These comments and polls appeared on the home page or in the Twitter feed of Prepressure.com during 2020. A separate page covers the 2020 prepress news.
Rediscovering the Object Inspector
The page on converting PDFs to grayscale needed an update, so I played around in Acrobat Pro a bit. At some point in time I needed to know the color space of images in my testfile. It was another reminder that I am getting a bit older. I knew there was some kind of inspector tool built into Acrobat Pro but I’d forgotten where it was hiding. If you’ve never used this: go to the Print Production tools, select the Output Preview module and in the window that pops up set the Preview: option to Object Inspector. When you then click on any object in a PDF, its properties are shown. For images that includes the color space, resolution, size, bit depth and compression algorithm. PDF files have no secrets for the object inspector.
Bigger and better
In 2011 I learned about photochrome prints and added dozens of examples of such prints to the site. In those days, image size was still crucial, so all images were 450 pixels wide with a filesize of around 35K. By today’s standards that is ridiculous so I am busy replacing all the images by versions that are 1000 pixels wide and 100K large. This time around, a second 1MB version is saved as well, to prepare for the internet of 2030. Enjoy!
Browsing the World Digital Library
Got some free time on your hands due to the Corona pandemic? Head over to the World Digital Library, enter a topic or event that interests you and dive in books, magazines, pamphlets, pictures. movies or artifacts that cover the subject. Admittedly the number of clay tablets discussing the latest Apple iPhone SE might be limited.
The whitepaper workflow
I frequently use Wikipedia but always have my reservations about its accuracy. Case in point: recently I stumbled across the Wikipedia page about Prinergy, the Kodak prepress workflow. On 15 April 2020, this is how Wikipedia defines Prinery: ‘It is a client/server system that integrates Whitepaper creation, job proofing, imposition, and a raster image processor into one unified workflow.’
‘Whitepaper creation’? Seriously? In the page’s history, you see someone tried to replace this by ‘postscript/pdf’ but for some reason, that change did not make it in the current revision. ‘Whitepaper’ first made its appearance in 2014, so the incorrect definition has been there for six years now.
This reminds me of the time I volunteered to edit Wikipedia pages and added a sentence to the page about RIPS, stating that these are sometimes called renderers. The change got rejected because it was not considered valid. I provided links to Agfa and Heidelberg webpages talking about the renderer in their workflows. The main editor rejected this as proof, so I gave up on trying to contribute to Wikipedia. Don’t expect me to fix that amusing Prinergy entry any time soon.
August 2020 update: I just noticed the error got fixed. I’m curious if it will reappear in the future.
Stamps stampede
It’s a bit sad that it takes a popular television series to get people excited about print. I am, of course, talking about the Game Of Thrones postage stamps issued in the United Kingdom by Royal Mail.
The 2020 reboot
During 2019 nothing much happened with this site but now it is back with a fresh new design. I also intend to once again add content on a regular basis. Watch this space!
<2019 – 2021>
I knew that there were some type of inspector tool built in Acrobat PDF.
Worked the printing trade for almost 60 years in Chicago
Have lots of info to share are you still working on this site ??
Hi Mitchell, I only update pages and review comments every few months. There’s too much overlap with my regular job so I keep the site running until my job description changes once more and daily editing becomes fun once again.