing process which is best served by a specified target and matching swatch that both the printer and client can use to compare the result.

I also fail to see how the Apple Color utility does anything to provide bleeds, slugs etc.

Peter,

Do you have a spectrophotometer in the shop? What make? Do you have a print profiling application? What make and what version? Do you know how to set up a matching session for a PDF/X-3 contract proof with a control strip? Do you know where to find the Apple ColorSync Utility? From the Finder menu, select Utilities, select ColorSync Utility, select Filters, and select Create Generic PDF/X-3 Document. If you were to support the person who posted the initial request for information in this thread, you would need to know that ColorSync is a faceless and scriptable application, and you would need to know how to supply a PDF workflow for the printing condition you offer, for instance, by supplying your ICC PRTR Printer profiles and your process scripts with said ICC PRTR profiles as OutputIntents on your website.

The proper place for a discussion of configuration, calibration and characterisation of a printing condition is the Apple ColorSync Users List, the home of the ICC colour management community for commercial developers, professional photographers, and prepress managers.

Apple Pages is able to do what a professional photographer with Apple Aperture would want to do in a portfolio booklet. As a rule, professional photographers do not want to work with Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress that mix device independent and device dependent processes.

Best,

Henrik

Henrik,

I have worked in Pre-Press, I am perfectly aware of what is involved.

Most designers do not need to have all the hardware, nor would they set up their own versions of PDF/X-3 or any other output as it would clash with what the printer would set up.

What they do need is to be able, on many jobs, to specify named varnishes and spot colors along with their tints, using swatches as guides, to output to separated plates.

They also need to be able to check bleeds, output resolution and print slugs to track their work.

I don't know how any of these things are achieved in Pages, which presumes all jobs are to cmyk.

This has nothing to do with how the color appears in proofs or the final job. That is handled in the print shop.

The designer must first getting a working job to the printer so they can take it from there.

How does he/she do that in Pages?

I don't know how any of these things are achieved in Pages, which presumes all jobs are to cmyk.

John Gnaegy, the colour engineer who is ColorSync List Master, a job set up in 2000, is good with words. At one point he posted that in a nutshell, ColorSync is an RGB peg in a CMYK hole.

The print shop supplies the ICC PRTR Printer profile for its custom printing conditions, or it supports ISO 12647 standard printing conditions.

The ICC Specification, which is now an ISO international standard, defines an ICC PRTR profile as bidirectional in order to support simulation on the desktop display and the deskside printer.

There are proofing RIPs that support a FOGRA control strip and there are definitions of the maximum deviation that is permitted in the proofing process and in the printing process.

PDF/X-3 is an ISO standard rendering specification for blind exchange of prepress masters, including issues of font embedding, trapping, transparency flattening, bleeds ...

The point and purpose of the ColorSync / ICC architecture is to provide predictability from the studio proof to the press print.

What they do need is to be able, on many jobs, to specify named varnishes and spot colors along with their tints, using swatches as guides, to output to separated plates.

This idea is a sure way to produce a disaster on press. For what it's worth, I wrote the ColorPicker manual for ProfileMaker 3 and the manual for GretagMacbeth iQueue that is a PostScript colour server and a PDF colour server installed in I don't know how many copies world wide. I have had endless discussions with prepress shops and prepress professionals on the ColorSync Users List, the PrintPlant list and more. There are some who do not even understand that the size of the printing gamut is related to the amount of ink that is laid down on the paper. The trouble at this point from my point of view is that prepress professionals praise Adobe Type 1 and as a rule reject TrueType and OpenType which crashes repurposing of PDF - but that's another matter.

Best,
Henrik

would-be technical writer -:)

Henrik,

You have me stumped.

What has any of this to do with the issue of spot color or any of the other matters?

Are we supposed to pretend that the cyan plate is one spot color and the magenta another? Just to get them to separate?

This is so basic.

1. Outputing spot colors to appropriate printing plates and being given some idea of the result on screen.

2. Being able to see what is happening with bleeds.

3. Work out whether the resolution is adequate for the screen selected and

4. Having slugs so that everyone can track the job.

Either Pages can do this in some way I haven't been able to find out, or it can't and you can put me out of my misery.