PDF/X-1A

PDF/X-1A

[Antoine Junod]

Dear List,

A lot of you guys helped me through the process of setting a little
booklet and I have to say I was proud of the result (44 full color
pages with a lot of pictures and texts). Thanks for that.

I'm now in the process of printing that booklet. I was happy to send
my beautiful pdf to the printer for 250 copies, pdf file that has been
refused because not in a PDF/X-1A format.

I googled a bit and learned a bit about that: wikipedia has a good
article [0] on the topic and there is LaTeX package (pdfx) for pdfTeX
that has a good doc about that [1]. In short, PDF/X-1A is a set of
rules and subset of PDF that ensures that the document will be see
exactly the same for the editor and the printer (embed every fonts,
use only CMYK and son on).

Here is my question: is it possible to produce such documents with
ConTeXt? It is quite frustrating to provide my printer with huge jpeg
files.

Thanks for the reply,
-AJ

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/X
[1] http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/pdfx/pdfx.pdf
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Re: PDF/X-1A

[Hans Hagen]

Antoine Junod wrote:
> Dear List,
> 
> A lot of you guys helped me through the process of setting a little
> booklet and I have to say I was proud of the result (44 full color
> pages with a lot of pictures and texts). Thanks for that.
> 
> I'm now in the process of printing that booklet. I was happy to send
> my beautiful pdf to the printer for 250 copies, pdf file that has been
> refused because not in a PDF/X-1A format.
> 
> I googled a bit and learned a bit about that: wikipedia has a good
> article [0] on the topic and there is LaTeX package (pdfx) for pdfTeX
> that has a good doc about that [1]. In short, PDF/X-1A is a set of
> rules and subset of PDF that ensures that the document will be see
> exactly the same for the editor and the printer (embed every fonts,
> use only CMYK and son on).
> 
> Here is my question: is it possible to produce such documents with
> ConTeXt? It is quite frustrating to provide my printer with huge jpeg
> files.

the pdf code produced by pdftex/luatex is rather stupid in the sense 
that it is rather compliant

you can control color to some extend using settings like

\setupcolors[rgb=no]

also, you can avoid interactive features

what does the pdf validator of acrobat say? maybe the printer is bit 
picky on aspects that don't really matter (like having some specific key 
in a dictionary telling thisorthat)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
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Re: PDF/X-1A

[Sebastien Mengin]

Le 24 fév 2009 à 02:27, Hans Hagen a écrit:
> the pdf code produced by pdftex/luatex is rather stupid in the sense 
> that it is rather compliant
> 
> you can control color to some extend using settings like
> 
> \setupcolors[rgb=no]

The OP should also control the color model (cmyk) and the
size/resolution of every picture included. These points are often 
causes of errors.

-- 
Sébastien
http://edilibre.net
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Re: PDF/X-1A

[Antoine Junod]

Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl> writes:

> Antoine Junod wrote:
>> Dear List,
>> A lot of you guys helped me through the process of setting a little
>> booklet and I have to say I was proud of the result (44 full color
>> pages with a lot of pictures and texts). Thanks for that.
>> I'm now in the process of printing that booklet. I was happy to send
>> my beautiful pdf to the printer for 250 copies, pdf file that has been
>> refused because not in a PDF/X-1A format.
>> I googled a bit and learned a bit about that: wikipedia has a good
>> article [0] on the topic and there is LaTeX package (pdfx) for pdfTeX
>> that has a good doc about that [1]. In short, PDF/X-1A is a set of
>> rules and subset of PDF that ensures that the document will be see
>> exactly the same for the editor and the printer (embed every fonts,
>> use only CMYK and son on).
>> Here is my question: is it possible to produce such documents with
>> ConTeXt? It is quite frustrating to provide my printer with huge jpeg
>> files.
>
> the pdf code produced by pdftex/luatex is rather stupid in the sense
> that it is rather compliant

I'm not sure that simple is a synonym of complient in that case...

> you can control color to some extend using settings like
>
> \setupcolors[rgb=no]

Okay I did it but it is still not accepted by my printer (with no
other details than 'not pdf/x-a1...').

