pdfColorConvert: Optimized PDF color conversion for newspaper production
callas software’s pdfColorConvert provides publishers and newspaper printers with a rapid, robust and extremely comprehensive tool for color-converting PDF documents. Thanks to device link profiles, this special tool can now adapt even better to the special requirements in newspaper production. Badische Zeitung is one newspaper that uses this tool for correcting ink applications settings for adverts.
Berlin, October 5th, 2006. Berlin-based callas software will be presenting an advanced version of pdfColorConvert at IFRA EXPO 2006 in Amsterdam.
This well-known product used for the professional color conversion of PDF documents impresses with its easy use, high processing rate and versatility. This is why the special tool has become the essential support and troubleshooting resource for PDF color management in many prepress agencies, printers and publishing houses. In fact, with just three PDF color optimization settings – determining the original file’s color space, establishing the target profile, and processing spot colors – you can carry out nearly every conceivable conversion. The key profiles for newspaper production, along with all the other important printing processes already exist, based on ISO standards.
pdfColorConvert now also allows you to use device link profiles. These profiles, which have been specially customized for the printing machines being used, often produce more harmonious conversion results, whilst also preserving the black channel. But pdfColorConvert, when combined with a specially customized device link profile, provides essential support not only for achieving optimum color conversion, but for optimizing ink application as well. For instance, having the wrong color settings in PDF print adverts can cause a newspaper printer huge problems. In the worst case scenario, production needs to be stopped. pdfColorConvert, on the other hand, when combined with a device link profile, limits the ink application to a value that is ideal for the newspaper press, without compromising on color appearance. For example the publisher Badischer Verlag, part of the Badisches Pressehaus media group, based in Freiburg, uses pdfColorConvert to produce the Badische Zeitung newspaper.
Badisches Pressehaus has been using for a short time now three brand-new KBA Cortina presses in its waterless offset process. It is not only the Badische Zeitung and Der Sonntag newspapers that have been printed using the new Cortina presses, but also a variety of free newspapers, newspaper supplements, telephone directories or advertizing brochures. The CLI modules pdfInspektor3, pdfCorrect and pdfColorConvert from callas software check, correct and optimize right at the prepress stage up to 650 full-page PDF adverts every day. “We used to always have problems with defective advert files on the press,” says Marco Rauber, manager of the prepress department at Badischer Verlag.
Background: Even at the design stage, advertizing customers take into account the dot gain required by the press, but rarely bother about the correct ink application. Even the KBA Cortina press is only able to handle image areas of 260%, but files are often supplied with values in excess of 300%, along with increasing numbers of files with the maximum value of 400%. callas software’s CLI modules, and especially pdfColorConvert, provided Badischer Verlag with a simple and highly efficient means of remedying the source of extremely costly errors beforehand.
pdfColorConvert is available from callas software as a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat 6, 7 and 8, or as a command-line module (CLI) for automated PDF workflows under Windows, Mac, Linux or Sun Solaris.
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