Using a commercial printer to print Pages prepared documents

I wonder if anyone has had any experience with preparing Pages documents for a commercial print run? Were you able to send it as a Pages document or did it need to be a PDF?

Don't send your Pages / QuarkXPress / InDesign / Word document to the printer. The printer will ask you to do your homework properly anyway, that is, put in the proper resolution for the images, make sure the fonts are properly embedded, make sure the proper OutputIntent is embedded per ISO 15930, and make sure the transparency is flattened for ISO 15930 PDF/X-2:2001.

Since the Apple ColorSync Utility has had a lot of complaints logged against it on transparency flattening, you are advised to set up your document (without embedded QuickTime, embedded hyperlinks or other non-printable frills), save out your PDF without reducing the resolution, and asking the prepress or press technician to flatten the transparency for you.

The prepress or press technician will flatten the transparency in e.g. Enfocus Pitstop or Acrobat Professional.

Henrik

Henrik,

Does that mean you can use the "Export" feature in Pages, and select the "Best" Image quality settings for the PDF, and just send that PDF to the printer making the requests you specified?

Lawrence

Does that mean you can use the "Export" feature in Pages, and select the "Best" Image quality settings for the PDF, and just send that PDF to the printer making the requests you specified?

First, search the Pages ´09 forum and the Pages ´08 forum for threads on PDF/X-3.

Second, if the Export path does not downsample, which I can't recall, then you can use that path in preference to the path that applies a PDF/X-3 filter through the Apple ColorSync Utility.

Third, please skip what people are saying about saving to PostScript or Encapsulated PostScript and then processing that in Enfocus or Acrobat or whatever.

/hh

Hi ACPerth

Welcome to the forum.

Pages is not suitable for commercial print, especially if going to .pdf.

There are several features in Pages that produce transparency: transparency itself, shadows, reflections and the 3D graphs that will be down-sampled to 72 dpi along with any text or vector objects that interact with that transparency.

This is a fundamental flaw of OSX's ColorSync filters and print engine.

Further Pages documents have no bleeds, crop marks or slugs. There is no image management to ensure images are of adequate resolution and no pre-press checks as you have in Indesign or Quark Xpress.

OSX does not directly handle spot color or specials so you will not be able to match colors of imported graphics or convert them to the color specs you need. The color control is very poor because there is no way of naming and retaining color specification other than mechanically selecting the same color swatch in the color picker and hoping you don't slip up somewhere.

In managing the layout Pages also lacks key aspects of controlled variables. Repeated positioning of text/image objects, color specifications, aspects of layout because of lack of retrospectivity ie things stay where you put them until you destroy them, only limited items can be retained, changed, moved and replaced systematically.

Pages is really only for personal output to a desktop printer, or limited controlled output, with a lot of fingers crossed, output to an inhouse system.

Peter

It really depends on what you are doing and who is working it. I just finished my first book (https://www.createspace.com/3403435) through Createspace.com using Pages '09 and learned through trial and error that "flattening" my graphics meant to "group" all of my graphic elements into one graphic. That satisfied the "technical" side of my PDF. They may have "loosened" the requirements that are discussed here, but my PDF interior and book cover when through just fine.

Flattening is not grouping, it is rendering (RIPing) overlaying transparent elements to a high rate bitmap (usually 300-350dpi) to separate and print.

The problem is that OSX's ColorSync filters are set to do this at a very bad 72dpi.

If you do nothing to offend the postscript gods you may get away with it but, as noted above, color management leaves a lot to be desired in Pages.

Peter

The problem is that OSX's ColorSync filters are set to do this at a very bad 72dpi.

I know it's macro on your keyboard (... :-)), but are you completely confident that resolution options for rendering transparency aren't supported in some later versions of the system?

With regard to non-process Pantones, they are device dependent and as they are device dependent they cannot easily be dealt with in a colour managed context.

/hh

Henrik

I thought I had fixed this when I used Snow Leopard. Once.

Since then it has gone back to being uneditable again. I have no idea why it behaves so bizarrely.

Despite what it says below, I am currently switching back and forth between OSX 10.5.8 and OSX 10.6.4 due to even more bugs in Preview.

We have been toing and froing on this issue for a long time. Intermittently you go back to describing the problem as if it doesn't exist. May I gently suggest it would be better that you do what most of us here do, which is actually test suggested solutions and post the step by method of achieving them.

