pdfOutput Pro

Manual

pdfOutput Pro is the first commercially available plug-in that lets you output separations for PDF files from within Acrobat Exchange on any PostScript device. This means, you can separate PDF files even on older PostScript Level 1 imagesetters or any PostScript desktop printer. Furthermore, you also have the option to create separated PostScript files from your PDF files by printing separations to a file.

pdfOutput Pro offers the following features: ¥ various settings can be stored as so called profiles.

- crop and registration marks can be added to the pages, bleed area and length of crop and registration marks can be defined.

- any combination of plates can be output

- for any process or spot color all important characteristics can be individually defined (e.g., screen frequency and angle as well as dot shape)

- paper sizes as well as width of roll material (film) can can be custom defined. pdfOutput Pro only separates process colors and spot colors. It cannot separated colors defined in other color spaces, like RGB or Lab. It also cannot convert spot colors to process colors.

In order to be able to separate RGB or Lab coded colors we recommend using Quite A Box of Tricks, one of the most exciting plug-ins for Acrobat Exchange. Among many other extremely useful options, Quiet A Box Of Tricks lets you convert colors, that are coded in RGB or Lab, to process colors. It even offers this using ColorSync so that you have fully color managed color conversion. From our point of view, this is the most straightforward route to á dealing with files that contain RGB coded colors (like often found in PDF files generated from Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Ami Pro, Word Perfect, etc.). á using the separation for a given color in Microsoft Word as a pseudo spot color: primary colors like red, green, yellow or blue are converted to straight process color equivalents by using Quite A Box of TricksÕ ÔquickÕ color conversion. 100%

Red for example will then yield 100% Yellow plus 100% Magenta, so that you can use either the Magenta or Yellow plate to print some red spot color from it. á converting Lab colors to process color using the full power and quality of ColorSync, thus offering an important and easily handled step in a color managed workflow.

Copy the plug-in file pdfOutput Pro as well as the folder ÔpdfOutput Pro PrefsÕ into your -Plug-insÕ folder inside your Acrobat Exchange folder. You will need to quite Acrobat Exchange if it is currently running and relaunch it in order to activate the pdfOutput Pro plug-in.

You will then find a new menu entry under the File menu named pdfOutput Pro...

Launching pdfOutput Pro

pdfOutput Pro stores all settings in so called ÔprofilesÕ which can then later on be used with whatever document is currently open. You will find a list of currently defined profiles in pdfOutput ProÕs main dialog box (select the pdfOutput Pro menu item under the File menu to open this dialog box). Obviously that list will be empty when you open the dialog box the first time after having installed pdfOutput Pro, as you yet have to define profiles.

Given you currently have a document open, you would select the desired pdfOutput Pro profile and click on Run in order to execute the print job as defined in that profile.

Beyond the Run button there are a few more buttons: New opens a dialog box that lets you create and set up a new pdfOutput Pro profile.

Edit lets you change the settings for an already existing pdfOutput Pro profile.

Duplicate creates a copy of an existing pdfOutput Pro profile. Remove deletes an existing pdfOutput Pro profile. You may only delete one profile at a time.

Ad hoc makes it possible to modify an existing pdfOutput Pro profile only for the execution of the next print job (changes to the settings are not stored).

Done closes this dialog box once you are done with setting up your pdfOutput Pro profiles.

The pdfOutput Pro profiles dialog box as shown below lets you edit all the settings for a pdfOutput Pro profile. Its various parameters are explained in the following sections.

Name and comment

Whenever creating a new profile you will have to give it a name and optionally enter a comment. We recommend you use self explanatory names and comments so its easy for you <Eth> and possibly other users <Eth> to figure out resp. remember for what kind of print job a given profile had been set up. The comment will always show up in pdfOutput Pro's main dialog box for the list entry currently selected.

Paper size

The Paper size popup menu lets you specify the desired size of paper or film on your output device. pdfOutput Pro comes with a set of often used paper sizes, but you can at any time define your own paper sizes. In order to do this, select the popup menu entry named Edit... which will present you with a dialog box for creating new or editing existing paper size definitions.

pdfOutput Pro profile options

The Paper size popup menu contains your own and various predefined paper size definitions

The buttons New..., Edit... and Remove let you set up the desired paper and film size definitions. The New... and Edit... buttons will open an edit dialog box for defining the size of paper or film:

- for sheet oriented output you can define the size of the output material by specifying its width and height. Measurements units will be used as set up in General preferences for Acrobat Exchange.

- for roll material like film you can define the width of that material, and also specify how much to advance that material after the actual page to be imaged as well as how much to offset the page's contents on that material in the horizontal direction.

Width is the width of the roll material

Paper offset defines by how much the page's contents is shifted to the right on the roll material

Page gap specifies by how much to advance the roll material after having imaged the page's contents.

Scaling

Lets you indicate by what percentage to scale the page's contents.

Offset

Lets you move the page to be imaged including its crop and registration marks on the output material in horizontal and vertical direction.

Important: When Paper size is defined for roll material/film, these values will be added to whatever value has been set up for Paper offset.

