PDF Workflow Question

[Danny Whitehead]

(the missing text was filled with the same color as the background behind it but instead of making the text a 50% screen, she made it 50% transparent).

Surely that would be invisible regardless of viewer or overprint preview?

It's not applicable to this situation, but I tend to use the Multiply blend mode a lot these days instead of overprint, as it doesn't require overprint preview to display correctly.

The vast majority of our work is only ever proofed as PDF. FWIW, I put this in the footer of all my proof emails:

PDF files are best viewed with Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. Other PDF readers and web browsers may display inaccurately. Download Acrobat Reader for free by clicking the above link. Please set 'Overprint Preview' to 'Always' (Edit > Preferences > Page Display on Windows, and Adobe Acrobat Reader > Preferences > Page Display on Mac OS).

With the 'Get Adobe Acrobat Reader' logo and link. I'd love to see some stats on how many customers are still viewing them incorrectly, but I imagine it's a pretty high percentage.

I guess another way would be to send truly RIPped proof PDFs. There's an annoying tendency at our other branch to call PDFs that have gone through Prinergy's Refiner as 'ripped proofs', when they're nothing of the sort.

 

[Danny Whitehead]

You should be specifying PDF/X-4 which normally would show overprint preview on within Acrobat. If the user specifies PDF/X-4 export from InDesign or save from Illustrator and specifies the PDF/X-4 joboptions, when viewed in Acrobat, any overprint issues should be fairly apparent simply by paging through the document.

Has there ever been any discussion about changing Acrobat's default to have overprint preview switched on for all PDFs, not just PDF/X?

 

[prepressdork]

Danny Whitehead That is what I thought was rather strange. Upon looking at the "missing" text with Pitstop, the form object inside the text (the text was outlined) had a blending mode of "Screen" and overprint settings were completely disabled however when I disabled Overprint Preview, the text appeared.

Regarding what you added to your proof emails, I implemented something very similar last week:

For best results when viewing a PDF proof in Adobe Reader or Acrobat, go to Preferences > Page Display and ensure Use Overprint Preview is set to Always.

After reading your post, I think mine needs improved upon

I'm also working with a programmer to see if there is a way to drop a PDF onto an app that will embed some JavaScript into the PDF that checks to see if Overprint Preview is set to Always when the PDF is opened and if not, display a dialog box.

Best regards,
pd

 

[Dov Isaacs]

Has there ever been any discussion about changing Acrobat's default to have overprint preview switched on for all PDFs, not just PDF/X?

The reason why overprint preview is not defaulted on in the general case is that there is a tremendous performance overhead hit taken when overprint preview is enabled. The reality is that except for overprinting CMYK=(0,0,0,1) text, overprint is not that commonly used since the advent of transparency in the PDF imaging model. (In the “old days” overprint was used as a poor man's transparency!) The rationale for the current defaults is that overprint is primarily a graphic arts feature for printing and that since PDF/X creation is almost universally available from graphic arts applications, overprint preview of PDF would effectively be the default for those who really care about it and that other users would not bear the overhead that overprint preview imposes on Acrobat and/or Reader performance.

That having been said, this is yet another good argument for content creators for print using PDF/X and preferably PDF/X-4 for their PDF needs.

- Dov