If this key problem was fixed in OSX, Pages might still become a commercial publishing solution. Although there are key failings in other areas they would just make it a hard to use solution instead of a disaster waiting to strike.

Peter

I thought I had fixed this when I used Snow Leopard

OK, so you still have the issue in 10.6.4. You posted that you would publish the procedure you had found useful, before you found that it was not useful.

May I gently suggest it would be better that you do what most of us here do, which is actually test suggested solutions and post the step by method of achieving them.

Actually, I posted several installments of the procedure, beginning with the basic idea of unifying/harmonising the area separations to a single total ink coverage / graybalance etc., and including how to control that composition is mapped to deviceK 100%. Then there are almost always posts from Australia asking for diecuts, varnishes, spots and more that tends to sidetrack things 🙂.

/hh

No Henrik

You have never done that. You have waffled with endless irrelevant diversions and arcane, meandering, technical discussions over which the user has no control.

I do remember one, +almost useful+ post, which was removed by the admin before anyone could read it.

Maybe it was in that. So we should all consult the inaccessable post for solutions.

Your referral to the ColorSync forum, elicited absolutely not one response to my questions.

I didn't end up posting my only partial solution, because it wouldn't consistently reproduce and did not fix all the other outstanding problems. Everything else is out there.

Peter

KevinCu

Don't take this personally, I am sure you have done a fine job but from what I can see, which is a thumbnail of your book cover, it is not a real DTP challenge and is only being printed via digital print with no qualitative feedback possible at this point.

I can produce a book from TextEdit if need be. That does not make TextEdit a good publishing solution.

Please however provide samples and details of how you overcame problems such as indexing, low resolution graphics (if you have any), bleeds, photo reproduction, maintaining color consistency without named colors and any general tips and experience that you think useful.

Peter

You have never done that.

Oh, hmm. I think you need to look in the Pages '08 threads. The posts followed on a thread with 4500 views on 'Using Pages for high-end DTP' (not that the notion of DTP makes much sense since DTP or PostScript-based imaging is for printing only, not for cross-media publishing :-)).

There were contributions by Magnus Lewan. From there it went on to explain the basics of the opaque imaging model in PDF 1.3 and lower and PS 3 and lower, configuring a colour matching session with an OutputIntent, finding ICC PRTR profiles for ISO 12647 reference printing conditions, setting up type as deviceK 100% and more.

technical discussions over which the user has no control.

Your frustration is understandable, but whatever application you work with, the interface controls wire into the underlying imaging model (PS, PDF ... XPS). You are 'writing on' the underlying imaging model and 'writing with' the application and the profiles and fonts available to you, as it were. What you as author are publishing is NOT your native application file format, but the application-independent file format of your chosen imaging model. If you have no idea whatsever about choosing an imaging model, you have lost up front. Which reminds me that Apple has advertised that Mac OS X opens EPS and PS for conversion into PDF as if this produced repurposable PDF...Arggh.

Your referral to the ColorSync forum, elicited absolutely not one response to my questions

Perhaps they didn't understand your questions, simply. To ask them a question, you need to talk in their technical terms.

I didn't end up posting my only partial solution, because it wouldn't consistently reproduce and did not fix all the other outstanding problems.

Relax, no problem. Just asking.

/hh

maintaining color consistency without named colors

I can _scientifically guarantee_ that colour consistency with named colours is possible to maintain if and only if the named colours are referenced to CIE colourimetry 🙂.

/hh

Henrik

Please give the link back to the thread, I may have missed it as for a long time I concentrated on Pages 09.

As to the ColorSync forum, I found it a dusty cobweb infested place and as you may have noticed I am quite capable of clearly stating a problem and the intended outcome desired.

P.

Henrik Holmegaard wrote:
I can _scientifically guarantee_ that colour consistency with named colours is possible to maintain if and only if the named colours are referenced to CIE colourimetry 🙂.

There are 3rd party solutions to naming colors in the Color Picker but the inbuilt method is clumsy and of uncertain color space.

There is also the problem of it quite possibly simply vanishing, as every Cocoa application can access and edit the same Color Picker palette without knowledge of its application in a document somewhere else.

Further I can see no evidence that it is a true named variable that can retrospectively change references throughout a document.

Peter