*** From the Archives ***
This article is from April 8, 2008, and is no longer current.
PDF Print Engine: “Throw Us Your Transparency Effects”
About a year ago, when InDesign CS3 arrived, it brought with it a host of new ways to create transparency effects, using the new Effects panel. However, the question always comes up, “But will it print?”
At the same time that the Effects panel arrived, the solution to the printing problem arrived as well. This was the ability of InDesign to create PDF/X-4 files with a PDF preset which preserved the transparency effects, rather than flattening them. (Previous versions of InDesign can export PDF files with transparency by selecting Acrobat 5 compatibility but without supporting the PDF/X standard.) I wrote about this just after InDesign CS3 came out. What makes this solution useful and important is the arrival of new printing technology from Adobe called the Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE). The APPE can natively render PDF files. Previous CPSI RIPs converted PDF into PostScript before rendering them. APPE supports live transparency as well as device independence (RGB to CMYK conversion and screening done at printing time), support for ICC profiles, and greater speed.
The Adobe PDF Print Engine isn’t something you can go out and buy off the shelf. It’s a Software Development Kit (SDK) that Adobe licenses to its printing partners to build into their next generation PDF RIPs and print workflow systems. And last year, commercial printers all over the world began purchasing those RIPs. James Wamser, senior trainer at Sells Printing in Wisconsin, was interviewed by Tim Cole in his blog about their Prinergy 4 system that includes an Adobe PDF Print Engine RIP. Here are a couple excerpts:
James Wamser: The thing I used to hear at previous InDesign and Creative Suite conferences–and that I used to agree with–was speakers saying, “Just because Adobe gives you all these [transparency] options, it doesn’t mean you should actually use them.” Now you don’t have to say that. You can say, “Yeah, use your gradient feathers, use all the effects built into CS3 with confidence in knowing that they’re going to RIP properly. So, that’s a huge benefit to them as designers, and it also enables us to deliver proofs on time that are correct.
* * *
Tim Cole: Do you think the PDF Print Engine benefits you more or the customer? How do you convince them that it’s in their interest to give you an unflattened PDF with which to work?
James Wamser: Well, they know they’re better off, because they don’t receive the phone calls saying, “Hey, we had a problem with your files…” They won’t necessarily notice a difference when they see the proof, but they’ll eventually say, “You guys didn’t have any problems with my files, and in the past you used to run into some…” So, although it’s more of a big leap forward for prepress people, customers now have the confidence that no matter what they throw at us in terms of transparency effects, they know it’s going to work.
According to Mark Lewiecki, Senior Product Manager for APPE, there are now over 2000 installations of the PDF Print Engine around the world. “Many of these systems include both PostScript and APPE. After carefully testing APPE, some reports from users indicate that they have switched to APPE for the majority of their work.” You’ll find most of the installations at larger printers with modern computer-to-plate printing systems from Heidelberg, Agfa, Fujifilm, Kodak, Screen, and Xante. He also reported that “some of the workflow/proofing vendors like Dalim and GMG are also beginning to adopt APPE.”
James reports that for printers, APPE helps them avoid all the problems that can occur with flattened transparency (like having a customer choose the incorrect flattener preset) and greater flexibility in print workflow:
Tim Cole: Do you recommend unflattened PDF because of the fact that flattened PDF is device dependent, and therefore limiting in terms of production options?
James Wamser: That definitely plays a role, because once you flatten a PDF, you’re commited to one production path. Not only is the resolution set at the time of flattening, but the color conversions are done at that time as well. There’s lots of options when you don’t flatten a PDF, including when the file is actually ripped.
I’ll cover some more details about the advantages of an APPE workflow, such as keeping live transparency and device-independent color, in another blog posting.
 |
Great post, Steve! I’m getting on the phone with my commercial printers right now to see where they stand on this. I don’t suppose there’s any way to search Adobe’s Partner Finder to locate a printer who’s moved to the PDF Print Engine RIP?
I only knew a few things about this, so thanks, Steve, for your fascinating posting! I only wonder if this wondrous technology has reached Oslo, Norway yet? I’ll talk to my primary printing company for sure.
I’ve had the pleasure to work with versions of both the high-end Prinergy product with APPE and the lower-end Ripit Rhapsody with APPE. Both of them worked very well with PDF/X-4 files where transparency was not flattened.
While I expected that Prinergy would work really well, I was very pleasantly surprised with how well the lower-end Rhapsody worked. At the printer that I consult for, the Rhapsody RIP is used for both CTP and for digital output. And some of the jobs even have a hybrid workflow with part of the job (perhaps high-res grayscale images) going to plate and press, with the remainder of the job imprinted digitally (I didn’t develop this workflow, just helped them implement it). In all cases we haven’t been able to break it. It does make it easier to explain to clients who never did really understand why the files that they paid “big money” (ha ha) for were coming out less than expected. Now we can handle all the transparency the designers can throw at us.
The big issue will be how soon individual printers upgrade their RIPS. In both the cases I’ve worked with, the RIPs were going to be upgraded for other reasons. RIPS and workflow software are a big investment and many printers will take some time to upgrade. I know of some major printers out there who are still using Postscript level 2 RIPS and they will tell Anne-Marie to stay away from PDF/X-4. I tell my students that this is what is out there now, but don’t EXPECT your printer to have it.
Oh, Ripit is Xante.
Great article.
I work for a printing company as a team leader in prepress and I can confirm 100% what article says. We are going through installation of Heidelberg Prinect Printready workflow and based on my testing I will have it defaults to Adobe PDF Print Engine. So far there was no need to switch back to old CPSI rip and 100% of things we threw at it, worked like a charm. Big hail to Adobe and their technology.
