PDF Trapping Solution?

[jhodges58]

We're an in-house pre-press facility for an ad agency that has always trapped pdfs going out to pubs.

We have been using an aging Prinergy system but it's now out of support and because we're not running the latest it's showing it's age on pdfs coming out of InDesign 5.5 and 6.

I keep arguing with my boss that with most of the pubs we deal with and even on most of our limited commercial work, the pubs/printers would rather do the trapping themselves and it really isn't even necessary for us to trap any more.

Unfortunately, she still feels we need to have the ability to trap in-house.

So what I'm looking for is a solution that can auto-trap the pdfs and flatten them. We also need some kind of trap editor that allows us to open a pdf and manually edit a trap if something isn't working quite right.

Ideally, it would interface with Switch 11, but I've asked on the Switch forums and nobody seems to be offering a Switch-compatible solution.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[ajr]

I would keep arguing, if your printer doesnt have in rip trapping than find another printer. All workflows have this nowadays, and alot of printers tend to adjust the trap depending on press, stock, ink order etc. Maybe arrange for some meetings with your printers and find out what they say.We also prefer unflattened PDFs now, as when a file is saved in a PDF level that doesn't support it properly it can cause all sorts of problems.

Also any PDF trap editor would be v expensive.



A

[Joe Duffy]

The best stand alone pdf editor I have used is ArtPro by Esko.
Yes, it is expensive and licence is by seat, but it takes in any pdf or ai file and allows full edits of traps, etc and outputs back to ai or pdf format.
Check with Esko for a demo version.

That being said, I agree with ajr that most printers prefer to set traps themselves.

[Colorblind]

We're an in-house pre-press facility for an ad agency that has always trapped pdfs going out to pubs.

Same situation here and while I used to supply properly trapped PDFs to publications, I gave up after having some of my files butchered by automated prepress workflows that were ignoring the PDF "trap flag true". And as ajr mentioned, it makes more sense letting the printer trap everything at rendering time. In fact, more and more publication spec sheets ask for untrapped files.

[marktonk]

Check out Prinect Trap Editor. It's roots are Supertrap, the first standalone PDF trapping engine on the market. It won a GATF award back then. The same algorithms are use in our Prepress Manager workflow. Did you know that Heidelberg wrote the original trapping engine in Prinergy? Anyway, Trap Editor is an Acrobat plug in and works with Acrobat 10. It has been trapping transparency for over 4 years now. The results are a standard, trapped, PDF. It is part of our PDF Toolbox, a suite of PDF plug ins. Here a link. The download selection will give you a PDF brochure
Heidelberg - Prinect PDF Toolbox

Hope this helps.

[jhodges58]

Thanks for all the response, especially Mark's -- I used to use Supertrap a long time ago and thought it had died but knowing it's still available in a new format is great.

Our Toronto office recently stopped trapping magazine work because all the mags did in-rip trapping. They still trap newspaper ads, however, 'cause so many of the pubs up there have older rips.

[Tommyjt]

NEO. Big $ but worth it if you need to edit/trap PDFs.

Neo: Editing and correction of multipage PDF files - Esko

[Stephen Marsh]

As you have an old Prinergy system, one option would be to upgrade that with the Rip/Trap/Output and or trapping editor license options.

A couple of other trapping solutions that have not been mentioned include:

MaxPro Trapping
PowerTrapper for Adobe^� Illustrator^� - Esko


Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh