In the beginning there was PostScript, our venerable favorite page description language. And then in the 1990’s Adobe introduced us to a new page description language called Portable Document Format, or PDF for short. Imagine that, a universally displayable content format. No more device or platform dependence. Everything we needed was self contained within this one format. Everything was self contained in the PDF to display each page or the entire document, regardless of originating platform or software, on any other platform for which there was a viewer.
Think of the possibilities! We in the printing industry certainly did. We found a new way to transmit content to one another. Initially there weren’t all the features in the PDF specification that we in the printing industry needed. With enough banging on Adobe’s walls Adobe listened and began to add features to the PDF specification that fit printers needs. Then things got really interesting. We had the tools to create these PDF’s, we knew what “we” wanted. We each developed our own ultimate PDF settings for our specific environments.
That is not where the problem began, that is where it exploded into a giant mess. Imagine being a creative agency that creates all sorts of different kinds of materials to be printed. Then imagine that you have six different print providers that you work with and they all want PDF’s. That would mean you have six different settings for creating those lovely PDF’s. What a mess! So a group of industry experts got together and decided that there just had to be a better way. That better way was PDF/X, the X meaning “exchange”. Eventually industry experts found what they thought to be the most critical aspects of exchanging PDF’s and that became the ISO specification called PDF/X-1a:2001. PDF/X-1a was intended for the blind exchange of materials for printing. Meaning that someone could create a document for printing and basically throw it over the fence to a bunch of printers and they, the printers, could have a high degree confidence that they could successfully reproduce the contents.
Great! Now we had an ISO accredited standard. But it was not enough. It was not “enough” because the committee had to settle on a few things rather than mandate specifics for such things as image resolution, color spaces, image compression and such. It is not that the committee did not specify color spaces, they did. They decided that color spaces such as device CMYK, Device N and Device gray would be allowed. But Device RGB, LAB and ICC bases spaces were not. They also decided that subsetted fonts would be allowed. For image compression they allowed for no compression, ZIP compression or JPEG compression. Sorry folks, no LZW compression allowed. The use of JPEG2000 wasn’t a consideration because it was not in Adobe Acrobat at the time. They settled on PDF version 1.3 as the base format for the specification since it met all the minimum requirements. Then we have to deal with image resolution. How does one specify in an ISO standard image resolution that will suit all manufacturing needs? You can’t is the answer they came up with.
And here in lies the problem. You are allowed to have a CMYK plus two spot colors with device gray text PDF that has subsetted fonts, JPEG compression and 200 DPI images for a magazine advertisement. Technically this meets the ISO specification for PDF/X-1a:2001. But it does not meet your needs for printing an advertisement. You want all CMYK with ZIP compression and fully embedded fonts. Or maybe you don’t want any image compression at all. It may be the case that you want everything to be device gray. The way Adobe see’s it in their Creative Suite 2 is that to be a valid PDF/X-1a:200x file it must be CMYK, have subsetted fonts and use what they call “automatic compression”. Automatic compression takes a best guess at either using ZIP or JPEG compression. Well that’s all fine and dandy, it is probably the most common use for PDF/X-1a:200x. Unfortunately it is not what everyone wants or uses. So Adobe has created a subset of PDF/X-1a which is already a subset of PDF. Now doesn’t that get confusing? Beyond that many printers have their own house version of PDF/X. They feel they must because they feel that the ISO specification does not meet their “unique” needs. I put unique in quotes because printers in general still feel that they have specific settings that make the “ultimate” PDF for their needs. It is true that the ISO specification is a bit loose.
So then early in the new millennium a few software developers got together and decided that they needed tighten up things a bit. This is how the Ghent PDF Workgroup was formed. The Ghent PDF Workgroup expanded upon the PDF/X-1a specification and created de jure standards for specific needs. They developed specialized requirements for magazine advertising, sheetfed printing, newspapers and others. Within each of these niche markets they were able to decide collectively what the “best practices” were for each market segment.
Prior to and even after the forming of the Ghent Work Group printers were hesitant to adopt the PDF/X-1a standard as their de facto file submission format. And I’m not sure how widely known the Ghent Work Group settings are known or understood. In the last year developers such as Markzware and Kodak have met the GWG criteria and joined developers such as Enfocus, Callas and Global Graphics in adopting the GWG settings. Getting Adobe and Quark on board are the next two hurdles for more wide spread adoption. Once those two developers are on board and integrate the GWG settings it will lower the barriers to adoption for everyone. To further lower the barriers we in the industry need to examine our own internal needs and evaluate how the GWG settings can be integrated. When I sit down with clients and examine their needs for a PDF based workflow part of what we discuss is what the real needs of the workflow are. Not what is wanted, but what is needed. Once you get down to that level and compare the wants versus the GWG profiles you find that there are really only personal esoteric differences between the two. The challenge in adopting a standard is that it is counter intuitive for many of us. The standard “doesn’t fit what I need” is what I hear from people. Much of the time that can be dispelled very quickly. Europeans have been using these profiles and methods with great success. Adoption of ISO Coated, Uncoated and Web color profiles, CertifiedPDF from Enfocus and the Ghent Work Group profiles for PDFs have all gone a long way to easing communications between content creators as John Dunn calls them and print providers. This enhanced level of communication has lowered the barriers that we here in the States still face. It does not take someone like Time, Inc., RR Donnelley & Sons, Quad Graphics or other such industry giants to cram this down our collective throat. It takes all of us to realize the benefits of such standardizations. If we can wrap our heads around that we will be able to communicate in a much clearer manner and be more efficient. Through that efficiency we will begin to reap the rewards of efficiency.
