Pages to PDF/X-1 a:2001

Dlawn,

Here's a link that may lead you to closer to an answer.

http://i-work-in-pages.blogspot.com/2007/11/pages-and-professional-printshops-wh y.html

Good luck,

Jerry

Pages will not produce satisfactory .pdfs for commercial printing.

1. It does not have bleeds, crop marks or slugs

2. OSX does not support spot colors, except indirectly for imported postscript graphics.

3. OSX's ColorSync filters render any form of transparency at 72 dpi

4. The color management in OSX is opaque and has no usable method of verification that the .pdf is viable.

I would advise you to use Indesign or Quark XPress if you are going to commercial print as both these applications bypass Apple's print technology.

Peter

Do I need Adobe Distiller?

No. Distiller converts page-dependent PostScript into page-independent PDF, that is, Distiller is a PostScript interpreter. PostScript does not support a long list of things supported in PDF, not least the tagged file format of the International Color Consortium (ICC profiles), the tagged file format of the Unicode Consortium (TrueType, Apple Advanced Typography, OpenType), and transparency.

For instance, the Adobe PDF Standards Architect, Leonard Rosenthol, has long taken the line that converting PDF back to PostScript and then converting PostScript up to PDF is a bad practice in prepress (e.g. http://www.gwg.org/download.php?f=f121c163fa679f86977235da32290812). Leonard does not say that converting from authoring application into PS and then converting from PS to PDF in Distiller is also a bad practice, but then he has to sell Distiller 🙂.

Can I go through the normal PDF route via Pages?

No.

Apple support ISO 15930 PDF/X-3 starting in Mac OS X 10.3 and does not support the more device dependent PDF/X-1a. ISO 15930 is a family of standards and there were two versions of PDF/X-3 the last I looked. Adobe's Dr James King considers that is an advantage for Adobe PDF over Microsoft XPS that it accomodates many very narrow and very vertical market segments.

I'm very new to this area of supplying a file for printing?

Set up your pagination (no hyperlinks, no QuickTime clips). Check image resolution and image colour management before placing images (Apple Preview, Get Info). Export your pagination through the Apple system PDF service, avoiding downsampling of the images.

Then use any of a number of PDF prepress tools like Enfocus PitStop or Adobe Acrobat Professional to prepare the ISO 15930 PDF/X-1a printing master. This involves converting the device independent transparency into device dependent form for a particular printing process.

/hh

1. It does not have bleeds, crop marks or slugs

Apple has the interface, but the interface does not do anything. Whether Apple should have the interface in the first place is another matter. Device dependent settings don't belong on the desktop, they belong as close as possible to the printing and binding process.

2. OSX does not support spot colors, except indirectly for imported postscript graphics.

The Apple ColorSync filter can be configured to preserve the names of non-process colourants (spot colours), and if memory serves to colour manage non-process colourants which is to say convert to the data space of some device using a source and destination ICC profile.

Presumably the names would be matched to CIEL a*b D50 2 degree standard observer measurements of double impressions e.g. of Pantone swatches on specified paper and at a specified frequency algorithm and specified tone value increase.

There is no information on what version of what spot colour library this would be done with. Chancing on the piece of UI is one thing, knowing what it does is another. Since there is no documentation, ...

3. OSX's ColorSync filters render any form of transparency at 72 dpi

A static condition, seemingly. Apple should not have said in advertisements that printing PDF provided for resolution-independent. Printing PDF does not provide for resolution-independent unless the destination device is able to accept PDF with transparency directly.

4. The color management in OSX is opaque and has no usable method of verification that the .pdf is viable.

IMO the blame is partly Apple's and partly Adobe's. Ever since Adobe had to advise the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2003 that Microsoft was preparing a competing document model, Adobe has been more concerned to complicate and diversify than to simplify and consolidate.

/hh

Henrik Holmegaard wrote:

1. It does not have bleeds, crop marks or slugs

Apple has the interface, but the interface does not do anything. Whether Apple should have the interface in the first place is another matter. Device dependent settings don't belong on the desktop, they belong as close as possible to the printing and binding process.

The designer needs to set bleeds, and slugs and crop marks are essential for proofing and tracking jobs.

I agree finishing should be as close to final production as possible, but the designer needs to be able to communicate the requirements within the job. There are plenty of other things to go wrong as it is.

2. OSX does not support spot colors, except indirectly for imported postscript graphics.

The Apple ColorSync filter can be configured to preserve the names of non-process colourants (spot colours), and if memory serves to colour manage non-process colourants which is to say convert to the data space of some device using a source and destination ICC profile.

