I received the craziest, just plain wrong pdf the other day. I know if you are a pre-press person you have to know what I am talking about. The weird thing is a PDF is supposed to be the perfect type of file to send to a printer.... not in this case. It really all depends on how the operator or designers save the pdf out of quark in order to get the perfect PDF to rip in our program (Rampage).
The file looked great on the screen, then all hell broke loose when I tried to rip the thing. It was a two color job but when I ripped it, it was 8, crazy. So I spent 3 hours trying to break the pdf file apart to make it work. It was honestly no fault of the designer, it was just the way the file was exported into a PDF.
I had to open the pdf in Acrobat and select the Advanced Edit photo tool then I selected each picture with the command and option keys, this opens the photo in photoshop so I could change it to a duotone instead of 4 color grayscale photos. Then I saved them and they automatically update in the PDF. There were about 12 or 14 photos I had to do that to. What a hot mess, I tend to think that I have no patience sometimes, but I actually have some when it comes to technical stuff. That is only if I can figure it out and make it work.
So to make a long story short it took 3 hours to break the pdf apart and make it work. Then we finally got the proof out... then along came changes, finally I got the parent quark files from the client and saved the pdf correctly and WOOHOO it worked.
Next week I am going to tell you the settings for a high res pdf in quark so you will save your company money. When it makes it to prepress department at your printers you will have an almost perfect or perfect pdf as long as the images and fonts are perfect too.
Have a great week and Enjoy the beautiful weather!
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