> what does the pdf validator of acrobat say? maybe the printer is bit
> picky on aspects that don't really matter (like having some specific
> key in a dictionary telling thisorthat)

I have sadly no such tool. And I can't give the pdf to the world
because of some information that it contains... (adresses and phone
numbers of kids).

I'll povide them with jpg. But that's not really cool.

A+
-AJ
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Re: PDF/X-1A

[Antoine Junod]

Sebastien Mengin <sebastien-listes@edilibre.net> writes:

> Le 24 fév 2009 à 02:27, Hans Hagen a écrit:
>> the pdf code produced by pdftex/luatex is rather stupid in the sense 
>> that it is rather compliant
>> 
>> you can control color to some extend using settings like
>> 
>> \setupcolors[rgb=no]
>
> The OP should also control the color model (cmyk) and the
> size/resolution of every picture included.

And what exactly should I check that is related with the size /
resolution of the pictures I included in the document?

By the way, is there any way to check PDF/X-1A compatibility without a
proprietary tool?

All the best,
-AJ

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Re: PDF/X-1A

[Hans Hagen]

Antoine Junod wrote:

> Okay I did it but it is still not accepted by my printer (with no
> other details than 'not pdf/x-a1...').

just ask him for a printed report; validators can do that

Hans

-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: PDF/X-1A

[luigi scarso]

> By the way, is there any way to check PDF/X-1A compatibility without a
> proprietary tool?
AFIK none.
BTW pitstop and adobe are the most important players in this area,
so a certificate made from pitstop/adobe
has more credibility than that one make from an open source tool

-- 
luigi
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Re: PDF/X-1A

[Tobias Burnus]

Antoine Junod wrote:
>> Okay I did it but it is still not accepted by my printer (with no
>> other details than 'not pdf/x-a1...').
You could also try to use Ghostscript with PDF/X3 option, cf.
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Ps2pdf.htm#PDFX

Example command is:

gs -dPDFX -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOOUTERSAVE -dUseCIEColor
-sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out-x3.pdf PDFX_def.ps input.ps

If I understood it correctly, one can also replace "input.ps" by
"input.pdf".

(Note: Completely untested.)

Tobias
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Re: PDF/X-1A

[J.A.J. Pater]

Tobias Burnus schreef:
 > You could also try to use Ghostscript with PDF/X3 option, cf.
 > http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Ps2pdf.htm#PDFX
 >
 > Example command is:
 >
 > gs -dPDFX -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOOUTERSAVE -dUseCIEColor
 > -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out-x3.pdf PDFX_def.ps input.ps
 >
 > If I understood it correctly, one can also replace "input.ps" by
 > "input.pdf".
 >
 > (Note: Completely untested.)
 >

Maybe you could use this shareware programm: http://www.pstill.com/

Info from this site:

\startquotation
"Convert to PDF, PDF/X and PDF/A
Easy and high-quality EPS, PS, PDF and several raster image formats to 
PDF conversion _on Windows and MacOS X_, able to concat multiple files 
of all types in the output, also as mixed set. You can just drop in some 
PS, PDF and e.g. JPEG files and PStill will create one PDF from the 
input set. PStill can output also to PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3, a focused 
subset of PDF for 'pre-press' work. PStill knows about CMYK and spot 
colors and can handle overprinting. Starting with version 1.72.18 PStill 
also creates PDF/A-1b, a special version of PDF for archiving purposes."
\stopquotation

\startquotation
"The Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX, AIX and HPUX versions are free only 
for personal/private and educational use. Commercial users (means: any 
for-profit use) must register and order a commercial type license key. 
The software will run without any functional restrictions but will 
display a notice on the console."
\stopquotation

 From the above the impression could be raised that conversion to 
PDF/X-1a only works on Windows and MacOS X,
but according to this post it seems to work on linux as well (?):
http://www.stone.com/stoneforum/viewtopic.php?t=171

Note: Completely untested by me.

Please inform us if it worked.

You could also try one of these more commercial services: 
http://www.pdfxreport.com/doku.php?id=en:tools

Thanks,

Adriaan.


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