Presumably the names would be matched to CIEL a*b D50 2 degree standard observer measurements of double impressions e.g. of Pantone swatches on specified paper and at a specified frequency algorithm and specified tone value increase.

There is no information on what version of what spot colour library this would be done with. Chancing on the piece of UI is one thing, knowing what it does is another. Since there is no documentation, ...

Just being able to label the output finish, whether it is a mixed ink, a laminate, varnish, metallic, diecut or whatever, is a start. Apple makes it almost impossible using its tools. Yes it can be in an imported .pdf/ai file but then you can't match the spot color within Pages.

3. OSX's ColorSync filters render any form of transparency at 72 dpi

A static condition, seemingly. Apple should not have said in advertisements that printing PDF provided for resolution-independent. Printing PDF does not provide for resolution-independent unless the destination device is able to accept PDF with transparency directly.

Thought I had nailed this one but Snow Leopard "improved" this out of existence again.

4. The color management in OSX is opaque and has no usable method of verification that the .pdf is viable.

IMO the blame is partly Apple's and partly Adobe's. Ever since Adobe had to advise the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2003 that Microsoft was preparing a competing document model, Adobe has been more concerned to complicate and diversify than to simplify and consolidate.

Either way, useless is useless, I really don't want to hear any more excuses or finger pointing.

Peter

Just being able to label the output finish, whether it is a mixed ink, a laminate, varnish, metallic, diecut or whatever, is a start. Apple makes it almost impossible using its tools. Yes it can be in an imported .pdf/ai file but then you can't match the spot color within Pages.

There is ICC structure to work with spot colourants, specifically the NMCL Named Colour profile type. There are also spectrophotometer types to measure special surfaces such as e.g. metallics. There are even tricks with 0/45 - 45/0 spectrophotometers to do that (Scotch tape). However, this part of the ICC structure is technically demanding as well for the developer as for the professional user. Non-professional users have a hard time understanding that spot colours can be colour managed if and only if they are specified as solids, specified for the same papers and specified for the same tone value increase as the swatches they purchased a decade ago and have had sitting in a sunny window sill for a decade 🙂.

/hh

I have no difficulty with a spot color being a solid or tint. Which is why it is so useful and why it works when so much of "Color Management" remains off-stage hokum.

I have difficulty applying either when there is no mechanism to choose them.

Difficult as that may be. No, wait! They could do that in 1986.

But then OSX is still catching up.

No, not even trying, because Apple thinks anything professional hasn't got the "fab" appeal for the clueless who are its new target audience.

P.

I have no difficulty with a spot color being a solid or tint. Which is why it is so useful and why it works when so much of "Color Management" remains off-stage hokum.

The swatch printed solid is one colour and the swatch printed e.g. 90% is another colour again for the same paper and the same tone value increase.

For another paper or another tone value increase, the swatch printed e.g. 90% is still another colour and there is no colourimetric specification of what one would want that colour to be.

For process colourants combined on the press -

1. The ICC PRTR Printer profile for the intended printing condition has a strategy for you to specify a colour position inside the gamut, and for calculating the colourants that will form that colour.

2. The ICC PRTR Printer profile also has a strategy for remapping colours in the source colour space into the print space, if the colour position in the source colour space cannot be reproduced.

For precombined colourants -

1. If there is only a name reference e.g. PMS coated xxx, then a plate will be emitted for that name reference without a specification of the CIE colourimetry. Proofing is impossible because a digital proof does not by definition support the same colourant and the same substrate as the press.

2. If there is a specification of the CIE colourimetry for the name reference, and if there is a known ICC PRTR Printer profile for the printing condition, then it is possible to determine if the colour of the precombined colourants can be reproduced as a combination of process colourants.

While spot colour / precombined colourant can be specified in sheetfed offset, it makes no sense in gravure (engraving an extra cylinder is considered kind of crazy) and in digital presses and large format digital printers the name reference is always converted either through a CIE reference or to a device dependent colourant combination that is detected by the device e.g. from information on the substrate and colourant that is configured. Packaging design works with custom colourants and coatings, but then again packaging design tends to work with non-ICC procedures.

Knowledgeable Bruce Lindbloom, developer of ColorSynergy, wrote on the ColorSync Users List a decade ago of "the general flaming of the CIE system" 🙂.

/hh

…and if there is volcanic dust in the setting sun it is yet another color.

But the invariable is what is on the paper. The rest is adjusted for perceptually.

