Creating a Full Bleed Document in Pages '08

I need to create a couple of full bleed documents in Pages '08 ... I know that some printers have different dimensions.

First, set up the final format page size using Page Setup. Second, set up the design in the final format page size. Third, save out a ISO standard print master using ColorSync > Filter > PDF/X-3: Trimbox, Bleedbox, Transparency flattening, and more. Start by selecting a print shop and say you need the standard information to set up your printing master for the printing process they are selling. /hh

MacChad wrote:
One caveat ... I know that some printers have different dimensions. If I make my page size set to their full bleed specs, and make sure all my "safe zone" text and stuff is withing their parameters, will that work also?

I advise against making the actual document fill the bleed size, this will make your crop marks sit on the outer limit of the bleed. Whilst the printer can use their imposition software to bring the page back into the trimmed size, it is confusing and can lead to errors.

Better to set up the bleed etc in the PDF-X 3 settings.

If you know who the printer will be ask them for what they want, always.

Have you spoken to VistaPrint?

What did they recommend?

For a start you will need their colorsync or equivalent settings or you may be in for a rude shock when the job comes back.

Henrik,

*My Attempt at creating a new PDF/X-3 Filter:*

+ColorSync Utility > New Utility Window > Filters > Clicked on the plus > Untitled > Clicked on the down arrow > Add Color Management Component > Default Color Profile > Add PDF Retouch Component > PDF Policies > Add PDF Retouch Component > Create PDF/X-3 Document > Destination Profile > Euroscale Coated 2 > Ticked Add Trimbox if needed > Ticked Add Bleedbox if needed > Ticked Flatten Transparency > Changed Resolution to 300 > Left Trapped unchecked > Add Domain Information > Checked all options+

*Issues I can't resolve:*

1. "Untitled Copy" won't change no matter what I type in, with word spaces. The only thing I got to stick was "XXXXXX"

2. Is the Trimbox zeroed at the page's boundaries or must I give it an overall size in points?

3. Likewise with BleedBox is this 9/9/9/9 (outside of page size) or must I give it an overall size in points?

4. Trapped I'm assuming should be left to the RIP?

5. How do I save this and where does it go?

The formal answer from Apple is available in a guide to colour management in Mac OS X 10.4, see page 21 in the reference. What the ins and the outs of the formal answer are should be taken up in a separate thread. I promised, so I need to make good on that promise.

Reference:

http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/ColorMgmtinTiger.pdf

If I were to get the settings from a printing company, I wouldn't even know where all the settings go in the color sync utility.

I should figure out if there is a way to name a PDF/X-3 filter and save out that named PDF/X-3 filter so it can be shared. Then I should figure out what a print shop needs to know in order to set up and save out a filter.

Which takes me back to my first step which was to figure out what Apple Pages is supposed to be for - composite printing process on a digital press or a separations process with spot colour on an offset lithographic printing press.

I also need to add that PDF/X was initiated by the laser imaging industry in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany starting at Seybold in 1998 and 1999. PDF/X only deals with managing colour information, not with managing character information.

I am as certain as certain can be that Apple will introduce PDF/A in Mac OS X 10.6 and plain PDF 1.5 or higher. I am not certain PDF/X-3 will continue to be supported, since the support for an OutputIntent could be incorporated into PDF/A.

I tried to bring the issue of device independent PDF up on the ColorSync Users List in the past, but was told that the photographers could care a toss about managing character information, and come to that about managing colour information in PDF and PS.

All they cared about was managing colour information in TIFF and JPEG. The archives have what Bruce Fraser, author of Real World Photoshop, had to say on the subject. Bruce passed away in 2005, and I'm sorry we can't continue where we left off.

/hh

Henrik may be able to give a good description on how to make it work, but my personal experience has been less than overwhelming.

I have tried to create and use colorsync profiles several times in both 10.4 and 10.5, and there is always something that does not work. That may be my setup, my hardware, my way of clicking on the buttons, but in the end, profiles do not work reliably for me.

There are persons who claim that it works wonderfully for them - good for them. Colorsync still seems to be a fringe application that has not been properly tested for most configurations.

Colorsync still seems to be a fringe application that has not been properly tested for most configurations.

