Detroit InDesign User Group

Meeting Notes Archive

November 8, 2007

Since there were so many new attendees, we reviewed the “perks” of being an IDUG member—discounts on books and training materials as well as the many resources available on the IDUG Web site.

All submissions for the annual calendar/holiday card design challenge, sponsored by ULITHO, were shown, with a wide range of designs to choose from. Congratulations to Celia McCulloch who will receive a copy of InDesign CS3, courtesy of Adobe.

Feature presentation
Kevin R. Donley, VP of Sales & Marketing at Grand River Printing & Imaging, showed how Acrobat 8 and PDF/X files save valuable time and reduce costly rework on printing projects.

Making Print -ready Documents With Acrobat 8 and PDF/x
A presentation by Kevin R. Donley, Grand River Printing & Imaging
Download [PDF: 367 KB]

Some of the presentation highlights:

The breakdown of file formats received at Grand River Printing in 2006: PageMaker-7%, QuarkXPress-15%, InDesign-42%, PDF-29%, PDF/X-1a-7%.
PDF/X is the ISO standard for high-resolution printing and PDF/X-1a is a SWOP color space. CMYK colors are preserved; in fact all elements are converted to CMYK, even if there were RGB elements in the file.
PDF/X doesn't support live transparency—it must be flattened before or during PDF file creation. However there was a discussion on the new PDFx/4 which does.
InDesign CS, CS2, and CS3 can generate a PDF/X-1a directly through File > Export.
It’s always a good idea to preflight your PDF/X-1a in Acrobat 8 to make sure the document won’t encounter any problems on the press: Print Publication > Preflight > Check for PDF/X Compliance > PDF/X-1a and see that you have all green check marks and no red Xs.

Kevin showed how PDFs were generated through several software programs and how not all of them passed the compliance test. He demonstrated the process necessary to achieve green check marks in files that had “missing title” problems by going to Document Properties in Acrobat 8 and giving the file name a Title, you’ll get notification that this will permanently change the file, and you click OK.

Another useful demonstration was how to view your files with simulated paper qualities in Acrobat through Preflight > Output Preview. You can try simulated paper color or simulated black ink, check overprinting and the user of rich black in your files. He showed, via the PDF created from Microsoft Word, how to fix the non-overprint problem for black text and also the rich black text problem. This of course, is not a problem in PDFs generated from InDesign.

He also showed the Advanced Tools in Print Production and how we can enable the ability for others to make comments in Acrobat Reader from Acrobat 8.

Wayne from the audience warned us that “Overprint Preview” is not checked by default and that we should turn it on in our Acrobat preferences when proofing our PDF/X files.

Chapter Representative Donna Gniewek then went on to show some resources for learning more about working with Acrobat on the Adobe Web site:

The Acrobat Design Center: Go to www.adobe.com, choose “Designers” from the Communities list at the top, and then go to Acrobat Product Design Center. On the right sidebar, Community Content, click “Conducting a PDF review.” Follow the link there to Acrobat Comment and Review Tools, www.dynamicgraphics.com/dgm/Article/28754.
On the same Adobe web page, under Features see Using Acrobat in a Review Cycle. Here is a sample tutorial and files from Classroom in a Book series, Chapter 11, that you can use to learn about comments and markups as well as practicing a review cycle. www.adobe.com/designcenter/acrobat/articles/acr8it_cib11.html
Same web page, under Acrobat Tutorial: PDF/X files and Adobe Creative Suite 3. Follow the link, then on the next page there is a link for the White Paper under “about this paper.” www.adobe.com/designcenter/creativesuite/articles/cs3ip_pdfx.pdf

Member FeedbacK

“Excellent speaker; highly informative and knew how to give an entertaining yet very educational presentation.”

”Speaker was terrific; animated! ”

”Good presentation, very informative. Nice to hear perspective from a printer.”

”Excellent. Appreciated the history of the PDF format.”

”Venue is excellent, pizza delicious, Kevin Donley is a wealth of information.”

”Helped me understand various problems I've had with sending PDF files to printers.”

”Wow! Some interesting information. I think a lot of this was above my understanding at this time, but I gained an understanding of just how complex the printing world is, and a real respect for the knowledge required to make things turn out well.”

”Excellent speaker. Very informative, provided information that I can directly apply to my day-to-day workflow.”

“Appreciate all of the effort put forth in organizing this event. Best one I have attended. Thank you.”

“Good meeting, informative, covered a good range of skill sets.”

“I'm new — a lot of great info — looking forward to next year's meetings!”

“Excellent as always! Thank you so much for presenting this opportunity to learn more.”

Thanks to members Cathy Begle, who contributed to the notes, and photographer Rena Laverty.

Donna Gniewek
Detroit IDUG Chapter Rep

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