I will repeat for the umpteenth time why designers want and need spot colors:

1. Fine detail on uncoated stock.

2. Colors unmatchable by cmyk.

3. Specials such as varnish, laminates, foils, embossing, intaglio, diecuts etc etc

4. Hexcolor.

5. Cost.

6. Accuracy for corporate livery.

cmyk is the junk food of modern printing.

We now have a generation who have not tasted any different, and can't tell the difference.

Possibly so conditioned by the junk being served up that consuming fresh well made and prepared anything that hasn't passed through the hands of several corporations, taking their slice of the action, sets off an advertising induced pavlovian gag reaction.

P.

I will repeat for the umpteenth time why I want and need spot colors:

For what it's worth, below ditto for why nobody needs the difficulties of working with non-process colours as more and more printing moves from sheetfed offset 🙂.

1. Fine detail on uncoated stock.

Spots specified for PMS coated, solids only (no tints), last minute change to PMS uncoated, some solids changed to tints. Surprise, surprise, surprise, and page designer wonders why 🙂.

2. Colors unmatchable by cmyk.

First, the colour spaces formed by process colourants are not necessarily static, and the larger the colour spaces the larger the number of spot colourants the device can reproduce directly.

Second, there is no such thing as 'CMYK'. There is four component / four channel data, and there is the laydown order of the data.

The laydown order of the data is different in different printing processes, gravure for web-fed does not lay down in the same order as offset for sheet-fed.

The laydown order of the data in turn determines the colours to be formed (yellow on black is not the same colour as black on yellow).

ICC Specification version 4 has a colourant laydown order tag which simplifies proof simulation, for instance. Whether it is used by sundry print profiling software is another matter.

In 1986, PostScript language level 1 did not yet have the setCMYKcolor construct (it was introduced in 1988). If memory serves, spots could not be specified either and frequency algorithms ('screens') were not yet properly sorted (see Lars Borg and Peter Fink's book on the problem). In 1993 a manual Gretag SPM spectrophotometer was USD 12,000 and in 2003 a semi-automatic GretagMacbeth Eye-One spectrophotometer was USD 1,300. Anybody doing spots and metallics in 1986 was doing it manually, mounting strips of film off a closed system colour scanner that saved directly to separated film, and mixing inks in vats behind the press. The press operator calibrated the ink keys on the press to favour editorial over advertising or advertising over editorial on a page by page basis. No spectrophotometer, and little likelihood of a densitometer in sight 🙂.

/hh

Henrik Holmegaard wrote:

I will repeat for the umpteenth time why I want and need spot colors:

For what it's worth, below ditto for why nobody needs the difficulties of working with non-process colours as more and more printing moves from sheetfed offset 🙂.

Difficulty?

Print PMS640U please. Oh what a beautiful blue! Just like the one in my hand. 🙂

Why does my gorgeous (rgb) blue look like used (cmyk) dishwater? I paid a fortune for a lousy thousand copies and will have to throw the lot out. 😟

1. Fine detail on uncoated stock.

Spots specified for PMS coated, solids only (no tints), last minute change to PMS uncoated, some solids changed to tints. Surprise, surprise, surprise, and page designer wonders why 🙂.

Text specified for black, last minute change to cmyk (in software) solid changes to brownish grey. Surprise, surprise, surprise, and page designer wonders why. 😟

Fine text on uncoated stock, printer changes to coarse illegible blurry cmyk rosettes that barely resemble the specified color. Surprise, surprise, surprise, and page designer wonders why. 😟

2. Colors unmatchable by cmyk.

First, the colour spaces formed by process colourants are not necessarily static, and the larger the colour spaces the larger the number of spot colourants the device can reproduce directly.

Hmmm. Show me the metallics, pearlescents, foils, varnishes, even simple pure bright colors. 🙂

More of way way less is still miss, miss, miss. 😟

P.

Difficulty?

On an aside.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Victor Scholderer was curator of the incunabula held in the Library of the British Museum.

It is expected of curators that they publish from time to time on what they cureate, which in this case included a copy of Gutenberg's Mainz Psalter.

Scholderer showed that in some copies, the initials had been rubricated on the press (not be the rubricator post-press) whereas in other copies the initials had not.

Scholderer wonder why in the world this was, and concluded that it was because inking the initials in place, or opening the printing forme to free the initials for inking, was too much trouble.

So, it was not as simple as it would seem to print spot colour in 1455 🙂.

/hh

At least they could see what they were doing. 🙂

P.