PerfX Image X is very nice but if you want to try with Acrobat 9, it seems to be possible. I made a preflight profile using what is called a "vérification personnalisée" in my french version of Acrobat (maybe "custom checks" in english). I choosed to add three times the same action but with different settings (245, 300 and 340% of TAC, for instance). The first one will trigger an information, the second a warning and the third an error. Then, I made a droplet with this profile. You only have to drop your file on the droplet and you receive a report with all the information you need. It's not fast but it works…
Sorry for the screen capture in french, but I don't have an english version.
APFill is an inexpenive software that can calculate ink coverage. I have used it to build pricing structures for toner based machines.
Depending on your workflow if you have digital equipment that uses a Fiery rip and can get the grahics arts package premium edition they have tools in it as well. Which is nice to see how your color management sytems (profiles etc) change the coverage and percentages.
Your message is confusing. Why are your customers "complaining they need to use too much ink for the coverage"? Are they the offset printer, or are you?
The one doing the design is the one responsible for using too much ink.
Maybe you could try a trick with Photoshop. Right now, I do not have a version of Photoshop on my computer but I will try to explain from my memory: 1. Open your file with Adobe Photoshop. You will be asked about the resolution. Resolution is not really important to find out about ink coverage so you can choose, for example, 72 ppi. You will also be asked about the colorspace. Here you choose CMYK, of course. If you choose the wrong ICC profile, you will not get the exact values about your ink coverage but even then it should give you a close estimate. 2. Now your PDF is open in form of a pixel file. You then go to the filter menu and start the filter Average Blur or Blur Average, i do not remember the exact name. The result is one color that fills your whole image. This color represents the average color of the whole image. 3. Now you go to Photoshops window menu and open up the info panel. In the info panel you can measure the color values of your image in RGB, CMYK, LAB or whatever you want. The CMYK values, though, represent the average ink coverage of your PDF-file, for each process color. There is also an option to get the total ink coverage in the info panel.
That's it, i hope this can help! This whole procedure can, of course, be made more convenient when you make a Photoshop action out of it and put it into a droplet.
Print Professional Training
www.print-professional-academy.com
If the ink coverage in your pictures is too high, then this is a problem about Color Management. Unfortunately, color management is a complicated matter and cannot be explained in one single post.
Let me put it this way: Obviously, all the color images in your PDF file must be CMYK or they must be converted into CMYK, before they can be printed. Unfortunately all images that come from a scanner or from a digital camera are RGB until they will be converted into CMYK. Maybe, some day, cars will be able to fly to the moon but there will never, ever be a scanner or a camera that directly catches pictures in CMYK mode.
So, sooner or later there must be a conversion from RGB to CMYK in order to print a picture. And in this conversion a so called ICC color profile decides about which RGB value will be coresponding to which CMYK value.
The complicated thing is that there are several different ICC color profiles for different kinds of paper. This is a necessity because there are different kinds of paper whith different paper tones, different dot gains and of course different amounts of total ink coverage they can hold.
Another complicated thing is the fact that there are different places where the RGB to CMYK conversion can be done. It can be done in Photoshop, then you have a technique which is called Early Binding. It can be done while the PDF file is exported, then you have a technique called Intermediate Binding. It can also be done by the print shops prepress in the PDF file, this technique is called Late Binding.
There are several ways to change the ink coverage even when a PDF already is CMYK. For example you can convert the file from CMYK into RGB and then back into another CMYK profile or you can directly convert it into CMYK by using a special Device Link Profile. But also, there are also lot of things that can go wrong and mess up the whole job. I would strongly recommend to invest some time and money in literature and training courses about this sensible topic. A doctor should not learn how to do heart surgery on the internet and a press operator should not learn how to set up his color management, online, either.
Last edited by ASchuett; 12-09-2012 at 08:17 AM.
Print Professional Training
www.print-professional-academy.com
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Originally Posted by Quetu
