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Matthew, You wrote: < Ah, Publisher. This new customer is transferring the cost of using and training someone to use higher quality page layout programs, such as Quark and InDesign, to you. > That might be true in some cases, especially when 'this new customer' does not have the right tools handy. Did you test the demo version of 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator'? (http://www.pdfstore.com/details.asp?ProdID=633) You wrote: < Anyway, to make your PDF's, we have found it best to do a "Save as" and select PostScript (.ps), then distill the PostScript file. All your composite PDF's will be RGB. You will then need to convert them to CMYK. Remember to convert all of you black type to 100% black, because when you convert RGB black to CMYK, you get a four color black. > 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' does handle this. Simply select 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' as destination printer and click 'print'! The result is a press-ready CMYK PDF with cut marks and trimming information according to PDF/X standards - ready for production. You wrote: < If your customer plans on using spot colors, you will need to first make separated PDF's, because that is the only way spot colors are supported in Publisher. Then you will need to use something like Creo's Seps to Comp to make the separated PDF into a composite. > Ah, this is an evil situation. If you don't want to invest in 'Colour Chameleon', which allow RGB colours to convert to Spot colours within a PS -> PDF conversion process, you actually might configure 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' to do it for you. The file 'Default.ccMap' that 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' installs contains 'custom' colour mapping information and can be edited with an ASCII editor such as Windows Notepad (we also provide an administrative interface for it to customers that purchase a bulk-pack with 50 give-away licenses). This is useful in cases, where the front-end user may not understand how spot colours work, since you via this file is able to set-up a hard-coded system at the front-end user's desktop that provide the results you need in your workflow. This is possible in practise because users that work with spot colours usually stick to the same spot colours all the time, so the typical situation is that only 10 or 20 'known' RGB colours need re-mapping to 'Spot'. The idea is to keep the complicated stuff away from the MS Office-user and make it so simple for them to provide production-ready material (we are NOT speaking quality of lay-out, only 'content creation' and 'technical quality') that they don't object against doing so. In such cases you therefore NOT need to add 3 or more prepress hours to MS Office jobs for commercial printing. You wrote: < Be sure your customer knows that there is an additional charge to make their files PDF/x compliant. Also let then know that if they were using a application such as Quark or InDesign, they would not have these additional charges. > 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' actually creates output that passes the Distiller 6.0 PDF/X checks for compliance. However, it does not do anything special for doing it, so owners of Distiller 5.X will create PDF output with identical PDF/X quality (though no compliance check is performed, since Distiller 6.X is the first version that offer this option). One important point is to learn how 'forms' work in Windows. This is important because: 1) most MS Office application does not 'read' a custom page size at printer driver level correctly unless the document is set-up according to a custom, predefined 'form'. 2) 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' adds cut marks and trimming information according to the media size used by the driver at print time. Useful PDF/X compliance (yes, a document CAN be compliant AND contain wrong information anyway) can therefore only be achieved if the document page size exactly match the media size set-up at driver level. The only way to do that is by using 'forms' (via the Windows applet: Printers folder -> Files -> Server properties). Using such 'forms' you can produce ANY layout with MS Word, MS Publisher or similar non-graphic application. With a combination of Acrobat Distiller and Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator added to such a non-graphic application you actually get quite close to what a graphic application offers. At many offices, where it for obvious reasons is convenient to stay with Office-like applications for most purposes, this might be a better overall solution than introducing a graphic application, which in daily use is much different to work with and require skills that most office users don't have. If you want to make business with them, then help them out rather than kick them out. FWIW, Jacob Schäffer Author of 'Chameleon CMYK PDF Creator' -------------------------------------------- Grafikhuset (House of Graphics) Havremarken 11 DK-3520 Farum Denmark Tel: +45 7011 0999 Fax: +45 4499 7020 Web: http://www.grafikhuset.dk Grafikhuset is a full service prepress centre offering * Imaging * Desktop publishing of any kind * Web design and automation * Advanced PDF workflow set-up and tools * Prepress troubleshooting * Education and training * PostScript programming * Specialized software for the Graphic Arts industry To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdf.html
