Adobe Community: Message List - Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:54:04 GMT

BUT what if the user ran some other program on the PDF after it was created - perhaps they combined it with some other file(s) or they added a watermark or (whatever). That could easily change any number of attributes of the PDF BUT it still say that it used your settings - and then it would fail

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:42:00 GMT

If customer uses export settings it eliminates many Features that are not needed for printing.

Just having the export settings used would be an easy check before we throw our battery of preflight checks against it.

Our prepress Dept is sometimes too busy to preflight all of the files and tell the customer if they can leave for vacation (actual issue) or whatever is their whim.

So maybe it does matter what settings were used. (not trying to sound grumpy)

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:31:51 GMT

Right!

And so you check the actual feature (or lack thereof) in the PDF - instead of how the user created the PDF.

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:30:08 GMT

Most of which are controlled by the Export options used;

Description

KK Stevens

PDF Preset: CC to PDF for KKSPC-Flattened

Compatibility: Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3)

Standards Compliance: None

General

Pages: All

Spreads: Off

Generate Thumbnails: On

Optimize PDF: Off

Create Acrobat Layers: N/A

Export Layers: Visible and Printable Layers

Include Bookmarks: Off

Include Hyperlinks: Off

Export Nonprinting Objects: Off

Export Visible Guides and Baseline Grids: Off

Create Tagged PDF: Off

Interactive Elements: Do Not Include

Compression

Color Images

Bicubic Downsample at: 300 ppi

for images above: 300 ppi

Compression: ZIP

Tile Size: N/A

Quality: 8 Bit

Grayscale Images

Bicubic Downsample at: 300 ppi

for images above: 300 ppi

Compression: ZIP

Tile Size: N/A

Quality: 8 Bit

Monochrome Images

Downsample at: 1200 ppi

for images above: 1200 ppi

Compression: CCITT Group 4

Compress Text and Line Art: On

Crop Image Data to Frames: On

Marks and Bleeds

Crop Marks: Off

Bleed Marks: Off

Registration Marks: Off

Color Bars: Off

Page Information: Off

Page Mark Type: Default

Weight: 0.125 pt

Offset: 0.125 in

Use Document Bleed Settings: Off

Bleed Top: 0.125 in

Bleed Bottom: 0.125 in

Bleed Left: 0.125 in

Bleed Right: 0.125 in

Include Slug Area: Off

Output

Color Conversion: No Color Conversion

Destination: N/A

Profile Inclusion Policy: Don't Include Profiles

Simulate Overprint: Off

Output Intent Profile Name: N/A

Output Condition: N/A

Output Condition Identifier: N/A

Registry Name: N/A

Advanced

Subset Fonts Below: 1%

Omit PDF: Off

Omit EPS: Off

Omit Bitmap Images: Off

Transparency Flattener Preset: [High Resolution]

Ignore Spread Overrides: Off

Warnings

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:27:02 GMT

Such things as:

- Font Embedding Status

- Raster Image Resolution

- Compliance with a PDF standard (such as PDF/A or PDF/X)

- Colorspace(s) used

- Use of (or non-use of) Hyperlinks, Form Fields, Annotations, etc.

(and the list goes on)

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:23:26 GMT

OK, What "features" are we talking about?

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:18:37 GMT

Understood - but it's more important that you check the PDF for features (or lack thereof), regardless of how it was created.

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:14:25 GMT

Alright. I'll check it out. Thanks.

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:11:47 GMT

We distribute custom export options to our customers.

The current way of telling is Document Properties.

PDF Version, Tagged PDF or Fast Web View are the telling things.

But if the line Export Options Used or something similiar existed it would be easier for our "lower level" prepress technicians or even our sales staff to verify our export settings.

I don't know maybe even something in metadata.

Our custom settings are not so specific as to make a PDF not usable if it was not created with them.

But this is our "first line of defense" when customers say "what happened?".

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:10:49 GMT

A PDF doesn't have a resolution, but each raster image can have one. You can use a number of tools to obtain this information including the Preflight tool in Adobe Acrobat.

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 17:41:00 GMT

I know how to tell what fonts are embedded, but how does one discover the resolution of images or of the whole PDF? That was one of my main concerns when I first posted this question.

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 16:55:10 GMT

No it does not.

We used to offer it as an option for all Adobe applications but it didn't actually do what people really wanted...since the problem is that there are MANY TOOLS that modify PDFs after creation and so the creation info can become stale/invalid very quickly.

Can you give some idea of exactly what you need to know? Because chances are that there are ways to figure that out...

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 16:27:53 GMT

Does InDesignCC include the information somewhere?

Why not?

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 21:42:39 GMT

No.

Because there are thousands of PDF authoring applications and they each have different settings and options.

Re: Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 21:18:16 GMT

A few points might be discoverable by analysis. Whether fonts are embedded, what resolution images have ended up, for example. Otherwise not really.

Is there a way to tell what settings were used to export a PDF?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 18:42:59 GMT

Is there any way to tell what export settings were used to create a PDF? I'm trying to recreate settings used in a previous PDF.