A tip to get good printouts from PDF files

Useful shortcuts, tips and techniques
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Giovanni
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon May 03, 2004 10:28 am
Location: Ilexsoft HQ

A tip to get good printouts from PDF files

Post by Giovanni »

Hi,
apparently the handling of PDF files when you are going to print is not so easy and, above all, it is not a task everyone can do without a bit of experience. I had a conversation with an experienced graphic professional in a printing house about the best way to handle PDF files and got a precious tip:

A PDF file created by Apple applications, such as the Print function used by HighDesign, is actually an RGB file which needs to be opened by Adobe Acrobat or by other specific applications as an RGB Tiff file: then that file must be converted into a CMYK file before sending it to the printer.

Without this step, PDF files are often different on printouts from what you see on screen: no matching of fonts, print resolution, line weights, and hatches and missing of graphic objects: those issues occur even with files created by Pages and Preview and are not connected to HighDesign itself.

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alexwhite
Posts: 266
Joined: Tue May 04, 2004 4:45 pm
Location: Indianapolis USA
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Re: A tip to get good printouts from PDF files

Post by alexwhite »

wow - that is indeed a priceless tip. there's been many times rushing to the printer before a meeting and we're all stymied by why certain lines are in the PDF on the screen but not the paper!

When I look at export options in HD, I see the export to tiff option - do you know whether this is a RGB tiff? Seems like if we are supposed to open it as a tiff file we need to save it as one. I'm also not able to find a way to save as a CMYK file for the printer... at least not in the native Apple Preview app.

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