Publisher to PDF?

[DCurry]

Some of the quality print firms I have relationships with refuse to have anything to do with Publisher documents and I don't blame them.

That's a dumb move these days, but I guess if those printers have enough work pouring in they feel like they can turn away money, more power to them. Much wiser to do as Matt says and figure out how to work with it. It's not really that difficult once you learn how Publisher "thinks." True, it can throw a curveball now and then, but what application doesn't? I'd still rather have a Pub doc to work from than PowerPoint or Excel.

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Copy shops seem willing to accept anything so I guess Publisher will live on.

If you're just printing out to an Phaser or Digital Press, 4-color registration isn't as much of a problem unless the type is really small. The average consumer probably doesn't even know the difference.

I agree with Matt. There are tools out there that can digest and fix an Publisher RGB file, both manually and automatically.

Greg

 

[chrisg42]

Once you learn how to deal with these files it becomes easy and opens a whole new market to serve. The tools are there to make this much easier than it is made out to be. If you don't want the money someone else will be happy to take it. Many online printers make a lot of money off this market segment that is ignored because some shops decide to give up early. A modest investment in time, tools and education can have big rewards. *IF* you choose that is.

We certainly don't turn Publisher files away and find there is a good niche market in dealing with the types of file that some other printer (still) refuse or charge at a premium. We certainly encourage users to make their own PDFs, which is straightforward in the 2007/2010 versions using the built-in converters. If we need to make the PDFs then, as Matt suggested, we always keep colours in RGB. Conversion to CMYK is done using Quite a Box of Tricks or PitStop. Set up correctly, these will these will make the RGB black into 100%K.

Problems with making PDFs from Publisher usually focus on the (over)use of transparency and/or WordArt. Some jobs which produce incorrect PDFs via the built-in converter will produce usable PDFs when printed via Distiller

 

[bryanlodger123]

ScanPDF is also a good one to convert batch files.