Convert a print file to a PDF

If your application does not yet offer support for PDF, you need extra software. This software can convert a printfile (usually a PostScript file) to a PDF file. Some applications acts as a dummy printers, intercept the output of an application and directly convert the data to a PDF.

Below is an overview of some of the solutions that are available on the market. Some of them are perfectly usable for prepress, like

• Acrobat Distiller (part of Adobe Acrobat)
  Acrobat Distiller is a separate application that can convert PostScript files into PDF-files. In many ways it resembles a RIP which, instead of writing a bitmap pattern to an imagesetter, writes the resulting PDF file to a disk. Distiller is part of the Adobe Acrobat package. It is available for Mac, PCs and some UNIX flavours.
• Adobe Extreme derivatives like Apogee or Prinergy
  Extreme is not a product, it is a technology that is sold by Adobe which allows graphic arts manufacturers to create a complete workflow solution that is based on PDF. There are several manufacturers that use Adobe Extreme technology. The two most complete implementations are Agfa Apogee and Creo Prinergy. Creo Brisque and Screen Trueflow also use parts of the Extreme architecture.
  All of these solutions are expensive prepress systems that can do a lot more than just create PDF files. Their functionality goes far beyond the scope of this page. Agfa also sells a separate product called ApogeeX Create which you could call a ‘prepress optimized’ version of Acrobat Distiller. A similar product from Creo is called Synapse Prepare.
• Jaws PDF Creator
  This is a commercial equivalent to Acrobat Distiller, created by Jaws, a subsidiary of Global Graphics. The same technology is also used in QuarkXPress 6&7. I have never used PDF Creator myself. Reviews I read about it seem to indicate that it is a very interesting product for office use but slightly less optimized for prepress use than Acrobat.

Other solutions are more geared towards home or office use. Among these are:

• Ghostscript
  Ghostscript is a freely available PostScript RIP created by Alladin Systems. It can also be used to view or print PDF files but better still: it can even export to a PDF file. Ghostscript is available for Macs, PCs and UNIX.
  Ghostscript is mainly used in the Soho market as well as in educational environments. I do not think it is suitable for prepress use but I don’t really know much about it. An often heard complaint about Ghostscript is that it is not really good at handling fonts: Text in Ghostscript PDF files is not displayed as beautiful as it is in Acrobat PDF files.
• various PDF printerdrivers
  • PrintToPDF is a shareware Macintosh printer driver that creates PDF files. PrintToPDF is not as powerful as Acrobat, but it creates simple PDFs for a much lower price ($20). It can be downloaded from the web site of Jim Walker. I have not tried this little application yet but it is a safe assumption that it is not really meant for prepress use.
  • Similar tools also exist for PCs
• various tools to convert native file formats to PDF. The majority of these focus on popular file formats such a the Doc files created by Microsoft Word.
• on-line PDF services

Use an on-line tool that converts a document to a PDF

For some web services you do not need to create a print file: simply upload the source document to the site and it will convert it to a PDF file. An example of this is Adobe’s own web service. These aren’t services that focus on creating high quality print-ready PDF files but if you received a native file and don’t own the matching application, it can be a solution.

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