90° Rotation/Mirror/Negative

Will rotate by 90°, mirror the page and/or invert the page's contents.

Maintain halftone information

In case your PDF document contains information how to rasterize certain elements you can decide if you want to maintain that information as contained in the PDF document, or want to override it by the values you set up in the current pdfOutput Pro profile.

Separation

In order to create separated plates for a PDF document, you have to check the Separation option. Next, you have to define how to separate by using one of the options in the popup menu next to the Separation check box.

As already stated earlier on, pdfOutput Pro only supports the separation of process and spot colors. In case you have to separate colors coded in RGB or Lab, you will have to use an additional tool available as Quite A Box Of Tricks. pdfOutput Pro as it comes out of the box has a few predefined settings for creating separations. You may at any time add your own settings, eg. to define your combinations of specific spot colors or enter your preferred screening angles for process colors.

Important: pdfOutput Pro will output a page for every plate indicated, even if n that plate nothing happens to be imaged.

Choosing the Separation popup menu entry named Edit..., you will be presented with a dialog box that lets you set up your own settings for separations. The buttons New..., Edit... and Remove let you set up the desired definitions for a given separation setting. The New... and Edit... buttons will open an edit dialog box for defining a specific separation setup:

Create/edit separation setups

The Edit separation dialog box will list all the currently known colors. Without further editing, this means you will see a list with the four process colors, as well as an entry named Spot colors (generic) which will be used for all spot colors that happen to be used in a given PDF file. You can edit the settings for every color, as well as add new spot colors.

The check mark at the beginning of a line indicates, if that color will be output or not. A check mark on front of the Spot colors (generic) entry will output plates for every spot color in a given PDF file.

If you want to be more specific when it comes to creating separations for spot color, you will have to create new spot color definitions, where the name for a spot color definition must exactly match the name of the respective spot color in the file.

The settings for a given plate consist of the parameters screen frequency, screen angle, and dot shape.

Crop and registration marks

By checking this check box and entering adequate values for offset and length of these marks you can add crop and registration marks to the output of your PDF pages (regardless if you are creating separations or printing composites).

Page range

pdfOutput Pro lets you specify a page range for a given pdfOutput Pro profile. This comes in handy when you have requirements like only print the first page of a document or always print all pages except the first 2 pages etc. Any value that is higher than actual number of pages in a PDF file will be regarded as the page number for the last page in the document. Thus, specifying print from page 2 to page 9999 will always print all pages in a document except its first page.

Output

You the option to either send your output to an output device (printer, image setter, spooler, etc.) or to write it to a PostScript file. When printing to an output device, pdfOutput Pro will send the output to the device currently set up as default on your system. When opting to write the output to a PostScript file, you have the option to automatically store the PostScript file in the same folder as the PDF file, or to be presented at runtime with a Save as... dialog box.

Combining the power of pdfOutput Pro with that of Quite A Box of Tricks gives you an extremely useful range of options.

Among many other things Quite A Box of Tricks lets you convert RGB and Lab colors to process colors. This has various essential implications

Print separations for documents created with Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Ami Pro, WordPerfect, etc.

If you ever had the requirement to output separated plates for files that come from Microsoft Word and the like, you will easily appreciate the following scenario: ask your customer to convert her Microsoft Word file to PDF (which will among many other useful advantages freeze the shape of the document and avoid text reflow), or if not feasible, convert it to PDF yourself by first printing to a PostScript file and then using Distiller to convert it to a PDF file open that PDF file in Acrobat Exchange and use Quite A Box Of Tricks color conversion function to convert RGB coded colors in the document to process colors. If you intend to print spot colors, e.g., a specific red for something that had been colored as plain Red in Microsoft Word, use the Fast, built fixed conversion in order to get 100% Magenta and 100% Yellow for 100% Red, so you can later on use the Magenta or Yellow plate for printing the red spot color.

Make sure to check Treat RGB as greyscale as most applications like Microsoft Word encode black text and graphic elements in RGB values (which would give you something like 100% Magenta, 100% Yellow, 100% Cyan, 0% Black instead of the expected, more desirable 100% Black only on conversion to process colors).

If you intend to convert colors to their best achievable process color equivalent (which may usually be true once you have photos and the like n your document), use ICC profile based conversion (takes slightly more time, though it usually does not make too much of a difference in terms of performance) and indicate the ICC profile for your intended output device. Quite A Box Of Tricks will regard any RGB color as RGB (standardized RGB; the evolving standard for colors as displayed on a typical monitor), and will perfectly handle any color that happens to be coded in Lab.

Once you have converted all RGB and Lab colors in your document you can now use pdfOutput Pro to easily create separated plates as desired.

System requirements

Macintosh: Mac OS 7.6.2 or higher <Eth> Acrobat Exchange/version 3.01 or newer

Windows: Windows 95/98/NT4.0 <Eth> Acrobat Exchange/version 3.01 or newer

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Idea: Olaf Drummer

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Manual: Andreas Arcularius and Olaf Drümmer Special thanks to ZMG, Printnet Schweiz und citysatz Berlin