creating book for lulu.com et. al.

Before you start this, make sure you search support.lulu.com for mac and pages, as there are some issues, e.g.

https://support.lulu.com/Discussion.jsp?id=20670

Also search this forum for lulu to see previous discussions.

Thank you. I've figured out how to use Pages to Postscript to Adobe Distiller (or Pro) to get exactly what is needed. I'm about to test it with a book.

PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript do not support transparency whereas you will be working in Apple Quartz and Apple Pages that do support transparency.

If you have transparency, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and you generate a PostScript program, then that transparency has to be flattened.

There is no UI for you choose commands that can control the flattening in a PS / EPS process (and while there is UI for controlling flattening in PDF 1.3, people have problems with this).

If the system archiving service detects transparency, it ups the PDF version from 1.3 (opaque imaging model only) to 1.4 (transparent imaging model).

You may then input PDF 1.4 from Apple Mac OS X into any of a number of PDF technical post-processing tools from Enfocus, GlobalGraphics, Adobe or Heidelberg for print production.

A competent inhouse prepress person could help, but Lulu.Com may not have competent inhouse prepress people.

/hh

Or I could do it in Pages, save as Postscript, covert to Adobe PDF using Acrobat Pro

Probably not the preferred process.

This book is poetry, text only, except for the cover (a photograph). If it's text only, then transparency shouldn't be an issue, right?

If the PDF version is indicated as 1.4 in Apple Preview > Tools > Get Info, then a PDF 1.4 feature is found in the document, probably transparency.

The iCalamus people simply propose saving out PDF 1.4 for post-processing in third party software product instead of seeking to process PDF 1.3 in the Apple ColorSync Utility.

/hh