I meant to post about this earlier but I was overloaded at the time and forgot...
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by matauri
Just thought I would ask others (as its related to this topic)... Have you found that most printers/signwriters now request files as PDF in preference? Especially if they are sent email. I thought this must have been for the size factor, but one print tech told me that its a better quality to print from.
|
I don't find most printers prefer PDF
unless a file is urgent and therfore needs to be sent via email (obviously for the size issue).
While the new versions of Acrobat seem to be more reliable and user friendly, the older versions required a good understanding of settings etc and could be a hassle.
Since my printers generally prefer a print proof with the artwork I find it simplest to send that with a CD and not email artwork.
I don't know about others, but I tend to set artwork up differently for different project types and printers.
I have one who deals with booklets etc who prefers Pagemaker 7 or Quark. Being a pauper I don't have Quark or even Indesign yet (although I cope OK without) so Pagemaker is the go there.
A couple of others who do my A4 tourism brochures and my postcards & business cards both like EPS so I set the layout up in Illustrator and convert the text to outlines and save as an EPS (can't go wrong with that).
Maybe I am wrong, but I can't understand why a printer would say you get better quality from a PDF, because the PDF is generally created from the layout program. Since part of the process is compression (which intrisically means some loss of data - however small) I can't see how the print quality could be improved from the original by compressing and converting to PDF.
If they are refering to accuracy as opposed to print quality, then yes there is an argument for PDF, because it embeds the fonts and you tend to avoid the minor text shifts that can sometimes occur in programs like Pagemaker (even if you send all the font files).
I personally find these "shifts" rare so I stick with the original, but like I say, I don't email artwork often.