Application Help

File Formats within Applications:

Common problems to avoid:

There are some common problems that are easy to avoid if you know what to look for. Avoid linking and embedding objects more than two layers deep. This used to be a big problem with EPS files in years past. If you imported a “place able EPS” within ad or layout, then used that new layout to create another new place able EPS file, and placed that new EPS in your final larger document, you could end up with broken links to the embedded high-res artwork, or if you used it on a different computer you may not know which fonts are missing or how to correct the problem.

A modern EPS problem occurred recently when one of our customers used DCS 1.0 EPS files in Quark Express. No matter how they tried to produce a Print quality composite PDF file, the images always came through at a low resolution. The problem rests with the DCS EPS file type. When you produce a DCS file, PhotoShop (or your other image editing package) produces individual files for each separation, and then produces a low-resolution place able EPS file that links to the separation files upon printing. When you print the file to a composite device Quark Express only sends the low-res place able image because it cannot combine the separations to send them. The high-resolution image can only be accessed when you print separations. The solution to the problem is actually quite simple, open the place able file in your image editing software, and then save it to a standard EPS file format (in PhotoShop, just use the PhotoShop EPS file format). This way you don’t break your links, and all of the image information will be sent to the printer at the time of printing, weather or not you are printing composite or separations.

Internet based graphics: Typically graphics on the Internet are too low of resolution to produce good clean printing. This has to do with the basic nature of the Internet. To be quick, images must contain as little data as possible, especially if your target audience will be viewing your page over a “Dial-up” connection. Internet browsers can only display colors within the RGB color space, while you can save many of the file formats in CMYK (such as JPG), a normal Internet browser cannot display them. GIF images present a special problem. The GIF file format uses indexed color space, and is not always interpreted properly by PostScript printers.

Postscript and PDF files:

Postscript and PDF files can be created by almost any application on any platform. The important thing is make sure the settings used will include all the information necessary to do a good job when it is time to print. Postscript is a printer programming language that is standard in the printing industry; today we are currently on the 3rd generation of the Postscript language referred to as Postscript Level 3.

PDF files take this technology a step further by allowing users to see their files on the screen, or have newer postscript rips (raster image processors) interpret them directly. PDF files can handle transparent and semi-transparent objects without converting them to raster objects first. Postscript and PDF files can be opened by some graphic applications, directly, and edited to a point depending upon how they were created, and how much information they contain.

Postscript and PDF are industry standards, when properly prepared anybody with professional equipment should be able to output quality work with from either format. PDF files include compression routines that make them considerably smaller than Postscript files and are far more portable. Postscript files need to reference the proper PPD file to output correctly.

Creating Postscript files: If you are an accomplished Graphic artist, and know how to prepare PostScript files for our use you can download the PPD from here. If you are working on a windows system and you need to know how to install the printer driver follow these instructions.

Download the installer from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1500
Run the installer file
When the installer asks which port to print to select file
When the installer asks which ppd to use select the one you downloaded from us.
If it asks you may need to restart the computer to ensure that everything is good to go.

Creating PDF files:
MAC: One nice thing about Mac OSX is that it has Acrobat Distiller built in. The trick is to select the appropriate settings. If you plan to do single or process color work, select PDF-X compatibility. This will make all images 300DPI, embed fonts and force the colorspace to CMYK mode. In your print dialog box you can select grayscale for single color work, or color for full color work. If you intend to use spot colors set the compatibility mode to PDF-X1a. If you are not using Mac OSX please upgrade. If your computer is not capable of running Mac OSX then I suggest you replace it. You can buy a nice Mini-Mac for less than $500 that runs OSX and would be faster than any Mac that cannot run Mac OSX. The only problem with this solution is you may need to upgrade your applications.

Windows: You can download free PDF creation tools from www.primopdf.com , www.pdf995.com, and then there are more advanced version that you can customize and edit the settings on also available from www.broadgun.com , www.primopdf.com , www.jawspdf.com , www.adobe.com , and others. Simply go to your favorite search engine and type in PDF tools.

Either: If you are actually distilling using a full copy of Adobe Acrobat Distiller you can use the Press Quality setting.