How Do I Completely Flatten Output on...

We have about 500 PDFs that get printed over 250,000 times a year. Our new document design using ID CS3 on XP SP3 has a lot more graphic sophistication using transparencies. When exporting I haven't found the setting that completely flattens the file as it's being saved as a PDF. The result is that when printed, the flattening step takes an additional 8-10 seconds. At our volume this is bad.



I've played with the various PDF presets and trying to lock the ID template to the predefined PDF preset with not much luck.



Any help would be very much appreciated!



Cheers!

Larry

worldvision.org
How Do I Completely Flatten Output on...
What is your definition of completely flattened?



Bob
How Do I Completely Flatten Output on...
BTW, in my experience, exporting without flattening is faster.



Bob

Have you tried PDF X/1-a? That should be flattening the file, but my experience is that you generally get better output by letting the RIP do the flattening at print time.



Peter

To clarify - the goal is that the resulting PDF will not go through the flattening routine when printed saving 8-10 sec.s each time they are printed. These files are printed as part of the daily print job as required. Thus we aren't able to take advantage of the RIPs rip one, print many feature.



So again, the resulting PDF should not require any additional flattening at the time of printing.



Does that answer?



Thanks!

Then export the PDF as X/1-a...but that's going to take longer than than

exporting with live transparency.



Bob

Good call - it does the trick! I will need to do a little more testing though as it appears on this first test that the color fidelity suffers a tad.



Next question: I'm merging XML data, graphics and pictures through an ID template and outputting to PDF. How do I associate the export X/1-a parameter with the template? I'm using a .NET app to do the actual merge which speeds things up.



Larry

%26gt;it appears on this first test that the color fidelity suffers a tad.



This could be the result of having the wrong transparency flattening color space selected.

The Export to PDF by PDF/X-1a does a couple of things auto-

matically:



1) Flatten layers (this is called 'merging' in ID)

2) Flatten transparency in the chosen transparency flattening

space

3) Convert everything into the document's CMYK color space



As a consequence, the automatism will work correctly only in

this situation:

a) All ingredients are defined in the document's CMYK color

space.

b) As Peter says: the transparency flattening space is the

document's CMYK space.



Visual deviations between monitor and print are to be expected

in these situations (besides wrong viewing conditions):



a) The monitor isn't calibrated correctly



b1) The printer isn't calibrated correctly (inkjet)

c1) The chosen CMYK profile isn't that of the printer (inkjet)

d1) If the profile is correct : the RIP doesn't feed through

the CMYK numbers without a change



b2) The process doesn't match the profile (offset) because

of actual deviations

c2) The profile doesn't match the process (offset) because

of a wrong choice, for instance ISOCoated instead of

SWOP. Mainly wrong because of different ink densities



e) The document contains untagged RGB images (no profile

embedded), and their original space isn't that of the

document



The process of transparency flattening depends also on the

applied algorithms. Actual tests by a PostScript toner

printer delivered visually different results for these two

cases:

a) Flatten by Export to PDF (Acrobat4)

b) Export without flattening (Acrobat5 or higher)

Flattening in the printer by PostScript color management,

based on ICC profiles



According to these and other tests, any proof printing

(normally by inkjet) of not flattened PDFs is unsafe,

because the flattening algorithms of the proof printer RIP

and the plate-setter RIP can differ.



Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

Thanks Peter and Gernot - we will review the various options here and post the outcome. It may be easiest just to adjust the color profile for our high speed Konica/Minolta color laser printer/copiers and RIPs to compensate, but we'll look into the transparency flattening color space as well.



Cheers!

The issue of flattening seems to be rather complex,

considering different sources of transparency, gradients,

spot colors and overprinting, in addition to simple

CMYK docs.

Here comes an interesting report (originally mentioned

by Bob Levine a while ago):

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/creativesuite/articles/cs3ip_transp.html



Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

Thank you for caring enough to share the knowledge. I've been browsing through the article and they have a lot of useful info. I have a lot to learn!