Finding the Hidden Creative Suite 4 Printing Guide
In its rush to promote its web and Flash applications and technologies in the past year or two, Adobe has demoted information available about print. It has let go many valuable people from its staff who focused on the print community, and has discontinued programs which provided information about how to print reliably from the Adobe Creative Suite.
A few days ago, Anne-Marie asked me this question:
I have a magazine publishing client that has moved from Quark to ID and could really use some explanation of best practices for using CS4 in a print production workflow. (They’re asking me questions like, “where do we enter the Frequency setting for our PDFs?” ::::ack::: )I can’t find anything that mentions CS4-era products in the Print Resources web page:
http://www.adobe.com/studio/print/If you scroll down to “White papers, printing guides, and more,” things seem to have stopped being updated in 2Q 2008. The only paper with the “Updated” tag — Adobe PDF in a Print Production Workflow — is about Acrobat 9 but InDesign CS3. Some of the instructions/screenshots from ID CS3 are not the same in CS4, so I’m hesitant to send my client the link.
It turns out that there is available on the Adobe website a Creative Suite 4 Printing Guide, very well written by Claudia McCue (author of the excellent Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications, Peachpit Press, 2009)
Here’s the link:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/cs4/articles/cs4_printguide.html
Why it’s not on the Print Resources web page is a mystery. The document covers common resources in Creative Suite 4, as well as InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4, and Acrobat 9 Pro. Highly recommended!
Just another example of Adobe showing us printers the door! We got them to where they are, supported them through their lean years, and now they could care less about us when we need them the most.
Thanks for the link Steve.
I’ve been pushing people towards the CS3 and CS4 printguides for a while now. I have both of them printed out and on my desk for quick referencing. They sure are valuable in a resource sense.
I’m a little astonished to hear about all the staff at Adobe related to print being let go? How odd.
Oops I only have the CS3 print guide printed out, not the CS4, I should do that though. Not sure if there’s a difference?
Thanks…this is a really excellent tip…never would have found this otherwise.
You folks sound surprised? Make no mistake, Adobe is the 800 lb. gorilla and couldn’t give a damn about what we think. Who’s going to challenge them? Quark? Whatever.
This is a fantastic guide. It answers a lot of the questions I’ve had about settings such as PDF/X or dealing with overprinting issues. I can’t believe that I never saw this guide before. Thanks so much for letting us all know about it. It’s very informative with great screenshots.
When the CS5 printing guide comes out, could you also put a post up about it here at InDesign Secrets? I’ll look for it on Adobe’s website after April 12th (didn’t even know to look for such a great document as this), but clicking on your handy link was so much easier.
Again, thanks, Steve!
If you only knew how much this helps! We design all our marketing in InDesign and then send it to different printers. This guide will save me so many headaches!
Love your blog!. I really enjoy reading all of the posts. Keep up the good work!