I was just writing about Dr Ronald Gentile who as moderator at the FOGRA symposium in München in April 1992 told an audience of printing and publishing professionals that they had to accept that colour could not be specified by colourants which led his co-moderator, Chief Editor Kurt Wolf of Deutsche Drucker, to interject that colour correction in a CIE colour space was beyond even the best trained professional.

In 1992/1993, a GretagMacbeth spectrophotometer cost USD 12,000 and there was no software. Colour management software has mainly been marketed as an adjunct colour measuring instruments, and for scanners and presses. Whether we like or dislike the concept of colours and colourants as entirely separable entities, the fact is that we no longer have a viewable graphic for a colour photograph (Aperture) or indeed for a colour pagination (Pages).

The only connection between the colours on the colour desktop display and the colours on the colour digital printing press is the ICC source and ICC destination profiles in the colour matching session. As Martina Stahl and Mattias Nyman pointed out in their project for managing colour in Swedish periodicals publishing, the printer cannot know what the photographer intended, because the photographer can take the colours beyond those of the 'natural' scene.

But you are right that ColorSync - like TrueType - are under-documented and under-implemented.

/hh

Magnus and Henrik,

Is there any point telling them to go to the ColorSync Utility and editing Quartz Filters if you can't save the result or the results are unpredictable or the details are beyond the knowledge of even experts?

What practical advice can you give the Pages user.

What should a user do if they want to have spot color, crop marks, slugs and bleeds in Pages?

Especially since this is all taken care of in most other DTP software without wandering off into an unmapped quagmire.

Please be explicit, give usable advice, or warn the user that it can't be done.

or the results are unpredictable

The idea is that you are responsible for configuring, calibrating, and characterizing the colour devices over which you have complete control.

For the studio photographer, it is the colour scanner, the colour camera, the colour display and the colour proof-printer / colour presentation-printer.

For the studio typographer, it is the colour display and the colour proof-printer / colour presentation-printer.

In a matching session, from the minute you start your scan you can preview what colours the printing condition will provide - if the press does not drift from that printing condition.

Does this work as such? Yes. Does this work if the photographer, the typographer or the lithographer at the press do not understand how a colour matching session is set up. No. Does this work without costly hardware and software, and without complex configuration. No. (Does this work without spot colour? Oh, yes -:)). The ticket into a colour managed process is the cost of a production Mac - a measuring instrument and software come at a considerable cost. Same with a professional smart font - whether as a family of fonts for specific sizes or as a single smart scalable font.

Just as I can quote Ron Gentile of Adobe to you from April 1992, and further on the advantage that no cap is put on the gamut of device colour spaces in the ICC architecture, I can quote Perry Caro of Adobe to you from September 1992 saying that the advantage of ASCII is that content and appearance are essentially the same, and urging that a cap be placed on the glyph space gamut in Apple TrueType. Caro cites a technically obsolete, but not recalled, standard on the glyph space gamut: ISO 9541 for Adobe Type 1. I have it here, believe it or not.

/hh

Henrik,

Let's do this one step at a time.

Do you know how to set up the bleed on the PDFX-3 filter?

If so, can you tell us how it is done please.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:
Magnus and Henrik,

What practical advice can you give the Pages user.

What should a user do if they want to have spot color, crop marks, slugs and bleeds in Pages?

When it comes to those subjects, my most practical advice is to fill in the form at http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html . I am not aware of any way to make them work in Pages, and I hope I have not led anyone to believe that I did.

I have had no problem setting up full bleed brochures "by hand" -- that is, setting the page size larger than the final cut size, bleeding the graphics, and then manually putting in crop marks. My local printer has dealt with this just fine.

However, I think it is also useful to recollect that Pages is a US$27 application, and one shouldn't expect it to have all the same high-end features of something like InDesign ($700), or QuarkXPress (~$700), applications that cost 25 times more.

Except Tulse this is such a basic and necessary feature that it goes back to the earliest DTP packages.

If only they had a proper pasteboard instead of one you can't get at, the problem would be solved.

I also own Swift Publisher and it has this and much more including inbuilt imposition, spot color etc.

I have said so before but Pages is a Teaser of a program, it lures you in and seems to proffer solutions to you, which are snatched away at the last minute.

If Apple truly offers Pages only as a DTP solution for personal printers, let them say so and not leave so many users in doubt as to what it can do.