ADOBE PDF PREPARATION GUIDE
Definitive guide for the Media Hub PDF preferences
PDF EXPORT SETTINGS
note the settings below have screenshots from mac, however the dialogue boxes and settings are common between both mac and windows.
Indesign Export
have your file ready, and go to File -> Export...
Select the location you wish to save the PDF, and choose Adobe PDF (Print)
In the following dialogue box, under Adobe PDF Preset, choose "[PDF/X-1a:2001]"
press "Export"
Photoshop Export
have your file ready, and go to File -> Save As...
Select the location you wish to save the PDF, and select "Photoshop PDF" as the format, then press save
You may be prompted with a warning that the following dialogue may overide your settings - press ok
In the following dialogue box, under Adobe PDF Preset, choose "[PDF/X-1a:2001]"
press "Save PDF"
Note: for large Photoshop files, such as PSB's, you may hit a "scratch disk full" error. This can be resolved by either freeing up space on your chosen scratch disk, or by adding another drive. For more information, see here:
Illustrator Export
have your file ready, and go to File -> Save As...
Select the location you wish to save the PDF, and select "Adobe PDF" as the format, then press save
In the following dialogue box, under Adobe PDF Preset, choose "[PDF/X-1a:2001]" and press "Save PDF"
You may be warned that saving as PDF/X will disable some editing features, press "ok"
Rhino Export (to be expanded upon!)
PDF straight from rhino will mostly likely never print
open in illustrator
remove excess folder/clipping masks (images to come!)
follow guide for illustrator above, or reference in indesign and follow the indesign guide above
TROUBLESHOOTING
forever flattening?
not printing?
drawing error?
follow these steps if you are still having problems!
Step 0: follow the guidelines above
make sure that you have followed the above recommendations - if not, that will be the first step. the PDF preset we reccomend is the most widely compatible - the PDF standard has had many features added to it over the years and many arent recogised by our plotters, and so cannot be printed, so this early, high comaptability print optimized preset helps cut out all the werid new features present in some PDFs.
Step 1: Fatten Transparency/layers
these also often cause problems - transparency and layers are computationally heavy tasks to process, especially if these are fancy blend modes used. if you have a PSD/AI with many layers, it may be a good idea to flatten it before either exporting as a PDF or referencing it in your indesign file.
Step 2: Rasterize Hatches
Hatches in both illustrator and rhino are patterns that are made up of hundreds of vector lines. These are difficult to process as is, and made even worse if there are elements layered above and below it. (rasterize your hatches) (see below for PPI/vector vs raster)
Final failsafe, Step 3: Rasterize your artwork
Export your work as a high resolution TIF or JPEG. PNG should be avoided, as they do not have CMYK colour data, so colours may not look right/be accurate in the print output. Below is the dialogue box from indesign, for File -> Export... then choosing JPEG as the format.
note: other software may have slightly different dialogue boxes, however these settings should be transferrable to other software if the options are available.
The "Export" options are pretty self explanitory, however, the "Image" and "Options" should be paid attention to. here are some guidelines:
Quality - pretty self explanatory, though worth noting the higher this is set, the larger the files size
Format Method - leave this as baseline
Resolution (ppi) - this is a measure of pixels per inch. The higher this number, the higher the resolution of your output file. higher that 600 is overkill, as our printers generally cannot print finer than that. Depending on the physical size of your print, eg. prints longer than 1.3 m, you may have to drop this down otherwise you will get a "Maximum size exceeded error"; JPEG files cannot exceed ~32760 pixels in any dimension, which is aprox. a 1.3m long file @600 ppi.
Colour Spaces - this should be set to CMYK, it will give a closer representation of the final print output when rendering it on your display.
Embed Colour Profile - keep this ticked, will help with more accurate colour representation.
anti-aliasing - anti aliasing is the proccess of softening hard edges, such as text and linework, so that they do not appear as jagged, stepped lines (aliasing). Leave it blank if your work has many super fine vertical and horizontal lines, tick it if your artwork is mostly text, or you are unsure. At 600 ppi the difference should be negligable.
If you know you need bleed settings or overprint simulation, use them - otherwise, keep these unticked
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