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According to the Desktop Publishing glossary of terms, Overprinting is defined as:
Definition: In most cases, when two objects of different colors overlap they knockout -- they won't print on top of each other. To intentionally print one layer of ink on top of another is to overprint. Overprinting is sometimes used to avoid the need for trapping and avoid gaps between touching colors. Spot colors intended to designate the application of spot varnish are also set up to overprint.
But if you ask me - it's just the biggest pain in the printing industry's derriere.
The reason that it is such a nightmare for designers is that the act of overprinting only makes sense on high end printing devices - it doesn't make sense on a computer screen or the average home/office printer. As such, for the longest time, designers had to print to see if they were doing their design correctly. Fortunately, Adobe introduced "Overprint Preview" into Acrobat and our authoring applications so that you could see what going on, on screen, while authoring and with the finished PDF.
Unfortunately, for the longest time, only Acrobat itself could preview Overprint. It wasn't until Reader 7 that the feature was added to Adobe Reader - and then, like Acrobat, the option/preference was OFF by default. Designers, printers and the like had to make sure that they had their preferences set correctly and provide their users with proper instruction.
With Acrobat 9, we decided that enough is enough! Designers need to know that users, whether they are using Acrobat or Reader, regardless of their preferences, see what is going to print. Isn't that a big reason why people use PDF??
In designing this feature, we originally planned for it to just be completely automatic and appear only when a PDF had the necessary components. However, we discovered that there are many files out in the world that weren't really supposed to be printed, and thus generate a "false positive" and produce inaccurate renderings. What is worse, is that 99% of these "false positives" are PDFs authored using a well known competitor to Adobe's products - and we didn't want to be seen as "playing favorites" with the quality of document rendering.
So we did the next best thing! We went looking for a clue in PDF documents that demonstrates that they are - without a shadow of a doubt - destined for printing. That "clue" is compliance with PDF/X (ISO 15930)! Since PDF/X is a standard designed for the creation of PDFs for blind exchange in print production - we can clearly say that all such files SHALL have Overprint Preview enabled. And that's exactly what Acrobat/Reader 9 does. As part of it's PDF/X Conforming Viewer implementation, when it detects that a PDF is compliant with PDF/X - it makes sure that overprint is properly rendered to screen.
We did, however, leave the preference in place - so that if you really want to turn Overprint Preview to "Always" or "Never", you are welcome to do so. We also left in that original "Automatic" option for anyone wanting to experiment and see the results.
Everyone in the print/publishing community that I've talked to is really excited about this feature...I hope you will be too!
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Comments
add new commentOverprint Preview
I think that it's wonderful that Adobe is trying to streamline things but from a prepress standpoint it has made things difficult. A lot of people don't even know how to create a proper pdf for press and we work with some great files and some not so great files. I just wish there was a key command as before so we could manually turn it off and on. The only work around I've seen is in the Output Preview where you can check Simulate Overprint on and off. Kind of a bummer.
Applying Overprint
Hello All,
I have been both industries, Print and now Digital. Overprint is great for print, (if needed). I also have a multi-media degree and I know how to use it correctly. The question I have now is to see if there is any way to apply overprint to pdf's besides using the print to pdf settings and make sure the apply overprint check box is checked.
Basically we take the same pdf's that were sent to the printer and covert them to digital, we work with overprint off, to see the the true way its going to look after it goes through our process. I would love to change the way the designers output there files but that's a road that is hard to cross with them.
So, is there any other way to apply overprint to the pdf?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Erik
Overprint Preview menu item
I've just installed CS4 with Acrobat 9 and am impressed thus far. A menu item for Overprint Preview used to be present in Acrobat 8 in the Advanced Menu/Print Production area. I no longer see any menu item for this however in Acrobat 9. I personally have it always on in preferences, but sometimes like to toggle it on and off to show someone an overprinting problem or to investigate something one of print clients sees(or doesn't see) in their printed piece.
I work for a process web printer. Computer is an Intel iMac 24".
Hi Leonard,
I have not seen Acrobat 9 in person so please excuse the questions. I applaud the intent, but I see an unintended consequence that might make things more dificult. Are these options truly preferences of the app?
We often will manually turn OPP on and off to get a quick feel for how the PDF is setup and where overprints are lurking. If the on/off switch is buried in the preferences, it's going to make it much harder to do ths.
Like I sad, while I applaud the intent, as a prepress professional, I don't want or need my app thinking for me. These features are great for novices, but it makes it a less powerful tool for folks like me.
Is there any visual cue in the UI that OPP is on/off for a partucular PDF?
Craig Schleunes
Back with Acrobat 7, I recall that Dwight Kelley of Apago created a small 'start up' file (perhaps it was a JavaScript, I can't recall?) - that, when you launched Adobe Acobat, it would automatically turn on overprint Preview. Even if the user was sharing the computer with others, who may turn this off - you could simply reset it back to the desired state by restarting Acrobat.
Now that we have several settings. While I can't imagine any prepress situation where I would want to choose "Always" over "Only for PDF/X files" - it is nice to know that if I ever discover a situation where people are printing loads of non PDF/X files but somehow trust overprinting the overprinting, well, that is available.
Thanks!