Creating PostScript Files in Snow Leopard for Older Print Workflows

Steve Werner

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One of the most popular postings I’ve done in the last couple years was one I wrote a little over a year about changes in the creation of Adobe PDF files under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). In summary, I wrote, “What you need to know is that in Snow Leopard, the Acrobat team replaced the functionality of the Adobe PDF printer with an Automator function in the Print dialog called Save as Adobe PDF.” For most of us Mac users who blithely continue to choose File > Export > Adobe PDF, these changes won’t affect us.

However,  people use many different workflows for print, and some of them require using older RIPs or using InDesign’s Print Booklet feature. These workflows can require creating PostScript files for various paper sizes. Using the old Adobe PDF printer when creating a PostScript file allowed you to create a page of any size. Subsequently, you could use the Adobe Distiller application, still available with all Acrobat Pro versions, to turn the PostScript file into a PDF file. Newer versions of Acrobat Pro 9 have even removed the old Adobe PDF driver entirely, along with its PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file.

For example, InDesign writer and publisher Aaron Shepard wrote in his blog:

That’s all well and good for general use, but it doesn’t satisfy every case. For instance, Lightning Source, the POD printer I use for my books, wants my book cover files to be run through Acrobat Distiller, which means first creating PostScript files from InDesign. But without the PPD for Adobe PDF, I have no way to create PostScript for oversize pages like book covers. It should work to choose “Device Independent” instead, but it doesn’t.

An additonal complexity was added with InDesign CS5. CS5 no longer recognizes PPD files installed in a location that worked for InDesign CS4 and earlier.

In the comments to my original posting, various suggestions were made about how to find and reinstall the old ADPDF9.PPD file that the latest Acrobat 9 versions remove. However, recently Alan has posted a good summary of these instructions which I’ll re-publish here. However, for those who need to know more, I recommend you also go to Alan’s blog post for further suggestions:

Fortunately, there are ways to recover Adobe PDF’s PPD and make it permanently available to CS apps. Here’s the procedure for CS4.

1. Find a copy of ADPDF9.PPD, the PPD file that the latest Acrobat Pro 9 versions remove. You might find it on a backup of your computer at Library > Printers > PPDs > Contents > Resources > en.lproj. (That’s starting from the root of your system, not from your user directory.) You can also get it from the Acrobat Pro 9 app itself if you choose “Show Package Contents” from the contextual menu and then go to Contents > MacOS > SelfHealFiles > AdobePDFPrinter > PPDs > Contents > Resources > en.lproj. You might also locate a copy for download from the Web.

2. Place this file in Library > Printers > PPDs > Contents > Resources. (Again, that’s starting from the root of your system.) Do NOT place it in the folder en.lproj. Though that will work too, it will move the file farther down on menus, making it harder to find.

3. Rename the file so that Acrobat won’t be able to find and remove it again. I suggest something like “Adobe PDF 9.ppd”. (That, again, will keep the file high on menus.)

For CS4, that’s all you have to do. Now, when you go to print from InDesign and choose “PostScript File” as your printer, you’ll be able to choose “Adobe PDF 9.0” from the PPD menu. (You’ll see a menu item by that name regardless of what you named the PPD file.)

With CS5, things are a little trickier. InDesign’s menu does not show anything from the Mac OS PPD folder unless it’s a PPD in a current print queue.

One possible solution for InDesign [CS5] is to add the PPD file directly to the app’s support files. Go to Applications > Adobe InDesign CS5 > Presets. Create a new folder named “PPDs” (case sensitive). Then place your PPD file in this folder. You don’t even have to rename it.

I also discovered that the same method will work with other PPD files as well. For example, if you had a very old RIP which required a particular Agfa PPD, you could install it in the same way. I discovered that if you do a Google search on, for example, “PPD Agfa”, the top hit will take you to an archive stored on the Adobe Systems server which has a compress archive of old PPD files from that vendor. Similar collections are found for other vendors. Warning: You’ll need a copy of the free utility StuffIt Expander to expand the archive. The results can be seen in InDesign CS5 below where I’ve installed three PPD files for printers I don’t have into the Presets folder as Alan described above:

Printing to PostScript

Thanks, Alan, for that great posting. I’m happy to pass it on to a larger audience.