Adobe PDF Print Engine enables 'no-excuses printing'

Kurt Foss, Editor, AcrobatUsers.com

Adobe Systems recently announced new printing software technology — dubbed Adobe PDF Print Engine — that facilitates more efficient print workflows and increased automation. It's based on industry standard Portable Document Format (PDF) and Job Definition Format (JDF). By rendering PDF content natively and relying on JDF to capture job-ticket and process-control information, Adobe PDF Print Engine-empowered workflows will enable designers and commercial printers to keep PDF content device independent throughout the workflow. They'll be able to more easily make late-stage edits in PDF files and configure PDF-based jobs to print on different types of output devices and presses.

Unveiled at IPEX 2006, a global technology event for print, publishing and media held in Birmingham, England, it ensures that print hardware from Adobe OEM partners will be able to output PDF files that include complex designs and effects, such as transparency.

Putting it more simply, Dov Isaacs of Adobe Systems says PDF Print Engine enables "no-excuses printing of device-independent, color-managed PDF files with live transparency maintained all the way to the RIP." His enthusiasm for the technology stems from his nearly four-year involvement, from inception — helping to draft the initial requirements, architecture and development plan — to giving demonstrations to IPEX attendees during the UK rollout event.

Isaacs is well known to Adobe customers who frequent various online forums and e-mail lists to discuss (and periodically complain about) Adobe's range of design, publishing and printing products, especially those that create or integrate PDF. Isaacs says his active, long-time involvement with users and customers played a key role in the functional and architectural ideas behind the development of Adobe PDF Print Engine, helping to ground it in reality with relationship to users' needs.

"It isn't only Acrobat users that I was listening to via various online forums, e-mail lists, conferences and live one-on-one discussions," Isaacs says. "I was also doing the same for InDesign, as well as with printers, creative professionals and various industry organizations. This process started close to eight years ago, but intensified after Adobe unleashed transparency in Illustrator 9, Acrobat 5 and InDesign 2, in combination with serious support for ICC color management within PDF. Adobe's creative professional customers, who had been requesting support for transparency since the earliest days of Adobe Illustrator, immediately started using transparency, both explicitly and implicitly (such as for drop shadows and feathering) to enhance the graphic richness of their designs. Similarly, Microsoft Office applications also supported transparency, which was increasingly being used and abused by PowerPoint users."

Alas, there were some family issues — between PDF and PostScript — to resolve.

"Unfortunately, at this point, the PDF imaging model with transparency and color management significantly surpassed that of Adobe PostScript 3,” Isaacs says. “A technique — known as flattening — needed to be utilized to reconcile the imaging model of PDF, which supported transparency, with the imaging model of PostScript, which only supported opaque objects. Flattening inherently required complete knowledge of the color-space support and device resolution of the printing device. Flattened content is typically non-repurposable and highly device dependent. If transparency and color are not used carefully, this flattening process can yield results that are not particularly visually pleasing, correct and/or efficient."

The end result was that many printers rebelled against jobs that utilized transparency, often the source of costly problems.

"The situation was driving printers crazy," Isaacs says. "Printers were bad-mouthing Adobe, refusing to accept content with live transparency, and in many cases, refusing to accept any content from versions of Illustrator greater than 8, or from any versions of InDesign. Although quite a bit of investment went into both improving the flattening process and providing user education to both creative professionals and printer alike — as to how to avoid various pitfalls in use and flattening of transparency — we still really didn't have a truly satisfactory solution that involved PostScript."

Armed with this "background of feedback of user pain," Isaacs and Adobe were determined to overcome the problem — to the benefit of both the company and its customers. Based on the April 3 announcement, which heralds Adobe PDF Print Engine as the "next generation of PDF workflows," Adobe and many of its commercial printing manufacturer partners believe the obstacles have been hurdled and the workflow streamlined. Industry leader support comments published on Adobe.com include Agfa Graphics, EFI, FUJIFILM, Dainippon Screen, HP, Kodak, Xerox and others.

Following Isaacs' initial online announcement, David Blatner, the editorial director of InDesign Magazine and The Creative Suite Conference, posted his appreciative reaction on the InDesign e-mail discussion list. "The idea that I can hand a PDF (with transparency) off to a RIP without worry about flattening is a dream come true," wrote Blatner, who also co-hosts a regular podcast at InDesignSecrets.com.

Adobe is providing the Adobe PDF Print Engine as a Software Development Kit (SDK) to its OEMs partners for building the next generation of PDF-printing solutions, including RIPs, print previewing and proofing software and print workflow systems. According to Isaacs, OEMs are currently in the process of integrating the Adobe code into their products. Some processes that traditionally have been separate, time-consuming and sometimes manual are now automated and effortless. "The new architecture allows them to dramatically simplify their existing architectures, since the Adobe PDF Print Engine simultaneously handles color management, imposition, transparency, screening, separations and (optionally) trapping as part of the RIP process itself," he says. "Separate workflow steps are no longer necessary!"

Initial OEM product announcements will revolve around high-end PDF workflow systems primarily for platesetters, Isaacs says, and eventually will also encompass digital printers, proofers and so on.

The release of Adobe PDF Print Engine "definitely demonstrates that we believe in the viability of the print marketplace," says Isaacs, "and that we will serve in a leadership position to meet the evolving needs of our customers in this continually changing industry." The notion of industry change — and the challenges for those who try to predict them — reminds him of a now-ironic prophesy at an industry gathering five years ago.

At the Seybold Seminars Boston 2001 conference in Boston, "one of the industry pundits boldy announced at a general session — to an audience primarily composed of both creative professionals and print service providers in the print business — that 'print is dead,'" Isaacs says. Now in 2006, he acknowledges that print and the print industry are changing. But "print is certainly not dead," he says. The same can't be said for the once-popular Seybold Seminars, which have faded from view and significance during the same timespan.