By: David Blatner
May 22 2008 • 8:37 PM
Stop the Transparencide
I’m terribly upset about a tragic situation that I’ve recently learned about. I encourage you to stop what you’re doing and go watch this video on Adobe TV or on YouTube and learn what you can do to stop the Acrobat PDF transparencide. This public service announcement was created by our friends (and Adobe evangelists) Tim Cole and Rufus Deuchler.
transparencide1
I hope you enjoy this little public service announcement about Stupid PDF Syndrome as much as I did. 
Amen
That is worthy of being bookmarked. I can see using it quite a bit.
That is a fabulous short clip. Will definitely use it a lot!
That is so funny!
RUSSSEEEEEELLLLLLLLLL !!!!!!!!!
Love the video and not just because we have (and love) the PDF Print Engine.
JW
PDF’s are great and useful, but the people at Adobe need to do something to speed up Acrobat. It seems with every new version the program gets slower and slower. Acrobat 8 is the slowest version yet and I much prefer to use Preview than it for viewing PDF’s, I’m just glad my company bought it and not me.
That’s hilarious! Thanks.
Long live the transparency revolution!!!
So moving. So true. God bless Tim and Rufus.
Perfect!
Hopefully my students will “get” it when I show this in class. If I’ve taught them well, they will. I’ll be watching their reactions closely.
Thanks!!!
Sorry, but I already gave at my paperless office.
Brought a tear to my eye. Think of all those we could save in the future.
Jerome, I appreciate your comment about Acrobat, but the Adobe PDF Print Engine doesn’t really have anything to do with Acrobat. It’s a RIP for a printer. The idea is that you can send PDF directly to the printer and not have to worry about PostScript and flattening at all.
What a transparent attempt at selling more software. Are there really any advantages to sending a PDF with active transparency to your printer? Doubtful.
Geo, I assume you have simply lost your mind temporarily. There are incredible benefits to letting the RIP handle the transparency instead of using built-in flattening. Anyone who has ever had a problem with transparency flattening (text or thin lines getting bold in areas, odd stitching lines, vectors getting rasterized, and so on) will tell you that flattening can be a destructive process.
Flattening usually works fine, but it’s just so much easier to not have to worry about it.
For example, we still recommend that people put text on a layer above any kind of transparent object when the job will have to be flattened. In a PDF RIP, you don’t have to think about those kinds of details. It just prints.
David
The problem is that less than 1% know what transparency is and what PDF Engine is and so on, and so on.
To be sure that we will not encounter any stupid phone call from the printer we flatten, we sometimes outline fonts.
Sometimes we even send the InDesign package and in the package I add a little explanation note :
- there are RGB images in the package and IT IS normal
- we used the Book feature
- there are ID documents imported in the ID document because… hey… did you know that IDCS3 permits that ?
If we send a PDF, I don’t dare to send a PDF/X-3 or 4 because how my god they will just insult me because I send something that is not flattened and contains RGB images.
But anyway I send also an explanation note on how the PDF was done and why.
Sad to say….
Branislav, you are absolutely correct… today. But someday (8 years from now?) most printers will have a pdf print engine rip, and we can all breathe more easily.
What I want is for all customers to ask their printers: “Do you have a PDF Print Engine RIP? If not, why?”
I don’t see any financial benefit personally! I don’t even own Adobe stock. I just want people to be successful when they print from InDesign!
That was very emotional.
Here in my city in the south of Brazil, the postscript 3 just arrived and nobody knows / cares about it. (Actually I’m teaching InDesign and other CS3 products around here and they didn’t know that it exists at all…but I’m changing it.)
I hope the APE doesn’t take so long…
:’/
David: I’m sure you should realize by now that nothing “just prints.” Just as there are occasional issues printing flattened pages, there are—and will be—issues printing transparent non-flattened pages. All this is doing is trading one set of (familiar and documented) problems for a set of unknowns.
If it’s proven that the benefits of a PDF Print Engine RIP outweigh the potential issues and cost, then maybe it will be time to make the switch.
FWIW I’ve never had the white box problem appear on a proof—or anywhere else but on the screen for that matter.
The link for Adobe TV won’t work for me (using FF 3RC1) but I saw it on YouTube just now.
I’m sorry, but this sounds more like an ad for Adobe products than anything else. Sure, it’s wrapped up nicely and has some truth to it, but I’ve yet to get any PDFs from any source (home or business users) that were too useless to print (except for the occasional CorelDraw exported PDF with incorrect settings).
Roland, oh yes, it is an ad. No doubt about that. But it’s just a very, very funny ad… like the great “i love print” ad that the folks at Pazazz Printing did on youtube.
Does anyone know how I can tell if our platemaker has an APE (other than me)? I remember the sales people talking about a harlequin RIP but I had little (NO) input regarding the platemaker.
I have recently been placed squarely in the middle of prepress. I do our document setup, layout, invention, etc. I take files that others have sent in and make those fly (I really do hate Bill G’s stuff). We recently added a Platemaker (CTP) and I have to be sure that any electronic files are set up so that plates will be done the way the press folks want them. Most of our work is black only. We added a two color press at the same time as the platemaker. So, I am both the creative, designer-type person…and the prepress person…I really do deserve a raise.
Thanks for any help.