An Acrobat plugin--good to have

Hi guys. I'm presently testing this Acrobat 8 plugin. It costs about 30k...I guess. But I think for those who use pdf, or pdf/x, in their daily workflow, this is simple and yet powerful arsenal.

Some of the many features it has are:
conversion from 1 printing condition to another
conversion from client's color profile to ISO colors via DeviceLink
***black screens, tints, black texts are preserved***
outlining of fonts
flattening of transparency (good for older RIPs to accept pdf)
easy color conversion from of RGB, CMYK, Spot and gray elements
preflight checking and automatic correction
imposition templates (good for small printers)
adjustment of tvi (dotgain) on the pdf files
***extremely important when press dotgain needs to be adjusted***
automation of the aforementioned tasks!

Hope you could test it too: Get a 30-day trial from http://www.callassoftware.com/callas/doku.php/en:products:pdftoolbox4

Besides Callas Pdftoolbox4 I just want to add other Acrobat plug-ins worth looking into : Enfocus Pitstop Pro, Heidelberg Color Editor & Apago PDFenhancer.

larrysison wrote:

conversion from 1 printing condition to another
conversion from client's color profile to ISO colors via DeviceLink
***black screens, tints, black texts are preserved***
outlining of fonts
flattening of transparency (good for older RIPs to accept pdf)
easy color conversion from of RGB, CMYK, Spot and gray elements
preflight checking and automatic correction
imposition templates (good for small printers)
adjustment of tvi (dotgain) on the pdf files
***extremely important when press dotgain needs to be adjusted***
automation of the aforementioned tasks!

Hope you could test it too: Get a 30-day trial from http://www.callassoftware.com/callas/doku.php/en:products:pdftoolbox4

Thanks for the info Sir Larry.That's a lot of features, but we need to be an extra careful using a device link. Flattening transparency is also a something to appreciate for postscript RIPS. This a solution for coping up with adobe PDF engines replacing postcript RIPs. I will surely download on my computer

CIECAM wrote:

...Flattening transparency is also a something to appreciate for postscript RIPS. This a solution for coping up with adobe PDF engines replacing postcript RIPs...

Hi Sir CIECAM. Speaking of transparency, it seems there are a lot of advantages by not flattening transparency. Well, if you have a modern RIP...that is.

I'm still in the process of studying the pros and cons of migrating to PDF/X-4 where flattening is not required.

I've been testing this pdfToolbox4 for a few days already and man....it's so darn powerfull!!! Not only is this "good to have"...it's a "must have"...in my point of view.

I tested PDF files created from Illustrator and Indesign. Then I opened the 64-page PDF in Acrobat 8 and activated the pdfToolbox4 plugin .

I selected Convert to PDF/X-4 (Coated Fogra39). The plugin begins preflighting the whole 64-page book. Well, it took a lot of time, I've to admit. After 3 mins of processing.....I've gotten more than what I was expecting:

• whole book was PDF/X-4 compliant;
  
• transparency is preserved;
  
• overprinting issues automatically solved;
  
• RGB photos automatically converted to CMYK (ISO 12647-2);
  
• all images and other elements converted to ISO 12647-2 colors;
  
• Primary colors (CMYK) remained the same; no contamination from other colorants;
  
• Secondary colors (CM, MY, CY) remained the same; no contamination
  
• Grayscale photos remained GRAY!!!
  
• Excessive TAC (ink limit) reduced to destination TAC;
  
• Other errors were automatically fixed;
  

After which, I also tested a flattened PDF file created in Photoshop. The file contained grayscale images, texts and CMYKRGB color patches. I used both Convert to PDF/X-4 (Coated Fogra39) as well as Convert to PDF/X-1a (Coated Fogra39).

Except for the flattened transparency in PDF/X-1a, both produced the same results!

The colors are converted to the destination space (ISO 12647-2) but the grayscale photos, primary and secondary colors.....THEY ALL REMAINED PURE!

My test is not over yet as I need to verify how the conversion would fair colorimetrically. I would like to convert all the patches of ECI 2002 CMYK test chart to the ISO 12647-2 colors and analyze its Delta E after the file is converted by this plugin.