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Hi Jackie, We too experience may problems similar to the ones you describe. Like yourself, we used to get round the RGB problem with Acrobat 5 -ie. save as 300dpi .tif & then run through photoshop to create CMYK file. There are obviously pros & cons to this last resort method...on one hand you've got a file which is guaranteed to print in 4 colours and won't generate any postscript errors, but on the other hand you may suffer loss of quality and the colours can sometimes change quite significantly (which the client might moan about!). We find "Quite a box of tricks" to be a very useful piece of kit with regards to grayscaling pdfs which have been supplied in colour etc., however with any change of colour profile (ie. RGB to CMYK, ICC/Lab to CMYK etc.) you again run the risk of significant colour changes. The other problem that we have encountered in the past is eps files (ie photoshop eps with path) with .jpeg encoding, which print mono from our rips. As far as we are aware, the only piece of software that will spot this is Pitstop, which will also spot the other problems which you mention. At least this way you can run every pdf file you receive through Pitstop, thereby giving you time to get the artwork re-sent. With regards to contact with agencies, what we do here is supply all the various sales depts. with a pdf booklet detailing all of our technical spec., which they can then e-mail to the creative agencies supplying copy. Maybe this would help you too? Therefore, if you can have only one of these pieces of software, we would suggest going for Pitstop, as it seems to cover all your needs. We've never used Crackerjack, so cannot say whether this would be of any use to you or not. Hope this helps, Regards, Chris Davies (Express and Star Newspapers). > -----Original Message----- > From: Rioduo [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 31 July 2003 11:33 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [PDF] Purchase adivce > > Good morning all. > I'm happy to say that our IT depatment is finally willing to investivate > the purchase of a software to help us with problem PDF's. I am in pre > press for a group of 23 weekly + 2 daliy newspapers. I have suggested the > 3 most talked about on this list: Quite a Box of Trick, Pit Stop or > Crackerjack(?). I've given them the various links for the software, but > would you all be willing to give me first hand advice? I know nothing > about the software except what I've read and knowing my company, only one > will be made availible to us. > The problem we run into most often is with color being RGB. We have been > able to work around a lot of problem color ads by using Acrobat 5. If the > color portion is a photo within the ad, it's usually not too much of a > problem, except that we often won't find out until it doesn't separte to > film. Then it's a mad dash to try to fix the file. > Twice this last week though, we've had ads with text created in something > other than a layout program, say possibly Illustrator or Photoshop, often > ending up with 4/C black text. If we suspect a problem ahead of deadline, > we can often contact the artist to correct the problem, but usually, it's > not discovered till right on deadline to print. I usually don't have > direct contact with agency artists, we have 13 offices with thier own > sales rep's & comp people, then the files are sent to us. > We are on Mac's, I think my 'new' computer will be running in OSX classic > (our G3's were stolen). We impose our pages in Quark 4 to send to film. > So if you had to pick only one, which one would help us the most? > Thanks, > Jackie > To change your subscription: http://www.pdfzone.com/discussions/lists-pdf.html
