Ideal PDF Settings

[AndyMc]

Hi, has anyone worked out what the ideal settings are for creating a PDF to run through Backstage that will produce consistent results, it would be good to be able to forward a document to our customers that reflects these.
We are at a stage now where Backstage gives a green tick but corrupts or loses data completely within the file supplied, often this can be fixed by normalising with flattening but is not much use after the horse has bolted and you are faced with a reprint.

Many thanks
Andy

[wesley]

Ok, This is a tricky one. First thing to know is the display values for PMS colors in the resulting PDF from Backstage WILL NOT match the display values from any Adobe product or the PMS library. The CMYK conversion values are different. Apparently when importing to a normalized PDF, Esko builds those values based on a profile and any export of that PDF will now contain those different conversion and display values. (Don't ask ME why this is. I am sure there is someone in Ghent that has an answer that will get angry). There is also not a way to select the Adobe profile without doing a workaround on export. I am a fan of a correctly separated PDF. Make sure on the setting you choose, you do not check the "Color Management" box. Reason I am telling you this is if you view the client PDF and the resulting exported PDF, they may have radically different display values for PMS colors. Has had me in trouble with quite a few clients already.

[AndyMc]

Thanks for the reply but we only deal with mono PDF's but Backstage has been unable to consistently normalize without creating errors within the file, examples may be losing text within some of the pages within the file.

I thought it would be good to be able to go back to our customers with Esko's preferred settings for PDF creation but Esko say they do not have such a thing.

[JeffHallJR]

AndyMc
I am having the same issues. I have 4 mac operators that are dropping pdfx1a's in Flexproof hot folders and have intermittent problems with the pdf's erroring out and going directly into the wait folder. If I have one of my packedge operators send direct using the same pdf there is no issue. Having an esko pdf settings profile would be very helpful.

[CHM]

Well I don't have a lot of experience with the Backstage part of the Esko busyness, but I have a lot of Experience with ArtPro and Nexus.
In that system we always import the native pdf that comes out off Illustrator, we save the Illustrator file with compatible pdf inside. Good thing about this is that the operator does not have to fiddle around with settings.
We have been doing this for quit some years now and the only version of Illustrator I do not recommend is CS2 (this was the wost version of all CS versions).

If you wanna ask a pdf out of Illustrator from a client, just ask to save it with the Illustrator native settings, this will do the trick to.

[eskopdl]

Try the Free Data Exchange Plugin for Adobe Illustrator to export a Normalized Esko PDF straight out of Ai. Here's the link to download - Download free software & plugins

[dgraves]

Here are our settings we have been using and giving to our customers.

http://wendlingprinting.net/showdoc....b_settings.zip