PrimoPDF

[eyetech]

Anyone here used one of these? It's a free service online for creating PDFs from most Windoz apps.

Question is what flavour of PDF gets created? High Quality, Print Quality, Press Quality?

We had one today visually it seems OK (apart from no bleeds and being tiled into 4: its only a 6pp DL flyer).

Also the file size is a bit bloated at 17mb - we'd expect around 2-3mb at most.

TIA

 

[disbellj]

Re: PrimoPDF

From what I've seen, it creates larger PDFs; they are converted to CMYK (assuming input of sRGB IEC61966-2.1 from Office, just like Adobe's PDF/X-1a in PDFMaker plugin for Office). I have made them and tested them (seeing the color be close to what I got from using PDFMaker), and used them when I got them from customers and they work well enough. Just not editable like a PDF/X-4 (I can't remember if it all becomes CT or not, but I can print them). I think when using the Press Quality (or whatever the highest quality one was named), the images are not compressed or downsampled, so the quality is what the original file's quality was.

Don

 

[mattbeals]

Re: PrimoPDF

It's basically "high quality" and I think that they only use flate compression. I haven't used it in a while. It works well. As long as I get images, embedded fonts and RGB I'm fine with what ever PDF I can get. I can handle the rest.

 

[Gerhard]

Re: PrimoPDF

Hi,
I don't think that this is the right tool for producing print ready PDF files. It is for free, that's the good thing but your results will just not make you happy at the end.
Using professional and automated tools like Speedflow from OneVision will help you spending your time on more important things then creating a print ready PDF file.

For more info check: www.onevision.com

Gerhard

 

[Mark Hoffman]

Re: PrimoPDF

Hi Frank,
I uninstalled with the HP CD, and restarted then installed with the
CD. Maybe I will download the latest driver and start again.

Errors attached. Obviously the files it says it can't load are
there.??!!

Mark

 

[bryan yeager]

Re: PrimoPDF

Most of the free PDF virtual printer programs out there (such as PrimoPDF, CutePDF, etc.) are solely based upon Ghostscript, which is an open-source (i think) PostScript/PDF interpreter. From my experience, they do create bloated PDFs that Acrobat or even the "Print to PDF" function in Mac OS X could create much more efficiently. Also, I've had problems with not a lot of control in creating the PDFs in terms of resolution, compression, and color.

For printing office documents and such, these virtual printers are fine. However, for PDFs that are going to press, I would advise your customers to use a professional-level program to create PDFs. Obviously Acrobat and Distiller come to mind, since they have the highest probability to adhering to PDF standards, but there are also other solutions out there as well. Even CutePDF Pro, which comes at minimal cost, may be a better solution to produce somewhat better PDFs.