1 Reply Latest reply: Sep 28, 2012 12:26 AM by Dave Merchant RSS

    PDF/X-1a question

    Roy Marshall Community Member
    Roy Marshall Sep 27, 2012 3:02 PM

      Hi.

       

      I have been out of the Pre-Press environment for 5 years now, but when I was last running a pre-peress studio, we did NOT stipulate that we would only accept PDF/x-1a files, as the modern rip was capable of accepting Acrobat 1.6 files, with RGB images, etc.

       

      Is this still the case? I now work for a company, and part of what i do is putting together PDF files, some will be printed on ofset presses. Our client has preflighted the PDF files we produce, and have rejected them as the fail on the PreFlight profile for PDF/X-1a.

       

      Do I need to tell them (politely) that this is an old standard, and modenr RIPS do not require this any more? I do understand that this standard of PDF is the most compatible, but is that now the real world experience?

       

      Any thoughs would be welcome.

       

      Roy

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        • 1. Re: PDF/X-1a question
          Dave Merchant CommunityMVP
          Dave Merchant Sep 28, 2012 12:26 AM (in response to Roy Marshall)

          PDF/X-1a:2001 is an 'old' standard but so are most RIPs in commercial print shops (and often they'll still be using Acrobat 6 for the same reason - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!)

           

          There are later versions of PDF/X which support additional features but you certainly don't want to be sending mixed-space documents to a remote printing service unless you know they fully support the version of the standard you're sending - for example despite modern RIPs being able to convert RGB->CMYK they may not always abide by the embedded profiles, so the end results can be dramatically different. Some  can't cope with transparency so the later 2003+ versions of PDF/X won't work.

           

          The advantage of PDF/X-1a is that it's so restrictive it can't help but print properly. There are rare occasions where specialist documents may need LAB color or externally-referenced elements, hence why PDF/X-3 and /X-4 were written, but you shouldn't yet be using those versions for general purpose jobs. If in doubt use the lowest possible version of the standard which supports the file content.