adobe acrobat on mac how to print to distiller

ADOBE ACROBAT ON MAC HOW TO PRINT TO DISTILLER MAC OS X
ADOBE ACROBAT ON MAC HOW TO PRINT TO DISTILLER PDF
ADOBE ACROBAT ON MAC HOW TO PRINT TO DISTILLER UPGRADE

Every PDF we send out is a certified one. In Europe we have use the settings from the Ghent Group: SheetSpotHiRes, SheetCmykHiRes (for example). All the PDF’s I send out are PDF/X1-a compatible. Several large printers overhere in Europe have completely banned CS2 exported PDF files for this Steve: Problems happens with PDF 1.3 and inposition programs. It’s more efficient and faster, and it can include all the elements that PDF is capable of handling. The Adobe PDF printer will take care of creating it.īut, by all means, use the direct export method if at all possible.

When you click Print, you’ll be given an opportunity to save a PDF file. You can then use the Adobe PDF Settings menu to select from all the PDF settings files (presets) you’ll find in Distiller.

In the menu that shows Copies & Pages, select PDF Options.

ADOBE ACROBAT ON MAC HOW TO PRINT TO DISTILLER MAC OS X

You’re now in the Mac OS X Print dialog box. Ignore the warning message or turn it off, and click OK. To get to the settings files, click the Printer button at the bottom of the dialog box. This printer uses Distiller in the background, and uses exactly the same settings files as you’d choose in Distiller. Here’s how it works: (I’m describing it in Mac OS X it’s similar in Windows.) Choose File > Print, and select the Adobe PDF 7.0 printer (or the version that matches your copy of Acrobat). To use this, you need a copy of Acrobat 6, 7, or (in a couple months) 8 Professional. (Some of them also still refuse to accept TrueType fonts!) So if you can’t get your printer to try your directly-exported file, you should at least use Distiller faster by choosing the Adobe PDF printer. Many printers find it easier to stick with the tried-and-true Distiller method than experiment with something new. The good news is that InDesign CS2 no longer embeds CID-keyed fonts by default, so its directly-exported files are smaller and more compatible with older RIPs.īut another reason your printer may resist is just fear of the unknown.

ADOBE ACROBAT ON MAC HOW TO PRINT TO DISTILLER UPGRADE

Actually, it’s pretty likely your printer just hasn’t forked over for a RIP upgrade since all modern RIPs do support CID-keyed fonts. This method is necessary to store some fonts with a lot of glyphs like OpenType fonts. This font-storage method has been part of the PostScript specification for over a decade but some older, non-Adobe RIPs don’t support it. ( Techie alert: If the rest of this paragraph makes your eyes glaze over, just jump to the next paragraph!) Your printer may have an older RIP (raster image processor) which doesn’t support font encoding called CID-keyed or Identity H, which was used by InDesign CS and earlier when it created PDF files. So why does your printer suggest this? One possibility is that your printer may have had an InDesign directly-exported PDF file fail on their RIP because of a PostScript error.

Interactive elements (bookmarks, hyperlinks, etc.) are thrown away.

Forget about a color-managed workflow embedded color profiles are discarded.

(I discussed this in my post on Creating Accessible PDF Documents).

The file’s structure (called tagging) is stripped from the file.

It’s not possible to create PDF layers, useful for versioning, for example.

Not only that, but you’re going to lose a lot of information when you make PostScript instead of directly exporting PDF: Because PostScript is an older technology than PDF, here are some things that will be lost: It sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it? It’s two long steps instead of one short one. You process that PostScript file in Distiller using the PDF settings file your printer suggests. Make your choices in the Print dialog box, and then click Save instead of Print to create a PostScript file.

Then you can choose a PPD file (I’d suggest selecting your Adobe PDF printer if you have Acrobat) or Device Independent (removing any printer dependencies, useful for some postprocessing workflows like imposition). Just select PostScript from the Printer menu at the top of the dialog box. In InDesign and all the Creative Suite applications, it’s easy to create a PostScript file from the Print dialog box. Why do they ask you to do that, anyway? Is it really better?īefore I answer that question, let’s look at the alternative method your printer is suggesting. Instead, they say that you should create a PostScript file and process it through Distiller. But you may work with a printer who insists that you shouldn’t send them directly-exported PDF files. In last week’s post I discussed how using InDesign’s Export Adobe PDF feature and PDF presets make it quick and easy to create a PDF for a particular workflow?commercial printing, a desktop printer or the web.

Adobe acrobat on mac how to print to distiller