Is Pages Good Enough For Professional Printing?

Pages will render any transparency, reflections, shadows at 72dpi.

It is also extremely difficult to color manage and ensure all your text and images are cmyk and not rgb.

You have to be very careful to make sure all vector black images, such as text is not a cmyk cocktail but stays 100% k.

Whilst it is not impossible, if you avoid problem areas and do a lot of detailed checking both before and after rendering to .pdf, it can be done. Personally I wouldn't use it.

Peter

Look at this site _http://i-work-in-pages.blogspot.com/_ . The author is using Pages for a magazine and for him it does work.

I spoke to him and he seems confused about what is going on in the color management, so it seems to me he is just coasting in on a minimal print job that doesn't stray into the minefields.

As he is working closely with the printer the printer is probably helping him over the line. Its something printers do. If the client doesn't follow how it works, just fix it, and keep them happy.

Peter

It is always challenging to match CMYK colors 100% on paper. Mixing colors on the computer can be challenging, namely when you are trying to translate specific colors to work in a four-color printing process. However, when color matching is critical, you should use a CMYK chart and enter the values that best reflect the color you are trying to reach.

http://www.psprint.com/helpcenter/preparingartwork_files/colorquality/index.asp#3

These people probably home some sort of printing hardware, but they have no idea whatsoever about device independent colour imaging. The RIP maybe antidiluvian, with no ICC frontend. They are talking about accepting native files from Adobe PageMaker, and the most recent version of QuarkXPress in the shop may be 4 with the QuarkCMS disabled. Try a more professionally-sounding prepress shop.

In general, as in anything else, you need to know what you are doing, or you need someone to help you who in fact does. This means that they need to be able to intelligibly address issues of ICC colour management and transparency. Design in Pages, save out as PDF, and let the prepress technician flatten transparency.

/hh

The author is using Pages

Igen, det er et dårligt råd at udskrive PostScript til disk, fordi PostScript ikke støtter transparens og heller ikke støtter ICC-profiler. Det ville hjælpe, hvis du interesserede dig for faktiske tekniske forhold. Det er ikke nok at være sød og rar; vil man hjælpe andre mennesker over vejen, så skal man selv kunne trafikreglerne, for ellers begge de ganske enkelt kørt over.

Henrik

Henrik, om du säger så så är det väl så. Man behöver inte vara expert i ett område för att tala om var man kan läsa annan information. Den som ställer frågan får skaffa sig sin egen uppfattning.

Henrik Holmegaard wrote:
Design in Pages, save out as PDF, and let the prepress technician flatten transparency.

Henrik

There is no way to save out of Pages to pdf without flattening the transparency. And that is the root of the problem.

If you know how, detail it and save us all some grief.

Peter

I produce a quarterly magazine using pages 2006. In the Page layout window I set the scale to 75% and this gives me a document at a resolution of 300dpi which is industry standard.
My printers tell me it is 300dpi.
You will find that you have to use a larger font size than you would normally. I use size 12 for normal text. I export at 'best' for pdf.
Hope this helps.

Have just bought a new macbook pro and wonder about buying iWork 09 or waiting for 10 but that is another question.

Lea Elizabeth wrote:
I produce a quarterly magazine using pages 2006. In the Page layout window I set the scale to 75% and this gives me a document at a resolution of 300dpi which is industry standard.

Do you mean the layout window in the printer preview? I don't understand what you refer to as Pages Layout window.

My printers tell me it is 300dpi.
You will find that you have to use a larger font size than you would normally. I use size 12 for normal text. I export at 'best' for pdf.
Hope this helps.

Have just bought a new macbook pro and wonder about buying iWork 09 or waiting for 10 but that is another question.

