Despite the rapid development in electronic publishing, printed matter—books, magazines, and brochures—still represents a huge proportion of publishing activities around the world. Over 45 trillion pages of documents are printed every year. In the USA alone, there are over 30 thousand printing companies, and print business conducted over the Internet accounts for only just over 10 percent of the entire print market.

Mastering PDF production is an essential element in using iWork for professional print purposes. Commercial, professional print shops will ask for your project to be delivered in PDF format, press-ready with CMYK color separation.

This may sound intimidating. Indeed, comments on Internet forums show that many iWork users believe that since CMYK PDF production is not supported in iWork, it is not possible to create a press-ready PDF in iWork. It is true that there is precious little information on how to deal with press-ready PDF production in iWork user manuals. However, a few additional steps allow any iWork user with a basic understanding of what is required for a PDF processed for high-end printing to prepare print-ready PDFs.

This chapter offers a few tips and solutions for meeting the requirements of professional print shops.