Dalim Swing vs Exporting

[Ausfall00]

Hello,

I work for an advertising agency and we have a system at work called Dalim Swing, which we use to create pdfx1a’s. Our boss, in an attempt to save money and avoid upgrading the Dalim, is insisting that we simply export from InDesign using the pdfx1a setting. Now, printers have never had a problem with the pdfx1a’s that we create using Dalim. Should I be worried about providing them with exported x1as? What are some of the possible problems?

Thank You!
Elvin

[mattbeals]

You should be just fine. If you don't "trust" the X1a's from InDesign then verify them with Acrobat Pro. Or convert them to PDF/X-1a's with Acrobat Pro.

[Ausfall00]

Thanks Matt.

[rich apollo]

I've not been keen on the PDFs I've received from Dalim systems. It has a tendency, or the ability, to incorrectly define the trim and bleed boxes. It drives me Batsa! to have all the extra colorbars and identifiers that creative groups tend to put on those PDFs, too.

I'd argue against PDFx/1-a. Me no likey! Go with PDFx/4, if that's a possibility, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

[mattbeals]

PDF/X-4 would be the best way to go, but not everyone accepts PDF/X-4's or knows what to do with them.

[RGB2CMYK]

From a file reliability standpoint, an exported PDF/x-1a from InDesign vs a normalized Dalim Swing/Twist, they are about the same.

When I worked for a large publication printer I recommended customers just export directly out of InDesign (direct export from Quark I was less keen on). Once it gets to the printer they will undoubtably send it through a Twist/Prinergy system themselves anyway.

That being said how diligent are you desktop operators when they create their files out of InDesign. A workflow like Swing does more than just normalize the file, it also preflights it. Do you have a process in place to replace the preflight aspect?

[mattbeals]

Simply using Acrobat Pro to do the preflight against any number of various "PDF/X-Plus" settings should be enough. And if the print provider(s) has their own Acrobat settings (many do) then they should be good to go.

[abc]

This is interesting as I guess the guys feeding Swing are designers?

Do you trust them to preflight their own work in Indesign, or more importantly do you trust them to fix errors themselves?, I am guessing Swing automatically fixes some stuff they don't currently even know about, I assume you are using it as a kind of Gatekeeper to the outside world for quality control and consistent output?

[mglouis]

Hello Rich,

I have never seen an improperly defined page box come from Twist due to the way we have our system configured; the job specs from MIS set the page boxes. Although I do not use this feature, Twist can autodetect multiple trim boxes and then set bleed boxes based on the trim boxes, resulting in page independent page box geometries. Trim mark detection can also be used for setting trim boxes. I can imagine you are getting inconsistent trim boxes across pages due to folks using the product in a way that makes no sense to imposition programs.

I am curious if the page decorations are outside the trim and bleed boxes, do they still cause you grief?

Matt Louis

[mglouis]

Hello Ausfall00,

Pdfx1a from Indesign are quite good. No problems with Apogee, Twist or Rampage. We get bad files occasionally but nothing I can attribute to Indesign.

Matt Louis