Anyone with Kodak Prinergy 4 has the PDF Print Engine as an option…
Per John Clifford’s comments. The fact is that a RIP upgrade is not really a particularly expensive investment. The problem is that many printers tend to be totally gearheads in terms of their investments. They will spend tremendous amounts of money on the latest doo-dads for their presses, but will spend many hours trying to find a workaround for some prepress problem that a third party InDesign or Acrobat plug-in or an upgrade to such programs would immediately solve.
From my experience with printers, the ones who are succeeding are the ones who understand that current software and training are at least as important as the gear they had in their shop!
Does anyone know if the Harlequin rip is based on or uses the Adobe PDF Engine? There are some rip kits available using Harlequin that enable older imagesetters to handle full pdf input files:
https://www.rti-rips.com/Imagesetter%20RIP-Kits.html
Al
Anne-Marie,
Thanks for the kind comment. I don’t think there’s any way to tell from the Partner Finder if a printer is using APPE. Good idea!
Al,
I believe that Harlequin uses it’s own proprietary RIP, not one made by Adobe.
Al, as Steve mentioned, Harlequin is a “clone” competitor to Adobe’s RIP. They do have a pdf engine that can rip transparency (they came out with theirs even before Adobe), but I don’t have any experience with it.
Steve and David,
Thanks for confirming what I had suspected. I asked because I had just learned about version 8 from Harlequin coming at about the same time as Adobe’s APPE, and thought there may be a connection.
But David, you are the one to use the term “clone”, not Steve. It seems comical to me that Harlequin, which solved the problem first on their own, should be saddled with that label. Why not consider Adobe the clone? It seems we are being Adobe-centered here.
Al
WRT/ Harlequin products …
No, they do not use the Adobe PDF Print Engine.
Klaus: I don’t think there’s any installation of APPE in Oslo yet. I know some of the larger printers (Merkur, Kampen and probably others as well) are looking into it, but most won’t place an order until after Drupa.
However, there is at least one in Bergen. I will be looking into that one at the end of the month.
The benefits of using a printer who actually sees the benefits of APPE should be huge.
Excellent post! I used to work for the digital printing department on a publishing company in Puerto Rico. Does APPE exist for printers like the DC 8000 or iGen3 from Xerox?
Thanks again for an excellent post and look forward for more!
Per Dov’s remarks:
The main reason I mention printers’ reluctance to upgrading RIPs (and I agree that the cost is really negligible these days in comparison to the benefits) harkens back to the announcement at Print05 when Time, Inc. went to PDF as their requirement for ads. They had an even more restrictive version of PDF than x-1a because their printers didn’t all have level 3 postscript RIPs at that time (and that with the power of Time). With that announcement burned into my brain, I always advise that people check with their printer as to what RIP and PS/APPE version they’re using.
WRT/ John Clifford’s comments:
The comments about Time, Inc.’s supposed PDF workflow are very interesting.
In fact, you don’t need a PostScript 3 RIP to properly print/separate a PDF file with live transparency and color management. With a copy of Acrobat 5 or later, it was very easy to successfully print such files from Acrobat to any fully conforming PostScript language level 2 or language level 3 device.
In the case of Time, Inc., at least back a number of years, when you submitted pages in their PDF/X-1a subset, after doing a preflight operation, Time, Inc. exported the PDF file to EPS files and placed them in QuarkXPress. (QuarkXPress never did a reasonable job of placing PDF beyond PDF 1.2 especially when dealing with CID-encoded fonts, color, etc!) The limitation was NOT the RIPs, but rather the problems of dealing with the fact you totally lose color management via EPS and transparency must be flattened going into EPS. Time, Inc. did not have a real end-to-end PDF workflow!
Other Time, Inc. restrictions, such as not permitting use of TrueType fonts, was pure baloney based on misperceptions of where problems really occurred in workflows.
Hi Luis,
We have some iGen3 customers and they do not have APPE in their RIPs.
We are providers of a software solution for the photobook and book on demand business. We have heavy mask and frame support in our editor and create layer based Pdfs. But some of our customers have to flatten the printjobs, as theirs RIPs do not handle the transparency well. I would be happy if some RIPS out there would use APPE.
Tom
>Excellent post! I used to work for the digital >printing department on a publishing company in >Puerto Rico. Does APPE exist for printers like the >DC 8000 or iGen3 from Xerox?
I hope this valuable thread isn’t totally forgotten! I have a semi-related question, slightly off-topic, perhaps, but this still seems the most sensible thread to ask about this very techy matter. Years ago it used to be the case that vector paths, in Illustrator/PDF files, could, if they contained enough nodes and path complexity (compound paths, etc), bring any RIP to its knees and grief to the world. I now have some huge, complex PDF files — with tens of thousands of vector nodes and compound paths galore — do I need to still be worried about how they will RIP, or is this ancient worry now history with the latest-generation RIPs, like the Adobe PDF Print Engine? And is there a simple, cheap way, with Acrobat Pro 9, for instance, to pre-rip the files as a safety test, to check if they will RIP-print? Yes, I know that Photoshop can rasterize almost any PDF and that trouble-files can thus be, in an emergency, circumvented and made to print — but absolutely the last thing is want/need is to have all of these lovely vectors bitmapped. I want vector output at the RIP from these PDFs.
Hello Klaus
Old thead, but maybe you are still reading it. We also create PDFs with a lot of nodes, paths and clipping masks. Do you have some expierence with RIPs commonly used for print machine like HP Indigo (Harlequin), Xerox Igen or Canon ImagePress (Fiery /Creo)? Did you ever had problems with PDFs having a lot of vector paths or complex clipping paths with such a RIP?