Opening PDF files in Illustrator

[shorty83]

Hello Shorty83,

Oh you've gone and done it now....

http://prepression.blogspot.co.uk/20...ts-of-pdf.html

In short Illustrator can make loads of changes to the artwork (CMYK values in particular) in the background without telling you.

It depends on the work you are printing.

If the PDF was created in Illustrator and saved as a Illustrator Default PDF you should be ok.

A lot of the work I do is Black variable data so not a lot can go wrong (and the bits that do are easy to spot and correct)

Read up on the subject and have a think about the artwork you handle and check out if it's effected or not.

AH, I see.... Thanks for the info. Well since my only option for outputting plate files to my plate maker's hot folder is through Esko which is done in illustrator then I guess I have to break the rules

 

[dabob]

Actually there is no way to keep a determined pre press monkey from getting into a pdf with illustrator . . .if you look around the web you can find apps that will unprotect a password protected pdf . . . like they say . . what one man can do another can undo . . . . .

 

[Danny Whitehead]

if you look around the web you can find apps that will unprotect a password protected pdf

Including, inexplicably, Apple Preview.

 

[Possumgal]

That’s the crazy thing, they will spend tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars dealing with lost productivity trying to move 50gig files around, when having the proper tools only costs fractions of that. Go figure. I think we have all been there and done that with employers that can’t see the wood for the trees. The cost of PitStop is obvious to them, but the cost of lost productivity and productive hours is not. Now that PitStop can be purchased via subscription, the old argument about capital expenditure is no longer valid, it is now an operational cost like paying the phone or power bill.


Stephen Marsh

You've got it. I had one of those "if we buy it they will come" guys who buys a machine and waits for the customers to come flocking in but gripes about buying felt tip markers. As to PDFs, I rarely get any from the customers, it's usually Publisher or Word files that are converted by the CSR to a PDF, then sent to me to fool with. I don't open them in Illustrator unless I have to, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

 

[WishIWasScotty]

Including, inexplicably, Apple Preview.

I had been musing that Mac computers were preferred for mostly that reason.

 

[Werby]

How can you use Apple preview to unprotect a PDF? I just tried it and it required a password to do anything that was restricted, including saving and exporting. What's the trick?

 

[Joe]

I think that trick was removed by Apple around OS X 10.7 or so.

 

[Danny Whitehead]

I think that trick was removed by Apple around OS X 10.7 or so.

Still present in Yosemite. Baffling, really.

 

[Werby]

Still present in Yosemite. Baffling, really.

What's still present in Yosemite? I've tried opening or saving or printing a password protected PDF in Apple Preview on 2 machines running OS 10.10.5 and no luck. What exact steps are you doing to get around the password?

 

[Danny Whitehead]

Opening a secured PDF (everything but printing is disabled) with Preview and pressing Command-S. The result is an unsecured PDF, but I dread to think what else has changed in it.

Maybe it doesn't work with all PDFs, but it does with the first secured one I found on my system.

 

[Werby]

Maybe just old ones? The PDFs I'm working with won't save.

 

[Joe]

Preview on OS X 10.10.5 won't do it for me.

 

[naplajoie2000]

WOW...Prepress Monkey. That is what you call us. I take every damn one of your PDFs through Esko Packedge and that's when I find out just how little the designer knows about the process of printing and how to properly prepare your files for that medium. I see RGB, no bleed, images that don't cross over from page to page, images so jagged and low-res that there is no possible way to fix them, designers (allegedly) that couldn't build a gate-fold document to save their lives, missing embedded fonts, PDFs that have been so chunked out by saving the files with wrong profiles, and the list goes on. Thank us for not printing what you supplied us - we are saving you from yourself every single time!

 

[Danny Whitehead]

WOW...Prepress Monkey. That is what you call us. I take every damn one of your PDFs through Esko Packedge and that's when I find out just how little the designer knows about the process of printing and how to properly prepare your files for that medium. I see RGB, no bleed, images that don't cross over from page to page, images so jagged and low-res that there is no possible way to fix them, designers (allegedly) that couldn't build a gate-fold document to save their lives, missing embedded fonts, PDFs that have been so chunked out by saving the files with wrong profiles, and the list goes on. Thank us for not printing what you supplied us - we are saving you from yourself every single time!

And there's the problem - all those poorly prepared files lead printers into policies that assume all incoming files are poorly prepared.

You mention both RGB and the wrong profiles (which I presume means conversion to and working in the wrong CMYK profile). Doesn't the former potentially solve the latter, by letting you convert to the appropriate CMYK profile?

 

[dabob]

WOW...Prepress Monkey. That is what you call us. I take every damn one of your PDFs through Esko Packedge and that's when I find out just how little the designer knows about the process of printing and how to properly prepare your files for that medium. I see RGB, no bleed, images that don't cross over from page to page, images so jagged and low-res that there is no possible way to fix them, designers (allegedly) that couldn't build a gate-fold document to save their lives, missing embedded fonts, PDFs that have been so chunked out by saving the files with wrong profiles, and the list goes on. Thank us for not printing what you supplied us - we are saving you from yourself every single time!

naplajoie . . . yes that's what I call myself and all of us working in the trenches . . . I'm sorry if you took umbrage at my remark . . . but that's what I think . . . .

 

[Tim-Ellis]

I am a Pre-Press Monkey and I am proud of it.

We were they ones NASA sent up before Buzz and Neil. But I digress....

Ok.

Q 1) How do you stop people from editing your PDF in Illustrator?

A 1) You can't.

so...

Q 2) How do you warn / educate / make like difficult for people you try to edit your PDF in Illustrator?


I like the idea of the "WARNING" statement. Maybe a watermark? Maybe a hidden layer?

What if you renamed a font and called it "DONT EDIT IN ILLUSTRATOR" and left a single character or it as live type in your document (hidden in a locked layer) so the missing font dialog box flashes up everytime?


(As I remember it, you had to open the PDF preview first. Go Command & P to print and then chose save an PDF in the Print Dialog box. It used to work and then they fixed it)

 

[David Milisock]

Dov Issacs, EDUCATING the masses has had the same result for the last 30 years. THE SAME PROBLEMS over and over, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. But I gues we have to try.

 

[David Milisock]

Joe unfortunately rasterizing Adobe PDF files in MANY CASES is the only financially viable alternative. the client is a CHEAP ASS, the time frame is VERY SHORT and the client wouldn't know quality if it bit them. I know shops where that is the standard work flow for PDF files. TOO BAD! I love kittens!

 

[David Milisock]

shorty83 opening a PDF file in AI is asking for issues, if the file was saved with AI editing capabilities then you have a native file. You need fonts sometimes links it's BS in spades.

We just bought a CJV150-130 Mimaki with Rasterlik 6.6 and of course the morons who service it wanted us to install FineCut which is a CorelDraw and Illustrator plug-in not even knowing that EVERY FEATURE was built into the RIP. If I was that stupid I would have deserved to lose money. We dump PRINT READY PDF files from our servers to the RIP after all it's the 21st century.

Every time I turn around I find that industry leaders and technicians are living 25 years in the past.

 

[David Milisock]

To all, do you remember before the ladies worked with us and we were proud to be strippers?