Yes it is another question. As rumour goes wait a few more month before you decide to buy a newer iWork. You could always try out the trial version of iWork09 but you can't save in Pages06 only 08 and 09.

om du säger så så är det väl så. Man behöver inte vara expert i ett område för att tala om var man kan läsa annan information

Misforstå mig ikke. Det handler om at leverandøren skal levere et produkt, der ikke lader slutbrugeren foretage sig ting, der er fundamenalt teknisk forkert, og at slutbrugeren (du og jeg) ikke bygger sin produktforståelse på en teknisk myte, men på tekniske fakta. Det er der ved at blive sat en ordentlig dagsorden for i Nordeuropa.

Venlig hilsen,
Henrik

fruhulda wrote:
Do you mean the layout window in the printer preview? I don't understand what you refer to as Pages Layout window.

I have been using Pages 06 since 2006 on an ibook and I made a template page A5 (metric New Zealand)
1 choose blank page. Go to File/page setup.Choose your page size or in drop down menu manage custom sizes. When you have make your size click OK. Again in the page set up window choose Orientation and then notice 'scale'. change 100% to 75% for 300 dpi.
Hope that helps.

Thanks for comments on Pages 09/10

There is no way to save out of Pages to pdf without flattening the transparency.

Proposition: In any save path, transparency is flattened in saving.

Test of proposition: Apple Pages '08 and Apple Mac OS X 10.4.11 as platform.

1. Launch system software and application software.

2. Insert first composition frame, select Apple Hoefler antiqua at 24 US pt, enter 'Type', leave default colour, leave default opacity.

3. Insert second composition frame, select Apple Hoefler antiqua at 24 US pt, enter 'Transparency', change default colour to rubrication red, change opacity to 50%.

4. Select e.g. File > Print > PDF > Save as PDF, name file 'Test', and select folder.

5. Launch Acrobat Professional 6 (first version with ISO 15930 PDF/X-3 verification), check the PDF version (: 1.4), check at high magnification (: no rasterisation), check that the source character string can be synthesised (: it can).

As posted previously, if transparency is applied, PDF 1.4 is automatically configured unless the path is ISO 15930 PDF/X-3 that does not support transparency (PDF 1.3 has an opaque imaging model, not a transparency imaging model). This is a simplistic test, but it is nonetheless a test.

Because Apple Quartz has applied transparency since 2000, and because there the matrix of system versions and application versions is somewhat monstrous, the notion of testing is somewhat notional 🙂.

/hh

I set the scale to 75% and this gives me a document at a resolution of 300dpi which is industry standard

Lea,

You have the wrong image in your mind. Apple Mac OS X uses the Adobe imaging model. In any version of the Adobe imaging model since January 1985, first, one sets up a design space as an x-y coordinate (whether standard media size or custom media size), second, one sets up area composition frames as x-y coordinates in the design space (to flow character information into and convert into imageable composition), and, third, one sets up area separation frames in the design space (to import scalable spline-based illustration, scalable spline-based illustration mixed with non-scalable raster-based imagery, or non-scalable raster-based imagery).

Design space is device independent and user space is the address space of an actual digital graphic device. An actual digital graphic device has attributes such as resolution (low at 72dpi or high at 2500dpi, symmetric dpi across and down or asymmetric dpi across and down, one colourant, three colourants emissive aka monitor, three colourant reflective ... six+ colourant reflective aka photographic inkjet, and so forth). If your design space is for an octavo edition your design space may fit your user space on your studio digital graphic printer, but if your design space is for a folio edition the imaging model may have to scale or tile in order for you to proof.

There is still more involved, because the colourants one digital graphic device has to have to reproduce a desired colour are not necessarily the same that another digital graphic device has to have to reproduce the same colour. This means that the imaging model must not merely scale spline illustrations and raster images, it must also reference the objects in the design space to CIE colourimetry, and when the design space is imaged on the address space of an actual digital graphic device, the imaging model must have information about the CIE colourimetry that the digital graphic device is capable of reproducing, and then try to converse the CIE colourimetry by converting the colourants to such as are needed on the device.

This is in fact not particular to the Adobe imaging model and its iterations, it is universal to imaging models for all digital graphic devices alike.

/hh