This recipe gives settings that should give consistently good results for a glossy magazine quality in the standard A4 format (209.9 mm x 297.0 mm or 8.26 inches x 11.69 inches) or in the similar North American Letter format (215.9 mm x 279.4 mm or 8.5 inches x 11 inches).
Acrobat Distiller has several settings for different levels of PDF quality.
To display your documents on the Internet, it may be preferable to choose a lower definition. This way, web pages load faster.
For high-quality printing, you need to choose Press Quality or Prepress, whichever settings are available in your version of Adobe Acrobat.
The settings can be customized. For a high-end printed product, it is best to fine-tune the settings. Take advice from an experienced printer or computer specialist.
The key to producing a good quality PDF from iWork documents is to use the PostScript stage when converting them. Simple Export to PDF or Save as PDF will not work with professional printers who require CMYK (four-color) separation.
- Print a Pages document to PS.
Type Command + P, and when the printing dialog opens, click on the PDF button and choose Save as PostScript.
- Launch Acrobat Distiller and process your PS files through Distiller.
Adobe gives a choice of Press Quality or Prepress presets.
For customized settings, you may need to follow the following example, which is based on the settings used for The Rendezvous, an English-language glossy magazine that was published in France. Content, design, and layout were done in iWork. CMYK PDFs were produced from iWork Pages in Acrobat Professional (versions 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0) by using the PostScript stage. The magazine was successfully printed, with equally good results, by three different commercial printing companies—a small local print shop, medium-sized printers, and by one of the largest printing companies in Europe.
- Under General, set the Resolution to 2400 dots per inch.
- Under Images, set Sampling to off, and set the resolution for color and grayscale to 300 pixels per inch and 1200 pixels per inch for monochrome.
- Under Color, set the Settings File to None. The Color Management Policies are set to ConvertAllColorsToCMYK.
- Under Fonts, check the Embedallfonts checkbox.
These should give you a CMYK-ready PDF and keep your print shop happy.
In addition to Adobe Acrobat, the Enfocus PitStop software is also good for producing high-quality PDFs. It works like an extended set of Adobe Acrobat tools, allowing you to convert PDFs to CMYK in one go and thoroughly check the prepress quality of PDFs.
If you are planning to use a professional (commercial) print shop for your project, arrange a visit to them to synchronize your settings. If you regularly use the same printers, arrange a session with them. It's easy to overlook a minor difference in settings, which can result in serious problems at a later stage in the printing process.
If this is not practical, send them a test sample of your PDF to check that it runs okay.
Always ask for press-ready proofs, especially for larger projects such as books or magazines—preferably on paper—so that you can check the end quality. When this is not practical, the printers should send you their final PDFs ready to go onto printing press plates.
Most printers use specialist computer service companies to fine-tune their machines and processes. Find out which companies they use, get in touch with them, and ask them to run through your workflow and settings.
It is not difficult to produce press-quality PDFs from iWork documents, but avoid getting into too much technical detail. Decide at what stage your work will be finished and you will hand over to others. You may find a printer who will take iWork Pages documents and convert them for you. Otherwise, print your Pages project to PostScript and take the PostScript files (with the .ps extension) to the printer. Printing is a highly specialized area, and if your main field of expertise is design, leave the final adjustments to the printers.
Avoid those who tell you iWork cannot be used for professional printing. It can.
- The MakingagoodPDFfromaniWorkdocument,andCMYKPDFsforprofessionalprinting recipe in Chapter 3, WorkingAcrossPlatformsandApplications