AGFA Apogee Prepress 8.5 - Normalizing PDF's from PDF/X-4 to PDF/X1a

[Magnus]

Any Apogee users here?

We are using AGFA Apogee Prepress 9 and I have problem with flattening/normalizing PDF's. I've contacted AGFA but they doesn't seem to understand what I want to achieve.
I want to set up a "simple" hot-ticket workflow that correctly converts different PDF's (Bad MS PDF's or perfect PDF/X-4) to CMYK-PDF's without transparency (PDF/X1a).

Doesn't it sound like the simplest task? AGFA think not...

If you got any solution for this I would love to hear about it.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

The GWG has some Apogee settings, perhaps they will do the job or can be altered to suit? Such as:

ApogeeX_4_CmykVeryHiRes_1v3

Application Settings



Hope this helps,


Stephen Marsh

 

[Magnus]

Thanks Stephen I will check it out!

I think the problem is how Apogee separates preflightprofiles and fixes (like flattening). It annoys me how this could not be a standard feature..

 

[Magnus]

I just looked at the Apogee setting you are referring to Stephen, and it was dated 2008. A lot have happened with Apogee Prepress since. I will try to get an answer from AGFA.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

Just for the hell of it, can you explain why you would want to ruin a PDF/X-4 file by converting it into a PDF/X-1a file. Any modern RIP or DFE will do a much better job with live transparency and color management than with a file in which transparency has been flattened (hopefully to device resolution) and all color prematurely converted to some CMYK color space?

- Dov

 

[Magnus]

Of course Dov!

We got about 10 different rips for our different digital presses in our five different print plants (caldera, feiry, hp indigo, creo, rampage, onyx, harlequin). As much as I would like, we can't make all this RIP's to handle PDF/X-4 files (or worse, strange word PDF's) exactly the same way. So our solution is to flatten/normalize the print files to CMYK (ISOCoated_v2) and flattening transparency (PDF/X1a). After the normalizing we send a rendered PDF proof to the client for review. Now we have a file that will print the same in all different printers.

For our offset production we are running with PDF/X-4 and it works great.

Make sense?

Best regards,

 

[Magnus]

No one using Apogee to do this?

 

[Magnus]

I finally got a solution!

I've been struggeling with the Preflight Action ap_Input tagging (Expert) and the Document Based mode in the PDF Render, but that approach apparently doesnt work in Export-workflows.

Did the following instead and got a good result:

Apogee Preflight 1: ap_Transparency flattening
Apogee Preflight 2: ap_Apply Color Settings
PDF Render: Mode: Custom (7.x compatible) Document Based does not work!
Set up the tagging rules as prefered in the PDF Render