Pages resolution, dpi, RGB, CMYK

You have transparency in:

1. Reflections

2. Shadows

and

3. Potential transparency in vector objects such as text, boxes, lines, shapes, pdfs etc

Overlap them and alter their opacity and stacking order and see what happens when you export to .pdf.

I am a professional designer and have been through all of this long ago, which is why I do not use Pages except to resolve users' issues. I await the day Apple actually fixes the many problems in Pages.

Assuming they are interested in doing so.

Peter

Ben Low wrote:
Thank you Peter,

I'll try some more experiments, as you are suggesting. I've got a lot of layers, and variations in opacity etc. etc. shadows, text, and the like. And they seem to come out exactly as I see them in Pages ... except for the RGB\CMYK shift. Which I'll work on tomorrow.

I'd switch over to Illustrator (which I may yet do) ... actually; I'm comfortable with Photoshop. I'm wondering if I can build my DVD covers in Photoshop and somehow open them, or send them to Illustrator from Photoshop?? so I can get Vector text (instead of rasterized, which is what I think Photoshop does when you try to export to any other format).

You just copy and paste across, but I would work in the other direction or just use Photoshop photographic type images assembled in Indesign or Illustrator, preferably Indesign.

I'm terrified of learning Adobe apps. Such a steep learning curve (for me). And I've stood over graphic artists who work with Adobe apps all the time, and watched them get confused, and have to dig into the manual in the middle of the job. Not super intuitive Adobe. Or maybe they are, for someone with a different brain matrix (than mine).

Adobe has a false reputation for "easy", "consistent" interface. The people who claim this, are just saying they've learnt Adobe's way of doing things and ignored all the inconsistencies. The only compensation is that their products are full featured despite being smothered in palettes and sub-submenus.

Adobe does give you the tools to manage professional jobs, but can't make a fool proof process if you don't know what you are doing. Stick with what you can understand and manage.

My wife and I are in the process of getting a new kitchen (her idea). I drew up the plans which surprised the joiners and contractors, as has my insistency on well put together simplicity with good finishes and no "features".

I got a laugh of recognition when I remarked that the fancier the kitchen the less people actually cook.

People want to think that if they buy the kitchen, Michellin is a door's knock away. No skill, no study, no practice and dedication required. Just a cheque book and a salesman willing to tell you it is that easy.

Peter

Ben wrote:

Has anyone tried to use Pages as a replacement for the Adobe apps? I'm trying to figure out what the actual resolution is, and if there is some way to export a PDF that will be printer friendly across the board. (I know this is probably fantasying, but if one doesn't ask...)

The resolution is set by the author before the monochrome / grayscale / colour bitmap is placed, and that resolution is respected when the document description is saved to disk as PDF.

It is left to the intended RIP to downsample the resolution, if necessary. As a rule, a RIP will be able to downsample the resolution faster, so there is no problem in late binding downsampling.

The problem arises if the placed resolution is too low for some or all of the devices the audience will apply for rendering. Neither ISO 15930 PDF/X-3 nor ISO 19005 PDF/A supply rendering specifications for resolution, because either the author knows the right resolution for the one intended device, or the author chooses an average resolution for a class of devices e.g. the class of studio displays (in the region of 100dpi) or the class of studio printers (in the region of 600dpi). In some PDF/X verification software there is a non-standard verification for resolution such that a minimum may be set below which the software issues a rendering warning per object, but in blind exchange of document descriptions where some may be rendered at low and some at high resolution there is no absolute answer.

Resolution and ICC-tagging can be cheched for single object TIFF and JPEG in Apple Preview, but for multi-object PDF the system graphics software does not supply a solution to checking.

Peter wrote:

One user has reported success in printing direct from Pages to his company's RIP, so if you can persuade a printer to do the same you may avoid the 72dpi problem.

Possibly the rastering resolution is automatically configured from the PDD PostScript Printer Description for registered printing devices. I have always thought, though I have never tested and verified, that this is how the resolution was automatically configured when transparency was flattened in QuickDraw GX for System 7 and System 8. Some of the same people who were working on the GX printing architecture are working on the present printing architecture.

Checking this comes back to the difficulties of registering a range of low resolution, medium resolution, and high resolution printing devices, registering the ICC profiles for their printing conditions, and getting the ColorSync Utility to respect the user's PDF/X-3 configurations.

/hh

I have successfully cracked the resolution problem in ColorSync and been able to beat the 72dpi rasterisation issue.

But then that is only part of the Pages problems.

Peter

I have successfully cracked the resolution problem in ColorSync and been able to beat the 72dpi rasterisation issue.

Interesting, how? No third party software and no PostScript streamed to disk.

I've not followed this for a while in order to work on the intelligent font model issues.

/hh

I am still thinking about what to do about it.

I had an Apple employee suggest I go on the developer forum and try and get Apple to pay attention. I am cagey about that. I've lost too many front teeth in the past trying to deal with Apple and prefer to keep them at a distance.

Apple censors my independent thoughts with monotonous regularity. On this one I am thinking I might just keep it to myself. Apple can spend its own money and time on this, I have spent enough of mine.

Peter

I had an Apple employee suggest I go on the developer forum and try and get Apple to pay attention.

The developer fora do not discuss architecture and workflow, rather the developer fora discuss details of development for specific calls to the system services. For discussion of architecture and workflow, turn to the CUPS Common UNIX Printing System community where people from the colour management community participate and to the ColorSync Users List where some of the CUPS people participate. The CUPS community and the ColorSync community both have Apple engineering participation.

On this one I am thinking I might just keep it to myself.

I thought you told me time after time that I was cagey about discussing technical details -:).

/hh

I had tried the ColorSync Users List at your suggestion and got not one response. Nada, nix, zilch.

Not exactly the Pages forum. 😉

Apple is showing itself even more nakedly as an unrestrained bully. They successfully despatched the Beatles' Apple Corp, after having broken several agreements. Now in recent months they casually set the lawyers on a couple of loyal Australian companies, which hardly could have been any great concern, and now they are turning on Adobe and Google.

It is very hard for me to not share, it is not in my nature, but still after a 25 yrs of getting the short end of the stick with Apple, I might have just learnt my lesson.

I am interested to learn more about CMYK with Pages and the conversion process.
My workflow is Pages/PhotoShop Elements/EZDraw. Don't have the money for CS4 or whatever.
I think Pages is great! Yes it has limitations. But I have produced quality ads for publications. And where there were problems, I worked with the publisher for conversions etc.
Have to do what I can on a budget. And advertisers (most, not all) are good to work with. After all they need money to survive and will help where they can.

But I don't love getting stuff back from the printer that doesn't look like what I see at Blockbuster... like muddy text, dull colors, etc.

The print provider is not there to improve on poor photography, poor typography etc. The print provider is there to provide print.

The print provider does this by publishing an ICC PRTR Printer profile that defines the colours the printing condition is capable of forming.

RGB and CMYK are colourant models, not colour spaces. An RGB or CMYK recipe will define one colour on on device and another colour on another device.

For my sins, I wrote the manual for GretagMacbeth iQueue which did colour space conversions for PDF 1.3.

/hh

Peter said on 16 January:

Beta versions of OSX 10.6.3 are reported to have fixes for ColorSync filters.

The seed notes said on 7 January:

ColorSync
- Resolves a crash when a PDF document uses DeviceRGB.
- Resolves an issue where Displays Pref with Color selected unexpectedly crashes.

Seemingly no solution in sight for the settings that don't stick in the ColorSync Utility.

(DeviceRGB in object-oriented colour management is an object with neither a PostScript Color Space Array or an ICC profile as source colour space for the to CIE transform.)

/hh

Reference:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Seed-Notes-Arrive-for-Mac-OS-X-10-6-3-Build-10D52 2-131459.shtml

Is there anyone responsible at Apple that we can talk to?

This is ridiculous.

I spoke at great length to one of their local support people who seemed convinced that sending feedback and bug reports to Apple's developer site actually gets results.

+*Not from where I am standing.*+

It seems like the kinds of problems you have with your bank. Where you are told the "correct" procedure is to go to the (unmanned) information desk. You can leave messages and correspond until you are blue in the face and all you get is a stony silence.

Anyone you speak to who you can address face to face, will deny the problem relentlessly until you push their nose in it and prove it without shadow of a doubt. Then they either change the subject and don't want to talk about it, or refer you to the (above) dead letter office.

Grrrrr.

Peter