Feature
PDF gets a unifying update
Pat McGrew
Three cool things you want to know about PDF 2.0
When Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) burst onto
the scene in the summer of 1993 it was the Adobe response
to a gap in the market: it was very hard to share files across
MAC, Windows and Unix environments. From its launch in
June of 1993 through the last 25 years of updates, PDF
evolved from a simple display format to a comprehensive
platform for printing, viewing, archiving, and file sharing.
By 2008 Adobe had released PDF to the care of the Inter-
national Organization for Standardization (ISO), which codified
it as ISO 32000-1. While there have been updates over the
last decade, it wasn’t until July, 2017 that PDF 2.0 was
released, responding again to gaps.
For many printers the introduction of PDF 2.0 will have little
impact on the day-to-day work. It will take some time for DFE
and RIP vendors to catch up to the feature extensions, and
on the emitter side it may take time for design products to
catch up. While many of the features of PDF 2.0 existed in
the wide array of PDF standards, from PDF X-1 to PDF-UA,
PDF 2.0 unifies the standard.
To prepare for the options opened by PDF 2.0, let’s look at
the following three areas.
With page-level output profiles, you can assign specific profiles
for different paper stocks and different presses.
20 | May 2018 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
File Preparation
Many print projects call for producing books, magazines,
manuals and marketing collateral using different paper
stocks and even different print devices, leaving production
teams trying to balance colour without the aid of ICC profiles
built for the output environment. In PDF 2.0 this gets easier
with support for page-level output profiles. They add a new
layer of granularity to how you associate colour profiles.
Now you can assign specific profiles to allow for different
paper stocks and different presses. This is a huge help to
companies running offset, inkjet and toner devices, and
mixing pages to create hybrid final products. Similarly, PDF
2.0 now allows for the output intent of an International Color
Consortium (ICC) profile to be kept separately from the PDF
data structures, which means that the ICC profile can be
referenced using a URL.
If you print graphic work that
uses large black areas or
features shadows, you will
want to investigate the
changes to object-level
Black Point Compensation
(BPC). PDF 2.0 expands BPC
control when converting
from larger to smaller colour
spaces. Designers may
remember when BPC con-
trol was added to Adobe
Photoshop at release 5 to create adjustments between the
output device capabilities and the black in the file. An ICC
whitepaper called Black-point compensation: theory and
application (http://www.color.org/WP40-Black_Point_Com-
pensation_2010-07-27.pdf ) describes how using this
technique can render more detail in shadows. For prepress
teams it is important to remember that Black Point Compen-
sation does not apply to the absolute colourimetric rendering
intent, where the goal is the exact reproduction of all colours
within the gamut of the output device.
There is some great
news for printers who
specialize in packaging,
industrial printing
or textile printing
There is some great news for printers who specialize in
packaging, industrial printing or textile printing. PDF 2.0
unlocks the option to use spectrally defined colour to pro-
vide an accurate way to emulate spot colours both for
proofing and for final print production. Using spectral values
is common in packaging printing where the order in which
the inks are printed, the dot gain, and screening may vary
based on the substrates.
Using the new feature requires that spectral data be added
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